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Church Friends with Beth Bruno and Haley Wiggers
210 Plays1 year ago
This week, the Red Tent Living podcast hosts a conversation between pastor Haley Wiggers and longtime church goer and author Beth Bruno about finding friends in church. With candor and compassion, these women admit that church friendships are some of the most difficult kinds of friendships to build. If you’ve ever endured an awkward season of church attendance, this episode is for you.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Tracy Johnson and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. This season, we tackle the messy truths of friendship. I'm excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
Introducing Guests: Haley Wiggers and Beth Bruno
00:00:19
Speaker
In this episode, you get to meet Haley Wiggers and Beth Bruno. The two of them are so winsome and wonderfully inviting. Haley is a pastor at her local church and Beth has been in church for 35 years. Listen in as they share honestly and vulnerably about their experiences with making friends and finding belonging in the space of church.
00:00:41
Speaker
you'll notice that you have to listen close to really hear Hailey. Honestly, we are still figuring out all the challenges in recording, so please hang in there with us as we keep getting better.
Challenges of Friendship as a Pastor
00:00:52
Speaker
And for today, turn up the volume as you listen to Hailey share her story. Hi, Hailey. I'm so glad to be with you. Where are you today? Like, where are you calling in from right now? So I am calling in from my office.
00:01:10
Speaker
one of the pastors on staff in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a larger church here. What about you? I am in our home office, also known as my husband's cave. It's really his space, but the quietest space in our home right now. So that's where I'm at right now. And why don't we just jump in, Hailey? Why don't you start and share your story, read your story, and we'll go from there. No one tells you how hard
00:01:39
Speaker
it will be some day with friends. Shortly after I started a job as a pastor in my hometown, we began searching for friends as if our life depended on it. We met a small cluster of young couples who were also looking for community. We'd host a smaller Bible study in our home to try to plan meals together and do fun, search appropriate social things like pumpkin carving. Then,
00:02:05
Speaker
Slowly, each couple would find where we're expecting a child.
Finding Connections Beyond Church
00:02:10
Speaker
We would celebrate with them as if we were all in this together. We should get together more outside of groups, people would say, and yet our weekend calendars remained wide open. It was hard work trying to adult while growing new friendships, trying to still be jerky enough that you wouldn't scare people off by the occasional square word or sharing that you watched something like Bridgerton.
00:02:36
Speaker
Very quickly, however, we realized that even within our own group of so-called true friends, our time together felt pretty one dimensional. And seemingly incompatible personalities were a wedge. Finally, others would message our group when we asked about our next meeting saying, oh yeah, we moved to California like two weeks ago. This happened more than once. Tyson and I started to call ourselves the left behind.
00:03:04
Speaker
because we always found ourselves literally left behind several years into our time back. We started to feel gated, like there's something about us that people want to be the state. If first was supposed to be the community about people, then why did it feel so hard for two very relational beings to speak and see the goodness of the community? I kept thinking, I'm a pastor for goodness sake.
00:03:34
Speaker
Making search friends feels like this sometimes.
Value of Deep Friendships in Hard Times
00:03:38
Speaker
It feels like you're looking into a one-way window. You can see them, but they can't see you. But you don't know that. You're waving like crazy, jumping up and down, inviting them into your side of the window, but they just won't look up. You're banging on the window and you're left tired, a bit raw and seemingly exposed. And you feel like all your effort was wasted.
00:04:02
Speaker
because they moved to California anything. And then I finally found my people. After several years, hard work, effort, and getting connected with friends of friends of friends who thought you needed to know this person. The funny thing is most of my people are not church related at all. Some of them were and are, but then there are others.
00:04:29
Speaker
They are the people that go to that other church across town, or work for a nonprofit, or a friend with seminary classmates, people I was put in an intensive group with. These people have been bombed. They've offered insight, helped me to find my location as always. They've welcomed the fullness of who I am with the occasional swear words, and they pulled up a chair with a bag of popcorn as we watched Bridgerton together.
00:04:56
Speaker
They sat with me in silence as I miscarried my last baby. They sent poems of prayers and blessings. They hold my hand and look into my eyes and say, so glad to be here. They kept my soul afloat when I felt I was drowning. I don't need more of first friends. I think what I, I think what we all need are those people
Loneliness Despite Church Involvement
00:05:22
Speaker
inside the first or not that open up their hearts
00:05:26
Speaker
and wrap you up in them and let you stay there for all you see. Who also let themselves be wrapped around your life, who have the energy and the grace to hold space for you and all your little messy, chaotic dreams and love. I don't need more of your friends. And that's the one. Wow. Hailey, I love your words and so resonate with them.
00:05:54
Speaker
I just hear, especially, you know, new family, that stage of life where you, you start to do that dance of, are you like me? Like, can I be truly me with the whole swear word and do you drink? I remember those same kinds of dances and, and playing it safe.
00:06:17
Speaker
and trying doing all the things like you described, all the church appropriate things and still feeling, why is this not working? And I hear your desire to just keep trying. You knew what it was that you really wanted and needed and you didn't give up and you found it elsewhere. And I think that was the surprising thing for me.
