I am reading a book called 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without by Dr. Leonard Sweet. The inside cover text that made me buy the book starts off with “The real meaning of life is not a journey question or an arrival question. It’s a relationship question. Your journey and your destination are both important, but neither is possible without an answer to this prior question: Who are you taking with you on the journey toward your destination?” Sweet believes there are characters in the Word that have traits we should look for (and also be for others) in relationships. In his mind, these 11 characters are God’s dream team for your life.

I am about half-way through and I’ve loved it so far. It has discussion questions after every chapter making it a perfect discussion book for friends, leadership teams, etc. I’ve always liked his writing style and this book for me is just wonderful because it points out an area that I believe people in ministry always neglect…looking for, developing, nurturing and maintaining key relationships.  Sweet calls these key people withnesses in our life as opposed to witnesses. His rationale for that is that these people walk “with” us in life in various roles while witnesses watch, observe our lives but are not active in it. I liked that.

Just this morning before I started my homeschool day with Sam, I was reading chapter (Withness 7) on needing a Deborah, someone who covers your back…one of the things he elaborates on in this chapter is the fact, a sad one but true, that the church is good at wounding their own and that we should expect to have a friend backstab us.  He said that is the ultimate betrayal when a back-guard becomes the back-stabber.

“Look around you at your circle of closest friends. You can be certain of one thing: One of them will betray you. You say, “No, certainly not! Not my friends.” I say, “Are you better than Jesus?”

He continues with this illustration:

“I will never forget a Starbucks meeting with a pastor and his lead elder. They wanted some advice on how to take their staff to the next level. As we stood up to go, I felt moved to say to the pastor, “Remember one more thing: You can count on one of your confidants betraying you. Every time you see a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, don’t look for the hidden Mary. Look for the hidden Judas. Goethe in a famous essay suggested the whole picture was designed to convey Christ’s words ‘one of you shall betray me.’”

The lead elder laughed and said to the pastor, “You don’t think it’s me, do you?” The Pastor laughed back, “Just don’t do it with a kiss.”

A year later it came out that the pastor’s wife and that lead elder were having an affair.”

What I like about this book is that it’s honest…the good, bad, ugly. He doesn’t sugar coat the fact that we need people in our lives, that some of the people we allow in our lives will hurt us deeply and that Christians can be mean or meaner than folk who don’t profess to know Jesus.

I  think every one should read this book because it will challenge your committment to personal development and your belief that you can do it without the help of others. Bottomline, you need a team of people around you.