Mentoring

In a fast paced world where we often try to see how many things we can “multi-task” at a time, it’s easy to forget the importance of spending real quality time with those we want to see grow spiritually. There are many aspects to this, and I think all of them are important, I’m going to simply mention a few from a missionary/pastor point of view.

An echo chamber is a lousy place to serve. Isolating ourselves to hear only an echo of our own opinions keeps us from growth. This is because part of the process of growth is for our thinking to be challenged.

Over the years, it has been my great privilege to spend time with older preachers. From them I have learned many valuable lessons: lessons which I put into practice daily in my ministry.

Many youth leaders have a “lone ranger ” type of mentality when it comes to their student ministry. They think they can do it all by themselves. This type of thinking will frustrate you (and your family) and will cause you to be ineffective.

When I was a younger pastor, I loved serving the Lord. I lived full out for Christ and for the church the Lord allowed me to shepherd.

The longer I serve in ministry, the more I recognize the value of working with young people. In fact, the longer I serve, the more I believe we should pour more of ourselves into serving our youth.

Millennials and megachurches—we often hear these terms used derisively. Or at least dismissively.

To me, encouraging other pastors isn’t just a nice idea. It is a responsibility. And training and equipping young preachers is part of God’s calling on my life.

I meet once or twice each year with the senior men of West Coast Baptist College to discuss ministry philosophy and personal growth. As we met last month, I was encouraged by their sense of anticipation and eagerness for getting into the ministry.

In 1956, I became the pastor of the Silent Run Baptist Church in Hopkins County, Kentucky. I was a student at Bethel College in Hopkinsville, and my wife and I were the youngest couple in the church. I knew practically nothing about pastoring a church, but I knew that God had called me to preach.

There are many different ways churches have been started. I am in favor of any honorable method that proves to be successful. Any method that works, you might say, is a good plan. However, my experience tells me that some methods are better than others. Unfortunately, many church plants are not successful, and there are reasons why they are not successful.

As younger leaders engage in the ministry, they bring a set of fresh questions and concerns. Questions are healthy and good—they prove a leader is thinking. Sometimes, however, I’ve watched older preachers blow off the questions of young men, responding with a spirit of pride, feeling offended that the younger generation would dare question our practices.

Of course we all want every new believer to enroll in discipleship, but we also want to make sure they are committed to it. When a person who is not committed enrolls, it can cause the discipler to feel frustrated that he is being paired up with someone who does not want to put in the necessary work to finish what he started.

I recently read a news article about former NFL player, Tom Holloway, who had his house vandalized while he was out of town. It’s hard to comprehend how the consciences of over 300 high school students would allow them to break in, get drunk, steal memorabilia, and graffiti the walls, but that’s exactly what occurred in Tom Holloway’s home. It was one big, bad, out of control party…nice kids, huh?

If you are like me, you wake up one day and you’re thirty-five with five children, and you realize, “I am not young anymore.” I feel young. I may even look young. But I am not considered young anymore—at least not by the next generation.

Perhaps this has not happened in your church, but in our church we occasionally have a person who joins the choir and then decides not to live by the standards of behavior to which they had agreed when they came in. We’ll sometimes have a Sunday school teacher who seems to wish to continue teaching their class but no longer wants to visit, no longer wants to live in accordance with the church’s stand on separation from the world, or to be faithful to the services as they had agreed.

The mission of every local church is, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15; see also Matthew 28:18–20 and Acts 1:8). But to break it down further, the personal order to every Christian is to be, “Ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.”

If you lead any sort of ministry team—whether as a senior pastor with a staff or a Sunday school teacher with one helper—investing in those who serve with you is not just smart for the furtherance of the ministry, it is a way to show gratitude to those on your team.

Excellence—it’s important in any area, and it’s vital in leadership, particularly spiritual leadership. The quality of a work is unlikely to rise above the quality of the leader. This is why—when it comes to local church ministry—spiritual leaders must maintain a quest for personal excellence.

I don’t remember that I thought too much about the word legacy—not in a personal sense, anyway—until my first grandchild was born. As parents, we’re so involved in the daily aspects of guiding our children, and we’re so committed to being there for them every step of the way, that we don’t think as much in terms of what legacy we leave for them after we are gone.