Mentoring Our Next Generation
Jeno’s pizza, rock quarries, and filing cabinets are three items that to most people do not mean much of anything. But to me they symbolize times in my teenage life when someone mentored me. To this day, whenever I eat a Jeno’s pizza, I remember the graciousness and sacrifice of a young couple who invited me over to their home just to get to know me better. They were financially strapped but used ninety-nine-cent pizzas to help bridge the gap between me and them so that they could attempt to minister to me.
As a teenager, I loved guns, but my dad knew very little about them. A rock quarry close to my home was the place where a man in my church would take me to teach me how to use a shotgun. While I learned to shoot, I also remember that the man challenged me to give my heart to the Lord.
And I can hardly use a filing cabinet without recalling the night a businessman from my church asked me to help him move filing cabinets. While trying to move the first filing cabinet, I cut four of the fingers on my right hand. I was rendered practically useless with this injury, but the man for whom I was working bandaged me up and challenged my walk with the Lord while he did it.
Looking back, I am amazed to think that none of these people were a part of the youth staff at my church. They did not have a position that would have prompted their involvement in my life. What they did have was a heart that was burdened for me and a big enough concern to pursue me and challenge me to walk with God. They mentored me!
The Magnifying Glass Principle
A number of years ago I began a study in Scripture to determine what it meant to Biblically mentor those around me in my ministry. I began my study by asking myself how Christ developed those around Him. In my reading, I came across Mark 3:14: “And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.” This verse grabbed my attention because it teaches us one of the primary classrooms that the Lord used to develop those around Him. This classroom did not involve desks or lecterns but rather simply “being with Him.”
Have you ever wished that more of the details of Christ’s daily life were recorded? What did the Lord find humorous? What were the conversations around the campfire like? What was Christ like late at night after a hard day of ministry? Scripture does not give us answers to these questions, but the twelve disciples would have known them: they were with Him! They saw and observed all of those things.
As I reflected on Mark 3:14, I realized that there is an inseparable link between proximity and ministry. The great fear that we face when we allow people to get close to us is that they may see that we have flaws—and indeed they will! But the constant awareness that people are seeing the “real” us challenges us to make sure that we are constantly growing and staying in a position in which Christ is magnified in our lives. I like to call this “the magnifying glass principle”—the closer people get to us, the more vividly they see the details of our lives. In Philippians 1:20, the apostle Paul tells us of his challenging desire: that Christ would be “magnified” in his body, whether it was by life or by death.
One of the most sobering truths that God reminds me of regularly is that God did not call me into the ministry because He needed me in the ministry; rather, God called me into the ministry because I needed the ministry. So what is the point? Mentoring is in essence allowing people to get close enough to us to see the Person we are pursuing and into whose image we are being changed. The bonus is that in the mentoring process, we are challenged to grow too.
For a number of years now I have taught this magnifying glass principle of Mark 3:14 to my church. When our church started, we did not have a teen ministry, simply because we had no teens. But when our church was about two years old, God sent Daniel, a young teen, into our church. His parents were not believers and did not show an interest in coming, but he came faithfully. We did not have an official bus route, but we did have a number of men who took turns picking Daniel up and bringing him to church. I do not underestimate the value of the teaching and preaching he has heard in our church from the pulpit, Sunday school classes, and now youth meetings. But I also cannot ignore the great value that has come from the time spent by different men picking him up and taking him home from church. It is interesting to me that he got saved after a conversation that took place at the end of a car ride home from church. As I look back over Daniel’s life from the time when he began coming to our church up until now, I see a number of different men who have spent time with him, teaching him how to build decks, shoot a basketball, grill hamburgers, and much more. All of those things were simply men taking opportunities to help shape Daniel’s life.
We now have a strong youth ministry with a number of youth workers. But I am thankful that those youth workers are not the only ones who minister to our teens. Instead, a host of adult men and women have grasped the Mark 3:14 principle. They have chosen to go after specific teens and to allow those teens to get close to them so that these adults can challenge the teens and help them become useable for God.
The Goal of Mentoring the Next Generation
Christ’s goal in having His disciples with Him was to be able to send them out. Our goal in mentoring this next generation ought to be the same—to send out the ministers of tomorrow. While God may not call all of them to be pastors or missionaries, what a joy it would be if they became mentors in the local church they will be a part of one day!
As I look on Sundays at the faces of our teens, I marvel at how many of the ones that now come to our youth group have specifically come because Daniel invited them. He is already putting into practice what he has seen others do in his life. And then as I look at the faces of the men who have been involved in Daniel’s life, I see men who have grown spiritually because of their involvement in mentoring him.
I will never forget that night I moved those filing cabinets and sliced my fingers. At that time in my life, I was a teen who was running from God and seeking to live my life apart from Him. But that businessman at my church developed a burden for me. He had plenty of employees who could have moved filing cabinets for him that night, but he chose to call and ask me to help him. He drove to my home and picked me up and demonstrated genuine concern in my life as we drove and talked. And when I cut my fingers and was unable to help him anymore, he did not get angry or frustrated with me. I am convinced that the reason for his not getting frustrated was that I was not there primarily to move filing cabinets but so that he could mentor and invest time in me. That night as he bandaged my hand, he exhorted me to get right with God. To this day, I clearly remember his words: “When you do get right, you ought to consider going to a place called Ironwood to work. I think God could use you in that type of ministry.”
Nearly two years later I did get right with the Lord and just a year after that I found myself counseling for a summer at Ironwood, a Christian camp in southern California. That conversation paved the way for God ultimately to lead me to California to live. Every day as I minister here, I am reminded that God uses mentors in local churches to change the lives of teenagers. The youth ministry is not limited to the people who specifically work with the teens in their weekly services. Rather, it includes any church member with a burden for teens and with a concern deep enough to challenge them in their walk with God—to mentor them.
Ron Perry is the pastor of Faith Baptist Church of Folsom, California.
(Originally published in FrontLine • January/February 2008. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
Photo by Medienstürmer on Unsplash