What is the role of friendship in discipleship community?

Both historically (see 1 Thessalonians 2:8) and currently, Christians see friendships as foundational to healthy discipleship. Disciplemaking involves actively helping someone else grow closer to Christ, requiring those involved to look outside themselves.

This article shares data from Growing Together—a Barna report created in partnership with The Navigators—to explore what percentage of U.S. Christian adults view their spiritual lives as entirely private and how friendships with other Christians can support discipleship.

Younger Christians Are Less Likely to View Their Spiritual Lives as Private Privacy might seem like the natural habitat for faith formation in our increasingly individualized culture. Indeed, 56 percent of Christians feel their spiritual life is entirely private.

This majority of Christians is less likely to say it is very important to see progress in their spiritual life (30% say progress is important vs. 54% of those who don’t consider their faith private), less likely to say their faith is very important in their life today (45% vs. 66% agree strongly) and less likely to have weekly time with God (51% vs. 66%). In other words, the idea that faith should be kept private is one part of a bigger swirl of negative conditions that need to be addressed for people to see spiritual growth.