Awkwardness in Church vs. Real Connections
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, there have been people, but it's like the person that connected me to the person that have been people that have given me the most life. And they're not, you know, connected to my place at all. Yeah, the referral of the referral of the referral feels a little bit like a dating app, trying to find the needle in the haystack. Here you are a pastor in a large church with the
00:07:16
Speaker
ton of options. And it took the referral of the referral of the referral sometimes to find the real heart connection that you described. I think I wanted to talk more about how it has felt like a fire hose of people. Really, I have access to so many people all the time. And then the tension of once I found people, I don't really want to meet
00:07:46
Speaker
anybody knew. This is really exhausting. That season we were still pretty young. You just aren't prepared for the work and like what you actually need as an adult in your friendship. Yeah, your early description of learning how to adults and make friends as an adult. I'm watching my young adult children doing do that right now and there is
00:08:11
Speaker
No preparation for that. You go from having limited options, but right there on a silver platter, all the way through graduation. And then you find yourself in a new city without that day-to-day. And it's as if we're little preschoolers trying to learn from scratch. How do we do this? How do we actually make meaningful friendships?
00:08:38
Speaker
I feel like it's a challenge that we just don't talk about enough. And so we end up feeling like, is it just me not realizing how many other people feel the exact same way? Do you find that to be true? Like it's just something we don't talk about? I think so, because I feel like nobody wants to say, I actually feel really lonely. I feel like it's my fault. It's hard for me to make friends. The layer of
00:09:08
Speaker
when you're trying to find friend church
Church Expectations vs. Community Reality
00:09:10
Speaker
is what things are on or off limits to talk about. And I think you only see the highlight wheel. I think you see other people holding up friendship and feel like, what's it going to take for me to get there too? Yes.
00:09:30
Speaker
I should probably read my story now because it's just so similar to what we're talking about. You know, you shared your context of being a pastor in a large church. And my context is currently we are not in a church and we're just in that limbo, uh, kind of space. And I feel like it was a challenge to write this and well, I'll just start.
00:09:57
Speaker
I like to sit in the back, one of the last pews if possible. That way I can survey who is in attendance and prepare my post-benediction strategy. It's a whole thing. I have to navigate my actual family members as well and work within their tolerance zones.
00:10:15
Speaker
Inevitably, the youngest will be waiting in the car, greeting me with an eye roll by the time I emerge from the building. My husband has a very short window for small talk and none of the awkward social etiquette concerns. He can easily stand by himself waiting for me while I grow increasingly uncomfortable by the minute as I see him out of the corner of my eye. I said it's a whole thing.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I'll be honest, I've been going to church now for over 35 years. I've attended large and small, international and house gatherings, mostly ones where we're deeply involved and a couple in which we've anonymously sat in the pews. I go for a place of belonging for community and like-minded friendships and a reminder of this bigger family of faith we have. And yet, if I'm brutally honest with my own soul,
00:11:11
Speaker
let alone all of you listeners, I rarely find what I'm hoping for. Certainly not to the degree I would like. I've heard church is one of the loneliest places to be on Sunday mornings, and I have experienced the truth in this. It's a hard truth to name out loud and one I hesitated writing about. And yet I know I'm far from alone in these experiences. You who know, know.
00:11:42
Speaker
This week, a friend mourned the lack of curiosity she and her family received from a church they stopped attending.
00:11:48
Speaker
After years of deep involvement and leadership, when they simply drifted away, no one called or asked or followed up. My own husband has recently been added to a leadership team at a church we have not attended in over five years. Seemingly, nobody has noticed our absence. I'd love to shift this story to a common narrative in which we are meant to find our people. Community in the midst of the larger body, right?
00:12:17
Speaker
Connection comes in small groups, doesn't it? But you who know know. That's a bunch of nonsense. Church small groups have been some of the most awkward spaces I have found myself in. Right now, I'm picturing some of you squirming in discomfort, and I'm feeling the urge to offer a silver lining.
00:12:38
Speaker
I'm thinking of those of you who appear to not have this struggle and are wanting to suggest a myriad of things I could do to alleviate my loneliness or even invite me to your church where I'd surely find friends. I'm even worried that I sound cynical, depressing, and you're judging me. All of that is going on in my head as I wrestle the truth forward.
00:13:04
Speaker
And I do feel an equally strong urge to usher forth our truth, those of us who know. Because here's the thing I'm wondering about. Maybe church is not the place where we find church friends. It may not be the place where we most experience the sacred. It may not be on Sunday mornings or come from the sign up sheet in the North X on small group week. Maybe the actual definition of church is different for some.
00:13:34
Speaker
Maybe it needs to change entirely. Maybe I'll never find what I'm hoping for to the degree I'd like. And maybe I'm hoping for the wrong things. But maybe, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. Thank you when you said it's a whole thing. I know that narrative.
