7 Tips to Make – and Keep – Good Christian Friends

Making friends is something that’s stressed me out since childhood. As a painfully shy, highly sensitive kid, I preferred being alone with my books and my mom to spending time with anyone else.

Moving around a lot throughout my youth helped dissolve this shyness, as did joining the speech and debate team and falling in love with acting onstage. But making real, deep friendships proved to be difficult until I reached full maturity.

That’s when I looked around — yes, in my thirties — and realized I didn’t have a single genuine relationship with any other Christian believer outside of my family.

I tried to befriend people at church, but while I was pretty great at making friends, keeping them was a different story (turns out you have to pour a lot of effort and time into lasting relationships).

Eventually, I learned how to cultivate Christian friendships, and today I count myself blessed to have a number of these in my life.

Here are seven tips on how to cultivate Christian friendships based on my own experience.

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1. Go to Church

Church congregants sitting and listening together

First, start going to church if you don’t already. Churches can be a great place to meet other people in the faith. If your church offers a coffee or fellowship time after or before the service, go even if you don’t know anyone. I often volunteered at events where I didn’t know anyone, because it gave me an excuse to be there and a job to focus on when I felt really awkward. Eventually, I befriended the other volunteers and developed real relationships with them.

Surrounding ourselves with Christian community is important. As we are reminded in Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

2. Do Some Soul Reflection

Who are you? What do you like? What is important to you? What motivates you? These are all things any new friend will want to know about you, and understanding yourself will help you uncover these truths, as well as cultivate a genuine appreciation for the beautiful soul you are. After all, God loves you, and you are worthy of love. This helps as you begin to think about what it means to be a friend to someone else.

Along with this, consider why you might need a friend. Friends can help keep us accountable in our Christian walk, and they can ease loneliness or add fun to even the most mundane tasks.

As it says in Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” And as it says in Ecclesiastes 4:12, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

Fellowship — and friendship — is important.

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3. Read Your Bible

Man holding a Bible and praying at sunset

You know that saying “to make a friend, you’ve got to be a friend”? It’s important to draw closer to the best friend we have in all eternity: the Lord. And one way we can do this is to read our Bibles and ask the Holy Spirit for understanding. Over time, this activity will lead us to become more mature believers, and therefore, better equipped to be a good friend to someone else.

4. Pray for God to Send You a True Christian Friend

One day, I was lamenting how I didn’t have a Christian friend, and I realized I’d never actually asked God to help with this. Even though I know God knows the desires of my heart, I thought there might be some importance to intentionally requesting this from God.

I love Matthew 7:7-11, where Jesus tells His disciples, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

A few months later, I was having lunch with a Christian friend and it hit me: God had answered my prayer. He’d brought not just one but several Christian friends into my life.

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5. Mimic Jesus and Pour Time and Effort into the Relationship

Two men, friends, having a serious conversation

Jesus had friends — real friends. And He poured time into those relationships. He laughed with them and ate with them, walked with them and leaned on them.

He washed his friends’ dirty feet and died on a cross for them and for us all.

We can do a lot by imitating our Lord when it comes to our friends. We need to invest time in the relationship and think of them first. We need to serve them and allow their needs and wants to motivate our actions.

For instance, I can get too caught up in work and the demands of my own family, but I know it is incredibly good for me to have Christian friendships and put in work to help them thrive. So even when I’m busy, it might hit me that a friend could use some time to vent about a situation she is experiencing. I’m thinking of her needs, not my own, when I suggest we have lunch together — and yet I reap the benefits of our friendship, too.

6. Get Creative

In the pandemic, it was hard to make new friends or even engage with existing friends, and I found I had to get creative. A friend’s husband threw her a surprise 40th birthday party via Zoom, and dozens of us joined in the festivities from across the nation. I started a lasting email relationship with a casual friend who is, today, one of my very closest friends.

If in-person friendships are difficult, think beyond this. Join Facebook groups for likeminded individuals, and engage from the heart. Connect with an online church, or join a Zoom or telephone Bible study, and don’t participate half-heartedly. Go all-in.

7. Organize Things Yourself

I used to feel lonely and isolated when I’d see people I knew posting about “girls’ nights” or other fun activities, yet I hadn’t been invited. I wanted desperately to do those things, and dropping hints didn’t work.

So I decided to organize ladies’ dinners — the kind that I’d want to attend. Everyone was invited, and no one needed to know each other. The more the merrier! I’d name a date, time, and location and ask for reservations. We started doing these dinners once a month, and it was great to get together with other Christian women and spend time. I made some great new friends this way, too. Friends would invite sisters, neighbors, or anyone who needed a night out.

If you’re hungry for this kind of interaction, you might need to be the leader. But I promise you it will be worthwhile.

There are many more ways to cultivate friends beyond this. Do you have any suggestions? How else is God calling you to make new friends in the faith?