Having seven questions each with five levels of depth can sound mechanical. You don’t build friendships like you stack Legos following the instructions to create what’s on the cover of the box. The seven questions are intended to help you to always have something to talk about. The five levels are meant to help you identify what area of a friendship is least developed and allow you to be intentional. If you have that level of awareness, go with where the conversation takes you.

Building meaningful friendships can be difficult, especially in a culture that is lonelier and more disconnected than ever. In Transformative Friendships: 7 Questions to Deepen Any Relationship, counselor Brad Hambrick encourages readers to develop new rhythms, habits, and lifestyles that will shape and grow their relationships, both with casual acquaintances and closer friends.
In this interview, we talk to Brad about the importance of building friendships and how doing so can transform your life.
Q: TRANSFORMATIVE FRIENDSHIPS EXPLORES SEVEN QUESTIONS THAT YOU BELIEVE CAN DEEPEN ANY RELATIONSHIP. WHAT ARE THOSE SEVEN QUESTIONS?
Hopefully, it’s not intimidating to imagine yourself asking a friend these questions or being asked them by a friend. In Transformative Friendships, we unpack how these simple questions can transform casual acquaintances into “iron sharpens iron” friendships that become dearer than family (Proverbs 27:17).

What’s your story?
What’s good?
What’s hard?
What’s bad?
What’s fun?
What’s stuck?
What’s next?

Q: THREE OF THESE QUESTIONS SEEM TO LINK TOGETHER—WHAT’S GOOD? WHAT’S HARD? WHAT’S BAD? WHY ARE EACH OF THESE QUESTIONS IMPORTANT AND HOW DO THEY EACH HELP IN DEEPENING OUR FRIENDSHIPS?
From a Christian perspective, this invites us to explore our identity in Christ (what’s good), suffering (what’s hard), and sin (what’s bad). In different Christian traditions, one of these questions may be emphasized more than the others. But if friendships are going to have a holistic and balanced influence on our life, then we need to emphasize all three.
Q: IS IT BETTER TO HAVE A FEW REALLY CLOSE FRIENDS OR MANY MORE CASUAL FRIENDS?
That’s a good question, but I think it’s better not to think in terms of either-or. There are benefits to having really close friendships, but if all our friendships were “deep” that would be exhausting and crowd out other life responsibilities. Casual friendships also enrich our life, but if all our friendships were “shallow” we would feel lonely in a socially crowded life.
One of the things I want to do in Transformative Friendships is help people see the value of both and learn how to be intentional in taking a few of their casual friendships to a deeper level.
Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FACTORS THAT MAKE HAVING GOOD FRIENDSHIPS HARDER THAN IT SHOULD BE?
This can vary from context to context. I currently live in a big city where people move in and out all the time. The frequency with which people move make friendships feel temporary. But I grew up in a small town where being vulnerable felt riskier because everyone there would know you for the rest of your life.
There is also the factor of social media. Social media allows us to polish our image as we post the best pictures and narrate them in our preferred way. Because of this lots of people know a lot about us, but we don’t really feel known. We put out curated information about ourselves, but that can impede cultivating an actual relationship because of the limited engagement. I’m not against social media. I just think we need to be more aware of how it impacts who we call a “friend.”
Q: AS YOU’VE SERVED AS A COUNSELOR AND WORKED TO CREATE CHURCH-BASED COUNSELING MODELS, WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT PEOPLE’S RELIANCE ON COUNSELING OVER FRIENDSHIP?
Many people begin to rely on counseling as a friend-substitute. Counseling is where they are “real” and talk about what’s “hard.” They think if they’re engaging in counseling (which I’m all for) that friendships can just focus on what is “fun” and “good.” The result is that their friendships become more superficial. Ideally, when counseling is needed, it would be a place to talk about and tame the hard parts of life in a way that makes those subjects more approachable in their closer friendships. An indication that someone is ready to graduate from counseling is when he or she feels like they can talk about their hardships in their friendships.
Q: HOW DOES TRANSFORMATIVE FRIENDSHIPS FIT INTO THE CHURCH-BASED COUNSELING SERIES THAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN?
The Church-Based Counseling series is primarily about helping churches create counseling ministries that are relationally sustainable, liability wise, and church compatible. But I didn’t want churches to think, “Now that we have a counseling ministry, that is where we send all the hurting people.” That would make the church less of what God intends it to be.
Transformative Friendships is meant to be a resource that strengthens friendships in a church. That should serve a counseling ministry, if a church chooses to create one, in two ways. First, it helps those who are reaching out for counseling not to over rely on counseling. A counseling ministry cannot and should not privatize discipleship. Second, it creates a relational context for those receiving counseling that makes counseling more effective.
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Empowered by the truth that God keeps me as “the apple of [his] eye” (Psalm 17:8), I made the commitment to be a man who takes literally the command that “each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). Over the years, I have landed on three practices that promote a marriage culture that sees: stop, scribe, and speak.

