Perfect people need not apply

If a resume is necessary to be involved in the mentoring ministry, the most essential guideline should be that perfect people need not apply. Mentors are not superheroes or champions. They are those who stand alongside one another with unending curiosity, inexplicable faith, and patience. You might be considering a mentoring relationship yourself and wonder if special qualities, such as a highly successful spiritual life, are required. 

 

What kind of person is best for this ministry? The more time we spend on scripture, the more we realize that there aren’t really heroes of faith or perfect people. Read More

A Required Course

Mentoring the next generation of followers of Jesus is not an elective; it is a required course in the curriculum of faith.  Here’s why: 

  • The Christian faith was grounded in the first two generations of Jesus’ followers, especially in the first generation.
  • It is entirely possible for us to see the decline and/or demise in another generation or two.

I sat in the back of remarkable architecture in a cathedral in Scotland.  It was no longer a vibrant congregation of the faithful; instead, it was a museum of the past. Only a very few saw this as a place for the formation of faith, and this narrative is repeated across Europe.

Mentoring is a required course. 

Mentoring, discipleship, and spiritual formation for the next generation is not an elective for us; it is a required course in the curriculum of faith.  Again, here’s why: Read More

What is required? 

What is required to be a mentor or a spiritual friend to another? 

Many times, we overcomplicate this question. For one reason or another, we tell ourselves, I simply don’t have what it takes.

I have found over and again that these four questions below have a way of orienting our hearts around what is required to walk well with others

Allow these questions to ready your heart:  

  1.    Am I willing to listen? Listening is fundamental to building trust in the relationship. By listening attentively to one another we remind each other that our lives profoundly matter.

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