The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time for examining the past and resolving to make improvements in the coming year. Being involved in the ministry full time, I find that my evaluation of the previous year always finds me lacking. There is always more that I could have done, opportunities that I [...]

This section is part of a class that I am teaching called Discipleship 101, the Lost Art of Disciple Making, where we are going to cover the basics of the Christian faith. I have in my class those who have never been discipled as well as those who have been with Christ for a long [...]

Mentoring requires people to be in communication, to be connected, in order for it to work. Perhaps an obvious fact, but I suppose many people feel that they can be mentored by remote control. It is true that we can be mentored through reading books, because there is a lot of information that we can [...]

Seems there are Ten Commandments for most any organization, which obviously started in the Old Testament, but I found these two lists of the top 10 relating to mentoring. The first is a classic list of “do’s” and “don’ts” for effective mentoring, written by John C Crosby of the Uncommon Individual Foundation.
 

Thou shalt not [...]

The Bible challenges us to make every moment count (James 4:14), so taking steps toward becoming more effective are positive ones. If you want to enjoy the mentoring experience, consider these steps:
 

Select a mentor or protégé whose philosophy of life you share. The greatest mentors are also our role models. In the church, who is [...]

I’d like to share three models that illustrate what mentoring is all about (2 Timothy 2:1-2, 3-4, 5-6). I see this in the lives of three people in the Bible: 
 
Barnabas:
The first model is that of Barnabas. He was the guy named Joseph, a Levite born in Cyprus (Acts 4:36) but everyone called him Barnabas, the [...]

As I think about mentoring, Barnabas is a name that pops into my mind. We read a little about his life and ministry and I sense that putting his story into a mentoring context is not doing him injustice.
 
Imagine the scene at Pentecost, in the upper room, with a group of believers impacted by the [...]

In Christian circles, mentoring is really a subset of discipleship. A disciple is one who would sit at the feet of a teacher and learn of his/her wisdom. The disciple in essence became a follower of the rabbi or teacher (more on a disciple). I can imagine that the student was so tied to the [...]

Mentoring is not really a new idea. It was a way of life between generations; passing on information, history, stories and a legacy to the next generation. In the past, there was not much talk about mentoring because it was expected, assumed, and therefore unnoticed.
 
As I study the Bible, I notice that nearly all training [...]