“Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”  John Crosby

“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.” Unknown

“Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat him as if he were already what he could be, and you make him what he should be.” Goethe

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill

As a young preacher I wanted to change the world for Jesus Christ. While I struggled with ambition as all young men do, I can say that genuinely my deepest motive was to honor the God Who loved me enough to change my life. When I surrendered my life to vocational ministry on Father’s Day, 1977, I did so with the desire to impact the world for the gospel.

That desire has not changed one bit. However, my understanding of how God might use me in His plan has changed dramatically. I once succumbed to the utilitarian notion that the best way to change the world would be to speak to as many people, to touch as many lives as possible. I once kept track of how many states and nations I have traveled to for the gospel.

I do not think that way anymore. The older I get the more I realize how the plan of Jesus still makes the most sense. He preached to multitudes, but He spent a large share of His time mentoring twelve. He started a movement with a few that continues to change the world. Mentoring a smaller number with greater intensity is a longer term strategy for change, but it is the most effective. Speaking to vast numbers sows some important seed, but mentoring leaders plants oak trees. I want to plant trees I do not sit under.

While the proverbial question of pastors, “how many do you ‘run’?” i.e. how many attend your services weekly, still matters (numbers do matter to God!), I am much more likely nowadays to ask a pastor or student pastor not only the size of their ministry, but another question that matters: “Whom do you currently mentor?”

I have preached in some of the greatest churches in America. But I have told pastors of some of these great churches that given the choice between preaching to the masses on Sunday or spending a day with their staff, I would always choose meeting with the staff. That is not at all to denigrate the vital, biblical role of preaching., particularly by pastors of local churches. It is to say that my primary passion and calling is to mentor and teach leaders.  It is also to say I value the local church and am committed to my local church, so preaching on Sundays happens a lot less for me these days.

Therefore, in 2011 I am embarking on an experiment. Instead of preaching in many churches on Sundays I will meet with small groups of leaders on a weekday. Instead of spending 30-45 minutes teaching a crowd, I will spend hours mentoring a few.  I am not actually sure how this will go, but I have decided that I want to spend the best days of my life in the coming years doing the thing I believe God has most called and gifted me to do.

I get pretty excited about the idea of spending a day mentoring a small group of leaders. I still believe we need conferences and large gatherings, and I still speak at those. But most of us know that even such conferences make sense in large part because they bring people together to meet in smaller groups at meals and breakouts to learn more personally about ministry.

Over the years God has given me a great deal of favor with younger leaders, in particular young men of God. In our day there is a remarkable need for godly men who demonstrate the impact of the gospel in the ways they live before their family and others. This is also a time of dramatic change in culture from the impact of social media to generational change.  We are witnessing remarkable paradigm shifts in our time, and I have a great love for helping young leaders think through the big picture issues of our time from a gospel perspective.

In a nutshell here is what I will be doing:

The What: I will lead a time of learning, stretching, and thinking about life and godliness, moving from general issues related to character, being a man of God, and a godly husband and dad, to more specific emphases of gospel focus and missional living.  This is NOT a time to learn a program or a new method. This is a time to talk about becoming more like our Lord, not more skilled in tools. It is about the toolman not the toolkit. Note: I do not think I am God’s gift to mentoring, but this is a passion, so I offer this for God’s glory. The day will last from about 10 AM to 3 PM allowing for travel time.

The Who: For young leaders (roughly under 40 but there is no “age” requirement) including pastors, student pastors, church planters, etc. Not exclusively for men, but as I am convinced we need men of God more than anything in our world today, that will be the focus.

The Goal: 15-20 at a given session. 30 is not a mentoring group, it is a class. But 15-20 is a good size for interaction and dialogue. So each gathering will be capped at 20.  This will also allow for helpful networking with one another.

Cost: $25.00 for the day, lunch included

I already have several of these scheduled as noted below, and will schedule more. Many are in NC, and the North Carolina Baptist State Convention has graciously come alongside me to help with registration. Here is a list of those already in play. If you or someone you know might benefit from these please register soon as they will close at 20.

Scheduled events already: If you live in the Tidewater area of Virginia, the RDU area, Burlington/Greensboro/Durham, or other places noted below, register sooner than later. I will update contact info on my blog. Email me with any questions areid@sebts.edu.

Thursday, January 6, Bethel Baptist Church, Yorktown, Virginia. Contact Student Pastor Jeff Mingee Jeff Mingee [jmingee@bbcyorktown.org]

Friday, January 14,  Piney Grove Chapel, 4440-A Piney Grove Rd
Angier, NC 27501 (just south of Raleigh) Register here.

Thursday, February 10  Burlington, NC First Baptist Whitsett  Register here:

More info will be available soon about the following. I will be updating my blog to keep you apprised of details:

Thursday, March 17 Mount Airy, NC

Thursday and Friday, March 24-25 Tampa Florida area (Thursday) and Orlando area (Friday)

Thursday, April 14, Fayetteville area, NC

Date TBA: Charlotte area, 2 days in Maryland.

I will schedule up to ten more of these days from June-December 2011. Again, contact me areid@sebts.edu for any further info.

