Mission-Ready Friendship

Allison Auth reviews Jason J. Simon's new book that calls for friends to help each other make their way back to God.

Mission-Ready Friendship: A Blueprint for Deeper Relationships and Life-Changing Faith

by Jason Simon

Publisher: Ave Maria Press

If you were a lifeguard on the beach and saw someone caught in a riptide, what would you do? Would you hope for the best and send your thoughts and prayers, or would you intervene to save them? That’s the analogy author Jason J. Simon uses in his book, Mission-Ready Friendship, to describe the seriousness of the culture’s hold on people which threatens to drag them away from the Lord. 

Disruptive friendship 

What Simon says the Church needs are disciples of Jesus who are ready to disrupt their friends’ facades to help them make their way back to God. With great vulnerability, Simon shares the struggles he had in his life and how a man named Chip befriended him and met with him weekly to show Simon a way forward in his faith that changed the trajectory of his life. Simon then shares how he has used that same strategy to befriend others and disrupt their façade to help them grow in their relationship with Christ. 

Take Bill, for example. Bill and his family always sat behind Simon’s family at Mass. They looked put together, were easy to talk with, and from the outside seemed to have it all. One day Simon invited them over to watch a football game, and from there a friendship formed. That friendship eventually deepened to the level of opening up about struggles, and Simon was able to walk with Bill, help strengthen his prayer life, and changed the trajectory of Bill’s faith and marriage. 

This causes me to think of all the families at our parish that I sit behind at Mass. Maybe I know their name, but not their story. Am I a mission-ready friend? Do I ask the Holy Spirit to open up an opportunity to develop a closer friendship with some of these people?  

In this book, Simon will give practical suggestions of topics to cover when meeting one-on-one with friends and explain habits that you can practice to become a mission-ready friend. He gives concrete examples of questions to ask to take a conversation deeper. Simon dives into what makes a good, virtuous friendship and how to be that kind of friend. He encourages the reader to talk about their personal faith in Jesus with others. 

Every chapter ends with some reflection questions to ponder where God is at work in your own personal life and challenges you to think of who God might be placing in your life for a friendship like this. 

You can be that friend 

This book is for anyone serious about their faith who wants to share it with others. Disruptive friends ask God to change lives, open up opportunities, and take friendships deeper. The urgency of this mission is clear: people are being swept away by the culture and yet God can use you as you are, wherever you are, to speak into someone’s life. 

Simon writes:

The mission of evangelization doesn’t have to be awkward but it is very personal. We can carry it out simply be being good friends—the kind of friend who intentionally disrupts a façade so that people don’t carry life’s struggles on their own; the kind of friend who is ready to share the Good News of Jesus, at the right time, in ways that answer the deepest hopes of the people they care about; the kind of friend who can gently and lovingly disrupt the darkness in people’s lives. 

I have been convinced that love does demand we do more than hope for the best. Sunday Mass or a Religious Ed class will only do so much. We need more disciples willing to be vulnerable and share their personal love of Jesus in a way that changes lives; to step out of their comfort zone and make a new friend. Thank you, Jason Simon, for showing us how. 

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Copyright 2024 Allison Auth
Images: Canva