Trinity Family Conference 2022 | 3. Fatherhood and the Need for Friendship | Rev. Andrew Dionne

This year’s Trinity Family Conference focuses on one of the family’s most attacked and villainized positions: the father. Our conference is designed to help families address real problems men face in leading the home as well as arming them with the tools to continue the work of fatherhood in a spiritual war against the original Father. 

Fatherhood and the Need for Friendship
Rev. Andrew Dionne
Friendships between men are more difficult today than in previous generations. The sexualization of nearly all relationships has been devastating to men’s friendships. Anthony Esolen, in his good essay “A Requiem for Friendship,” writes:

More than ever do men need to come together to eat and drink and argue and think, because more than ever their work separates them from each other; but now they are virtually forbidden to do so.
It is but more of the devastation wrought by the sexual revolution.

Our fatherhood, fraught with adversity and relentless challenges to our faith, requires the steady encouragement and committed correction that comes from strong friendships. After all, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Prov. 17:17).

Andrew Dionne began his pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church (Evangel Presbytery) in August 2011. He was ordained in the PCA’s Great Lakes Presbytery in Nov. 2004. From 2004 to 2011, Andrew served as a pastor at Christ the Word Church in Toledo, OH. Andrew received his M.Div. in 2004 after earning a doctorate in music composition from Indiana University. He currently serves as president of New Geneva Academy. He and his wife, Sarah, have been married for twenty-three years and have six children.