I love being part of a seminary where I teach and a church where I minister with the nations on our heart. We minister in several nations, including church planting ventures on four continents.  I am leading a trip in 2011 for SEBTS that has mostly folks from our church going to Capetown, South Africa. I will be the speaker for missions week at the seminary there, and students traveling with me will be involved in direct evangelism and church planting. Our college ministry at our church will also be going to Uganda, high schoolers to Greece, and others to a city in the US, to India, Israel, and other places.  We will also take a mission trip to our community.

Life is a mission trip we can choose to take daily. At the same time it is good to go to the nations, not only so we can minister to them, but so they can minister to us. Go to this video to see what I mean:

I Need Africa

Pray for us as trips like this are expensive and our students are not wealthy. But God will provide, and we will see Him work. Where are you going in 2011?

If 24-hour news networks existed in 1809, they would have been falling over themselves chasing the latest news from the Austrian countryside. There they would witness first hand mighty Napoleon’s army moving across the nation with the fury of the recent California wildfires. No doubt on-the-scene, up-to-date reports would have worn out the viewer with the latest village sacked by Napoleon’s might.

What would have been missed in the haste for the next big scoop were events that would have a much greater impact on world history than one stage of Napoleonic conquest. That year cradles rocked newborn babies who would shape the future, including:

–William Gladstone, future Prime Minister of the UK

–Poet Edgar Allan Poe

–Alfred Lord Tennyson, later Poet Laureate of England

–And on the same day, February 12, a British physician and his wife welcomed a baby boy named Charles–Darwin, while a Midwestern US couple swaddled their little Abraham:Abraham Lincoln.

I would suppose were you to ask a history major to name the major military campaigns of Napoleon in 1809, he would struggle. But most people would easily recognize the list above.

Go back about 18 centuries earlier. Rome had emerged as the dominant world power. No nation could stand against its might. From the Atlantic eastward to the Euphrates, from the Sahara to the Danube, the Roman Empire personified the word dynasty. Palestine existed as one tiny state under the heavy boot of Rome. Augustus, the cynical Caesar who demanded a census to determine a measurement to enlarge taxes, was declared a god following his death. Who could have noticed a couple making an eighty-mile trip south from Nazareth? What difference could a carpenter and a teenaged girl make compared to Caesar’s decisions in Rome? Who cared about this Jewish baby born in Bethlehem?

God cared. Unwittingly, mighty Augustus became nothing more than an errand boy for the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Micah. He was a puppet in the hand of God, a piece of fuzz on the pages of prophecy. While Rome was busy making history, the One whose life split time: by whose birth we date our calendars arrived. The world didn’t notice. History had seen Alexander the Great, Herod the Great, and the great Augustus, but the world missed it when the One who flung the stars into the heavens was born. History missed the coming of its Author. But now, we know, he is the one John called “the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world.”

Ironically, in that year of 1809, Washington Irving created a tale of a chubby fellow named Saint Nicholas. The little elf known as Saint Nick rode his magic horse across New York City. Small enough to fit down chimneys, he left gifts for the good children and switches for the naughty ones. While versions of his story have continued to our time, maybe we can dig a little deeper and go back a little further to reflect on something even more timeless. Perhaps this Christmas season we can reflect on the humility of the Christ Child, on the wonder of His nativity, and the wonder of birth: particularly the New Birth. I for one will try to reflect on the wonder of the Incarnation this Christmas, and think that perhaps, in God’s Providence, there are little babies around us who may do far more for the Kingdom of God than we may see.

This was inspired by a story I first read in Charles R. Swindoll, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1984), 87-8. I originally posted this in 2007.

Today in our last Prayer and Spiritual Awakenings classes we discussed more recent movements: the Asbury College Revival of 1970, the Jesus Movement, Explo 72, and movements from the new, younger, Reformed movement to the whole Charismatic phenomena. The adoption movement, a rise of passion about the nations, church planting, reaching cities, and others came up along the way.

I believe an emerging movement is mentoring. Not that it is new, for it has been going on since the early days of the Old Testament. But a realization of its importance is growing.  I have personally been struck by my friend David Platt’s saying that you do not care about the many unless you care about the one.

So for me, although I have preached in great venues and still do that some, I value mentoring like never before. This morning I met with a group I workout 3 times a week as I have all semester. I am mentoring them in discipline. I then met with a brand new believer who came with me to church service yesterday for about the fifth time in his life for a time of mentoring.  Later,  I met a 14 year old named Amir who lives with his mom and grandmom and is desperately struggling academically. I will meet with him weekly now to tutor him and as God gives me favor to be a dad in his life.

This afternoon I met with the awakenings class with colleague Dr. Finn. While more formal and academic, I still approach this with a mentor’s eye. Tonight we will have up to 30 young adults over for Monday Night Football, some of whom I mentor intensely on Wednesdays in a small group before I mentor in a scholarly manner two of my PhD students.

I do not have time for a whole lot other than my family, my classes, and my church once I get past the mentoring I do each week. But I am weary of hanging out, just shooting the breeze when I could be investing in those who do not know Christ, who just met Him, who long to serve Him, and who are leading others for Him.

So the mentoring movement may be happening in my life only. But it is happening. I hope it is happening in your life as well.