CategoriesDeep Mentoring, Jesus' Way, VP3 happenings by

Pause, Patience, and Jesus’ Way

What opens us more deeply to growth and faithfulness in Christ? What seems to hinder our formation as persons and communities in Christ? 

I have been pondering Jesus’ way in light of these two questions lately, in preparation for our upcoming VP3 Gathering in Kelowna, October 5-7. If these questions are currently important to you, consider making your way to beautiful British Columbia. Join us and our conversation.  

The element of Jesus’ slow and patient way with others has resurfaced in my mind in the past few weeks. Not by any means new thoughts, but perhaps something of my own pace, driven by my current occupations and preoccupations, has prompted a pause. Slow down. 

Big picture, our cultural preoccupation with speed, efficiency, and control—“Do everything faster!”—leads me to notice Jesus’ unhurried way with others. Our constant search for shortcuts and “getting the biggest bang for our buck” does not condition Jesus as he moves through the world. This slow, patient mentoring unfolds most clearly in the way Jesus treats his disciples.  Read More

CategoriesDeep Mentoring, Families, Mentoring Matters by

Uncle Tom’s Walks

Keith’s “Little Explorer on Board” blog last week caused me to think more about the connection between spiritual mentoring, leaving a legacy, and committing to our growth. This led me to recall one such person in my family whose influence has spread across several generations. My Uncle Tom was my dad’s uncle, one of my grandmother’s four brothers.

In my family, the Uncle Tom stories abound

Uncle Tom was quite a humorous character. In our family, the stories abound. He was the sort of person who, when told not to touch the chocolate fudge cooling in the kitchen, was known not just to brush aside such cautions by taking a finger full, but he was known to take the whole tray with him to work. As a butcher, he was known to cause a couple of unsuspecting women to all but pass out by his sharp chop of the cleaver, followed by yelling and writhing as if he had just chopped off a finger or two.

My dad tells a story of Uncle Tom taking him and his sister fishing when they were still young at a creek a short walk from their house. Now, this creek was lucky to have a couple of frogs, some worms, and a stray snake or two. It majored mostly on mosquitoes. There were no fish to be found in that creek. But my dad and Aunt Harriet were very young, and they didn’t know better. So off they went with Uncle Tom and two fishing rods. He generated the enthusiasm of a serious fisherman at a raging Montana stream. Once they got to the creek, he set them up, and they started fishing. He didn’t place them right next to each other but spread them out a bit “so that we can find out where the fish are really biting.” As Dad tells it, Uncle Tom moved back and forth between the two of them for a bit. Read More

CategoriesDeep Mentoring, Encouraging, Jesus' Way by

Not a spectator sport…

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like the wise man who built his house on the rock. -Jesus (Matthew 7:24).

We face tremendous pressure in our lives today to be spectators of this Jesus. But faithful living has never been a spectator sport. Danish Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard emphasized this by drawing a contrast between being an admirer and being an imitator. He wrote: Read More