The scene was reminiscent of a scary movie. Julia walked out to the church parking lot and found an ominous note taped to her car window: “I SEE YOU!”
Though she thought I was hundreds of miles away, I was actually nearby, watching the entire scene unfold. When she began to nervously look around, I took that as my cue and drove up next to her. As she stared in shock, I asked in the smoothest way possible, “Wanna take a ride?” (Yes, I had rehearsed it many times.) She joyfully got in the car, and a few hours later, I got down on one knee and asked if she would marry me. She said yes.
The cryptic three-word message was actually not the way I intended to start the morning. I had crafted the perfect poem to start our engagement day, but it got lost somewhere between my hotel and the church. With only a few seconds to write something, “I SEE YOU!” was all I could come up with.
We used to think our engagement was perfect except for those hastily written three words. Ironically, after 22 years of marriage, that note has become one of our favorite parts of the day. In fact, one of our marriage goals is to regularly and intentionally communicate what first happened on accident: “I see you.” While many fantasize about falling in love at first sight, we’ve discovered a better dream: a marriage that furthers love with each additional sight.
God Saw
It took a few years of marriage before I realized the power of sight as a way to pursue Julia. Up to that point, I was focused on developing my listening skills. Then, right when I began to make progress on that, God revealed (in perfect Godlike fashion) a new need for development: looking skills. We get a glimpse of the power of sight in the way God describes Israel’s suffering in Egypt:
God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel — and God knew. (Exodus 2:24–25)
By developing our listening and looking skills, we unlock a powerful combination in our marriages. When we listen, we communicate that our wife has been heard. When we look, we communicate that she is known and understood.
Unfortunately, far too many wives are overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness. Day after day, they feel invisible to the man they love. When I reflect on my own marriage and the real reasons why I don’t actively bless my wife as God intends, I admit that one of my main obstacles is optical. I don’t actually see what’s happening around me because I’m not really looking.
Savior with Wide Eyes
My breakthrough started with a study on all that Jesus noticed. Our Savior walked through life with eyes wide open. Jesus noticed Nathaniel under a tree (John 1:48) and Zacchaeus up in a tree (Luke 19:5). He noticed John’s disciples following at a distance (John 1:38) and the touch of one desperate woman while the masses pressed around him (Luke 8:45).
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Given that history, we would be better served to abandon the desire for winsomeness and all attempts to repurpose it and make it our own, and to instead return to Scripture’s ideas and terms regarding the multi-faceted virtue which is to be exhibited by the followers of Christ. President Kruger is right in his aim and practice, but we could wish he finds a better theory and terminology in which to dress it. For the excellencies of the Spirit-filled life do not fit well in the rhetoric of contemporary American culture.

