Transformative Friendships: 7 Questions to Deepen Any Relationship (Church-Based Counseling)

by Brad Hambrick

Publisher:

New Growth Press

, 2024

Overview

Transformative Friendships shares seven simple questions that will help you be intentional with your relationships and offers a springboard to deepening and strengthening friendships that will enrich your life.

Building meaningful friendships is not as easy as we wish it was. A culture that is lonelier and more disconnected than ever proves how hard it can be. In Transformative Friendships, 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.

The goal is not to develop perfect friendships, but rather learn to how to cultivate deep connections that grow steadily over time through conversations based on simple questions and common interactions. Hambrick’s biblical vision for friendship calls Christians to engage with one another in the transformational way God intended.

Key Features

• Strives to cultivate a sense of belonging and encourage mutual understanding
• Calls Christians to engage with one another in the transformational way God intended
• Helps churches mobilize and utilize levels of care from friendship to mentoring to counseling groups

Contents

Question One: What’s Your Story?

• What’s Your Story? The Facts
• What’s Your Story? The Major Themes
• What’s Your Story? The Plot Twists
• What’s Your Story? The Life-Shaping Events
• What’s Your Story? The Point of Your Story

Question Two: What’s Good?

• What’s Good? Your Talents
• What’s Good? Your Quirks
• What’s Good? Your Roles
• What’s Good? Your Sacrifices
• What’s Good? Your Character

Question Three: What’s Hard?

• What’s Hard? The Flip Side of Your Strengths
• What’s Hard? Your Current Life Challenges
• What’s Hard? The Fall around You
• What’s Hard? The Fall within You
• What’s Hard? What You’ve Never Told Anyone

Question Four: What’s Bad?

• What’s Bad? Your Respectable Sins
• What’s Bad? Your Most Prevalent Idols
• What’s Bad? Your Go-To Escapes
• What’s Bad? Your Code-Orange Sins
• What’s Bad? Most Likely to Shipwreck Your Life

Question Five: What’s Fun?

• What’s Fun? What Brings You Joy
• What’s Fun? Why You Enjoy These Things
• What’s Fun? Can I Try It Too?
• What’s Fun? Sacrificing for Your Joys
• What’s Fun? I Feel Your Joys

Question Six: What’s Stuck?

• What’s Stuck? When Your Ruts Were Life-Giving
• What’s Stuck? When the Color Began to Fade
• What’s Stuck? When Guilt and Duty Took Over
• What’s Stuck? How You’re Stuck in Stubbornness
• What’s Stuck? How You’re Stuck in Shame

Question 7: What’s Next?

• What’s Next? The Dreams That Got You Here
• What’s Next? The Dream You’re Working On
• What’s Next? The Dream That’s Fading
• What’s Next? The Dream for the Next Season of Life
• What’s Next? The Dream You Are Afraid to Say

Praise for Transformative Friendships

What makes friendship good? How can we enlarge our care for one another? As a skilled physician of the soul, Brad Hambrick combines his rich understanding of Scripture with his genuine curiosity about people and then beautifully articulates this doctrine of transformational friendship. Leave it to Brad to carefully and methodically communicate a message that the body of Christ is so desperate to hear.

—Ann Maree Goudzwaard, Executive Director, Help[H]er

In a world of inch-deep and mile-wide relationships, there seems to be a gap between people’s desire for rich friendships and the lack of depth in their current relationships. This book is not only a gospelsaturated reflection of that pursuit but a tangible roadmap for helping you get there. A timely resource that I think all church leaders should have on their shelves.

—Jason Gaston, Executive Pastor of Next Gen, Biltmore Church, Arden, NC

Living in a time when loneliness and isolation are reaching epidemic proportions, Transformative Friendships tells a better story and points to a better way. Offering rich insights aimed at building lasting friendships, Brad Hambrick winsomely hands the reader seven simple and meaningful questions to ask that will undoubtedly deepen any relationship. This book is immensely practical and desperately needed.

—Will Toburen, Lead Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC

Product Details

• Title: Transformative Friendships
• Author: Brad Hambrick
• Series: Church-Based Counseling
• Publisher: New Growth Press
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Pages: 160
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9781645073338, 1645073335
• Resource ID: LLS:TRNSFRMTVFRNDSH
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-04T18:33:38Z

About Brad Hambrick

Brad Hambrick, ThM, EdD, serves as the Pastor of Counseling at The Summit Church in Durham, NC. He also serves as Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a council member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition, and has authored several books including God's Attributes: Rest for Life Struggles, Making Sense of Forgiveness, and Angry with God, and served as general editor for the Becoming a Church that Cares Well for the Abused curriculum.