So communicate these things with the sort of exhortation or rebuke that carries full authority. Don’t let anyone look down on you.
Titus 2:15
If youth is wasted on the young, I am starting to believe that wisdom is wasted on the old. Somewhere in the in-between is where I find myself. Youth has since passed. Old age is still several strides away. Caught in the middle of middle age is the tipping point of life. It gives me the energy to run after life and the wisdom to know what not to chase. It would be easy to claim that these are things I have come to on my own, but that would just not be true.
My good friend, mentor, and last semester’s professor, Dr. William Lamb infused these 6 words into my life that he was handed as sacred “freely you have received, freely give”. This expression is pulled from the Gospel. Jesus exhorting his disciples to take the lesson learned, the power infused, the wisdom hand down, and he releases them to go do what he has taught and shown them. While Jesus was Messiah, he was also Rabbi and teacher. He was constantly pouring in the oil of knowledge and wisdom of the Father into the twelve and those disciples walking with him daily.
Mentoring matters. Mentoring is kingdom. Mentoring was modeled by Christ.
Mentoring means first being a recipient. It is impossible to give away what you do not first receive. To have capacity to give something away first presumes you have been given something. If you attempt to draw water from an empty well, you simply just fill the bucket with mud. If we are going to pour in living water into others, the first posture of mentoring means being a mentee. There are a couple ways we receive:
1) Mentored from a far.
There are voices in my life that will never know the impact they have made. I may never get the chance to thank Andy Stanley for the books he has written on leadership and communication that shaped so much of me. Yet, he has mentored me. As have many other phenomenal leaders and authors and communicators where as a student I have allowed their words and works become investments into my life and resources to share. Some may never know their impact except on the other side of this life. Yet, each voice, each author, each leader has left something of value in my being.
2) Mentored from up close.
This is the most common way we see mentoring. This life on life experience. Sometimes this is formalized through a specific course or study, but most often it is just window time. “Window time” was a concept taught to me early in my ministry. If you are going somewhere take someone with you. This plays out in the literal and the figurative. More can be taught and caught in a ten minute car ride and walk through the local bookstore than any formalized moments. I am an advocate for both. Yet, most of the moments that mean the most to me from my time of being the student did not come in an office or scheduled meeting. It was in a car or walking side by side with a mentor and learning a lesson in the moment. We see this model by Jesus so often. Pointing out the local farmer, the fig tree, the nearby river. So often his teachings were localized in the moment of something visible to the learner.
3) Go first
Sometimes you have to be the initiator of the relationship. Sometimes you have to go first. Leaders want to give away what has been given to them. They may not realize that you are willing to be a student. So ask. Set up an appointment. Send an email or DM. Put it on them to say yes or no. You may be surprised by their response.
Most moments have a lesson wrapped in them. A good mentor is teaching even when the student does not know they are learning. They are using the Mr. Miyagi method.
Where the process often breaks down is the student stays a consumer. The student stays in a posture of taking and never giving. Let’s reflect back on those six words of Christ – “freely you have received, freely give”. What is implied in this passage is the unspoken “now”. The disciples of Christ were not responsible for what they did not know or contain, they were simply responsible to give away what Christ had given them. Here is how we live that out.
1) Go back three steps
This, friends is not rocket surgery. Simply look over your shoulder and see who is not as far along the journey as you are. Then, and this is the sticky part, simply give away what has been given to you. Warning: do not attempt to be the expert. No one wants to sit in an inauthentic relationship. Your role is simply to offer what you have been given – in life, in faith, in relationships, in Biblical understanding.
Let me give you a huge permission. It is okay to say “I do not know”. Here is the rub with that, it also sets you up to go find out.
2) Share your story
Remember those mentors from afar. You may be one. Leverage your influence to have real influence. Share your story. Share what you are learning. Give away the insights you are gaining from your personal study. This can be done on whatever format or platform you are lead to use. Leverage Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, or even the old school art of writing a book. Or break it down even simpler, sit with someone and tell them. Your growth is what you want to give away.
3) Do this in real life
I think we have a gift in social media, but nothing will ever replace that life on life, in the same room and space impact. Get in the room with some people. Take them with you. Where you go let them go with. It may just seem like the mundane minutia of your life, but there are rivers and fig tree moments all around you. There are teachable moments that have to be seized and may only come via some window time.
Mentoring matters. Ask any leader and they will tell you the same. Their life, leadership, and success have been built on the foundations of the men and women who have poured so much into them and taught this this single principle: you are responsible simply to give away what has been given to you. So what are you waiting for, go give it away.