The debate over the desirability of winsomeness continues. In a recent entry no less eminent and praiseworthy a gentleman than President Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary – Charlotte has come to the defense of winsomeness with a polite but unyielding article asserting that instilling winsomeness is a key part of his institution’s efforts. He maintains that character matters; that it affects how our message is likely to be received; and that the Reformed world is in need of much improvement on this point. Those three points are indisputably true, but it is not clear that they have the close relation to winsomeness that President Kruger maintains.
Central to his argument is his contention that being winsome is simply embodying the fruits of the Spirit in our own lives. Let it be stated very plainly that if to be winsome is to be kind, loving, patient, and all the other fruits of the Spirit, then we are indeed under obligation to be winsome. No believer is permitted to disparage the Spirit’s works or embody the works of the flesh (Rom. 8:13), and if President Kruger’s aim is only to inculcate a Spirit-directed life in his students and audience (comp. Gal. 5:25) it is wholly appropriate, and all Presbyterians ought to wish him Godspeed.
I disagree with his definition, however, and assert that while his ministerial efforts are laudable his scheme of classification is mistaken. The essence of winsomeness does not lie in the sundry fruits of the Spirit or being like Christ. The conception of winsomeness that Kruger and others praise regards winsomeness as something in the person who is deemed winsome. Indeed, Kruger uses winsome as a synonym for virtuous or Spirit-filled.
But winsomeness, like attractiveness, is in the eye of the beholder. Its essence does not lie so much in what one is, but in how he or she is perceived by others. We describe other people as winsome when we regard them as charming, likable, pleasant, polished, and generally enjoyable to listen to or keep company with. Such people tend to be many of the things that Kruger regards as essential, such as kind or peaceable, but their winsomeness does not lie in those things as such, but in how those things lead us to have a positive esteem of them. One can only be deemed likable or charming if his character has charmed others or made him likable to them.
If this be doubted, consider how people talk about others. How often have you heard someone say something like ‘He’s a good guy, nice and easy to get along with, but –‘ followed by some caveat that means that his kindness, peaceableness, gentleness, patience, and goodness notwithstanding, the person in question is not likely to be called winsome. In practice there are many people who are kind, good, pleasant, etc., whom we find only partly likable, at best, and who do not inspire that feeling of fondness and positive impression that leads us to praise them as winsome or to take their position in disputed matters.
Note also the contexts in which winsome appears. I have yet to see someone refer to himself as winsome – which is well, for it would be about the most unwinsome and revolting thing he could do. But I have read Robert Burns use it to praise his wife as a delight (“My Wife’s A Winsome Wee Thing”), and I have read many a book review or profile of a prominent figure whose subject was described as winsome by an admiring author.
The problem with the view of Kruger and others is that they have effectively enshrined winsomeness as the preeminent virtue, the one in which in principle all others are found and from which they flow. What arête was to the ancient Greeks or honor to the antebellum Southerner, so is winsomeness to the contemporary evangelical. Again, Kruger defines it as consisting of a conscious embodiment of the fruits of the Spirit and imitation of Christ.
There is an alternative to winsomeness which I will delineate in a subsequent article. For our purposes here I will mention only three more things. One, the worst people in the world can often be described as winsome. Any time you meet a winsome person you ought to tread carefully, for there is a good chance that person is a deceptive, manipulative fiend with bad intentions, an adulterer, con man, abuser, or some other form of blackguard who is compelled to hide his true nature to accomplish his foul aims (comp. 2 Cor. 11:13-15).
Two, my disagreement with President Kruger et. al., does not concern how we are to behave. We are all agreed that we are to imitate Christ, walk by the Spirit, and embody virtue in all that we are and do. The disagreement is merely over what terms and concepts we should use to describe such a manner of living. If anyone comes away from this article with a poor impression of President Kruger or imagining that we are to be curmudgeonly or uncivil, he has misunderstood me entirely.
Three, winsome is an ancient English word that fell out of use until it was revived by eighteenth century Scottish poets such as the aforementioned Robert Burns (Online Etymology Dictionary). Burns was a fierce critic of the Church of Scotland.[1] Consider the thick irony that we are all running about desperately trying to be winsome, ultimately, because an opponent of our Scottish forebears revived the word. For the whole history of the church people have been talking about the goodness of being merciful, just, loving, virtuous, etc. Only in the last generation or two has the emphasis shifted to being this one thing, winsome, and this has only been possible because a critic of the church re-popularized the term in previous generations.
Given that history, we would be better served to abandon the desire for winsomeness and all attempts to repurpose it and make it our own, and to instead return to Scripture’s ideas and terms regarding the multi-faceted virtue which is to be exhibited by the followers of Christ. President Kruger is right in his aim and practice, but we could wish he finds a better theory and terminology in which to dress it. For the excellencies of the Spirit-filled life do not fit well in the rhetoric of contemporary American culture.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.
[1] It must be noted that the Church of Scotland of Burns’ day was by most accounts unhealthy, however, and in need of reform.
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