8/18 Pastor's Perspective

Dear Church Family,

As you reflect over your life, can you identify your mentors? A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser or trainer that greatly impacts your life. In my humble opinion on this matter, as a culture, we greatly undervalue mentorship, and overly value formal education. Mentoring should start in the home, with parents providing much needed training in all manner of human existence and purpose. This model should extend to many areas of life and be a top priority in many aspects of training; including jobs, spiritual development, and marriage. Mentorship involves relationship, where things can be modeled as well as discussed. The principle of leading and following is being lost in this information age. In the cow/calf beef production world, ranchers and farmers have been researching and sharing with one another about the value of keeping calves on the momma’s longer, up to 10 months, before weaning. 5-7 months has been the has norm for years. We are learning that the calves that spend a longer time with the mom, develop better grazing habits, including learning to eat a more diverse variety of plants, these calves also have better herd social skills, are more alert to danger, and are overall happier and healthier.

Mentorship is one of the things we will be looking at in our Philippians 3 study this Sunday. Our true citizenship is in heaven, and we need to understand how everything on this earth is evaluated considering this eternal kingdom. Our Lord placed much value on mentoring His disciples, training them to carry on the important work of His day. If what we are spending the bulk of our time doing today is not worth teaching to another, we should question the value of what we are doing. Are you willing to be a mentor? Do you seek to be a mentee, one who seeks the counsel and guidance of another?

One of the reasons we have lost ground in the mentee, mentor model is the separation of ages in our culture. Much of our elderly population are isolated in retirement communities rather than sprinkled among our homes and churches. May we all take a close look at this model and be willing to take considerable steps to bring about change. It is a treasure to have every elderly member of our society rubbing shoulders with the young bucks of our day. Let’s embrace this diversity of age and learn from the experience they offer. 

Let’s continue to grow, find a mentor!

Pastor Marv