Feeling Unnoticed in Church
00:14:00
Speaker
I'm going to plan what I'm going to do, what will,
00:14:04
Speaker
Allow me to receive but not have to like live in this space that feels so awkward. Like, I found myself holding my breath. I think when you said there's a story of your friend who felt a lack of curiosity on the surface part that struck like, yes. And then you who know, know. What I wrote down was I felt like that story, the word that came to my mind is permission.
00:14:34
Speaker
permission to name the thing that you can't say out loud, and then permission to find a blessing, not in maybe what we would expect elsewhere. And I feel like that's the journey. For naming truth, no matter the category, it's the journey of coming to a place where you give yourself permission to actually name it and say it.
00:14:59
Speaker
That's where I use the word wrestling. It has felt like a wrestle that truth out and hold it in front of me and just, this is it. It's not pretty. It's not something I want to talk about or people do talk about, right? And I fear judgments. I fear all the things everyone's thinking, but I finally wrestled it forward and it feels good to hold it. Like I'm finally holding something that feels true. Yeah. And then to be,
00:15:28
Speaker
35 years and wondering for you what it has been like that 35 years to come to finally feel like maybe there's a little bit of freedom and sadness in that too. Yes, right. Those two are often one in the same two sides of the same coin because that is what I feel. I feel release and I'm grieving.
00:15:53
Speaker
I said it before I read the story that I just feel like I'm in limbo right now. And that's where I feel like I don't think I'm alone in that. I think there's a lot of us who feel like we have 35 years behind us. And now we're wondering and questioning and curious about the definition of things. And maybe for me, it's even the definition of church and where I might find some of those same elements
00:16:23
Speaker
elsewhere and that feels freeing and it and it feels like grief at the same time because why you know why can't church be that place as somebody who role is to connect people to church. I hear so many people's stories in so many things that you said it's so hard for me to come to church or
00:16:48
Speaker
to have a spouse or partner who is very chatty and you're like, I just want to leave. And the folks that sit in the back and hustle out. I felt frustrated on behalf of the church when we said, your husband was added to this leadership team with church that we haven't attended in five years. What? Does anybody even have an idea what's going on? And I think the challenge is
00:17:18
Speaker
For me and for people on my side of the church doors, I guess, what are we going to do? What are we holding on to that's just worth the awkwardness? Or what are we willing to shift? How do we walk through that grief and the tension of missing something that
00:17:41
Speaker
we never really even had and still looking for it because we hold out hope. It's an odd place to be and still love Jesus and still love his people. Haley, one of the things we're doing in each of these podcasts is just naming what are we going to take with us? What are we from what we heard from each other?
00:18:07
Speaker
How might that change or carry into our actual real lives? I think the phrase that comes to my mind is, it's complicated a little bit. And I say that, you know, with humor, but also with a little bit, like I feel ugly in my soul. So to hold that and to say church relationships and church people and church, all of the things get complicated.
00:18:34
Speaker
How do we just allow that reality to exist, at least for the people in my world and life that I'm encountering and to hold that with them? Not to say, well, have you tried this or have you tried this? There's this small group or this group of meaning, but just to say, yeah, it is. Yeah. Your picture of staring out of a window where
00:19:01
Speaker
you're looking out, they're not seeming to see you, you're trying to get their attention. That image, I think, is something I will take with me, especially hearing it from a leader in a church, just that sense of how many of us feel that way, even if it doesn't seem to look that way. I think there's an equal footing, like we're all actually in a similar space.
00:19:29
Speaker
that that image offered me and was just good for my soul. Just to remind myself, yeah, I'm not alone. And others are in pain too.
00:19:42
Speaker
And it's just a great reminder to look at people with intentionality and curiosity, like really see them. I think both of us kind of named an absence of being noticed. And so I think I'm going to carry with me. How can I notice a little bit better this week? Thanks for this conversation, Haley, and your honesty, your authenticity and your words and the beauty of them.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. I think as somebody who is years down the road from you and just likes to hear the honesty of somebody who loves the Lord and loves people and it's trying and holding space for your own grief, that is a gift to receive that from you and to hear you might be wrestling with this for a long time.
00:20:42
Speaker
for you saying that to me. Thank you. Thank you.
Reimagining Community in Church Relationships
00:20:47
Speaker
I imagine many of you are like me and Beth's words, if you know, you know, resonated for you. I loved when Haley said that church, friendship, and belonging are complicated.
00:21:01
Speaker
Are you able to hold space for another woman who just needs to hear? Yeah, it is, when she names her experiences there. I also thought that Beth's takeaway of wondering this week about where she can notice others a bit better was so generous. I know it can feel impossibly hard to do for others the very thing we are so desperately wanting someone to do for us.
00:21:23
Speaker
And yet when we do something different, it can be the catalyst to such goodness for us and for another person. Perhaps you need permission to wrestle forward some truth. I hope that after listening today, you know that you aren't alone in needing to do that and that you can love Jesus and find yourself struggling in traditional church settings. Let's imagine together what something different might look like in the realm of the sacred and church and how we find friendship and belonging.
00:21:53
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by Katie Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson and our guests are all part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Until next week, love to you dear ones.