Mentorship: Practical & Crucial

Question: How do you define MENTORING?

• Webster's: someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person.
• I believe that mentoring is a RELATIONAL experience in which one person empowers another by sharing God-given RESOURCES.

Question: Is there a difference between DISCIPLING and MENTORING?

• A DISCIPLER could be defined as someone who helps an understudy (1) give up their own will for the will of God, (2) live daily a life of spiritual sacrifice for God's glory, and (3) strive to be consistently obedient to the commands of The Lord.
• A MENTOR, on the other hand, provides modeling, closer supervision on special projects, individualized help in many areas - discipline, encouragement, correction, confrontation, and a calling to accountability. 

Mentoring is a PROCESS of opening our lives to others, of sharing our lives with others; a process of living for the next generation.

My life verse is Psalm 145:4 "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts."

• This verse speaks of passing something on to the generation following.
• It speaks to me of being generationally minded.

Consider this old Chinese Proverb:

• "If you are planting for a year, plant grain.
• If you are planting for a decade, plant trees.
• If you are planting for a century, plant people."

Planting people takes TIME.  More time spent with fewer people equals greater lasting impact for God.  

While some seek to impact the MULTITUDE, it's the ONE that remains with you till the end. 

Remember that it was the multitude that left Jesus first when He was on His way to the cross...followed by the 70, the 12 and the 3...but only the 1 (John) remained at the foot of the cross.

Your greatest impact is in the one!

• Moses mentored Joshua.
• Naomi mentored her daughter-in-law Ruth.
• Ezra mentored Nehemiah.
• Elijah mentored Elisha.
• Elizabeth mentored her cousin Mary.
• Barnabas mentored Paul and John Mark.
• Paul mentored his spiritual son Timothy.

Question: Who is your Paul?

• Do you have a SPIRITUAL mentor who is pouring his/her life into you the way Paul poured his life into Timothy?
• Do you have someone you can go to for WISE counsel?
• Do you have someone who is a GODLY example for you and a model worth imitating?
• Do you have someone who lives out BIBLICAL values and spiritual maturity?
• Do you have someone with solid SKILLS that can help you improve where you are weak?

JOB DESCRIPTION of a MENTOR

1. A willingness to spend the TIME it takes to build a bonded relationship with the learner.
2. A commitment to believing in the POTENTIAL and FUTURE of the learner; to telling them what kind of exciting future you see ahead for him or her; to visualizing and verbalizing the possibilities of his or her life.
3. A willingness to be VULNERABLE and TRANSPARENT before the learner, willing to share not only strengths and successes but also weaknesses, failures and brokenness.
4. A willingness to be honest yet AFFIRMING in confronting the learner's errors, faults and areas of immaturity.
5. A commitment to STANDING by the learner through trials - even trials that are self-inflicted as a result of ignorance or error.
6. A commitment to helping the learner set GOALS for his or her spiritual life, career, or ministry and to helping the learner dream his or her dream.
7. A willingness to objectively EVALUATE the learner's progress toward his or her goal.
8. Above all, a commitment to faithfully put into PRACTICE all that one teachers the learner.

I believe the best learning doesn't come from a classroom or a book...it must be heard, seen, studied, handled, lived and experienced in order to be PROVEN and assimilated!

Question: Who is your Barnabas?

• Do you have someone in your life to encourage you?
• Do you have someone to believe in you, support you and guide you?

ENCOURAGEMENT is the kind of expression that helps someone want to be better!

Lessons from Barnabas:

1. He was generous with his finances (Acts 4:32-37)
2. He reached out to Paul when everyone else was skeptical about him. (Acts 9:26-31, 11:25-30)
3. He spent time with Mark when he had failed. (Acts 15:36-39)

This was the RESULT of Barnabas' encouragement:

• If it were not for Barnabas we would not have Paul's epistles nor Mark's Gospel; nor the rapid spread of the Gospel!

Four Key's to Barnabas' life (Acts 11:24)

1. He was a man of integrity.
2. He was a man full of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17, 26).
3. He was a man full of faith.
4. He was teachable. (Acts 13:43,50)

Question: Who is your Timothy?

• Do you have someone in whom to invest your own life?
• If married, you should look at your spouse, children or grandchildren as a "Timothy". But is there anyone outside your family in whom you are investing?

2 Timothy 2:2 "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teacher others."

The 6 Keys of Mentoring

1. RELATIONAL - The you in 2 Timothy 2:2 refers to Timothy and the me refers to the Apostle Paul. People LEARN how to better love and follow Jesus in the context of FOCUSED FRIENDSHIP.
2. PERSONAL - The basics that Timothy learned from Paul were mediated through his unique personality, gifting and style.
3. THEOLOGICAL - Paul is faithfully delivering what he himself received from MANY WITNESSES or martyrs. Martyrs became public witnesses to the truth. The meaning of the word martyr literally means that Christian truth-telling could be TERMINALLY costly.
4. INTENTIONAL - All of us are involved in hundreds of unintentional relationships. However,  in the case of Paul and Timothy we see a relationship that was established for a specific purpose.
5. TRANSFORMATIONAL - Mentoring involves study, reflection; action and receptivity.
6. REPRODUCIBLE - Who will be able to TEACH others.