Mentoring
  

What does it mean to be a mentor?

The apostle Paul was a mentor.  He was a prolific mentor.  He constantly worked to improve and build up believers around him.  He identified potential leaders, kept them close, and taught them.  His letters to Timothy were letters from a mentor.  Paul understood that he would not be around forever, so wherever he went he taught, exhorted, and mentored until he felt confident enough to leave the work in the hands of these leaders-in-training, and move to the next place where he was needed.  But even then, after he was far away, the mentoring relationship did not cease.  He wrote to those he had left behind and continued to mentor them.  If Paul had not been such an excellent mentor, how many of his writings would we now have?
 
But Paul is not the only Biblical example of a mentor.  Moses mentored Joshua and prepared him to lead Israel, Elijah mentored Elisha on what it meant to be a prophet of God, Naomi mentored Ruth, Mordecai mentored Esther, Deborah mentored Barak when the Canaanites invaded, and the list goes on and on.  The Bible is full of stories of people who accomplished great things because of God’s involvement and the influence of a wise and spiritually mature individual.
 
What about now?  What about us?So what does that mean for us today?  What is our part in this great story?  How does this affect missions? 
 
The truths contained in Scripture are still true today-spiritual maturity is gained through the desire to know Christ and through the fellowship of believers.  We can all point to man or women of God who reached out to us and helped us become who we are today.  In the same way, we have the great honor and privilege to serve God by investing in someone else.
 
As with everything else, Jesus Christ is our greatest example of a mentor.  When Jesus mentored His disciples, He wasn’t thinking on a small scale.  Jesus mentored with the world in mind.  He made it plain to them that His salvation was for everyone, and when He left them, He sent them into all the world to spread His message.  Although Jesus is not physically present today, He still mentors every believer through His Holy Spirit.
 
We want to continue doing His work.  We want those who come behind us to take NMI beyond anything we could have dreamed.  We want our next generation of leaders to have more passion and than we do and to embrace God’s work in our world with an enthusiasm that surpasses our own.  That means we have to identify and mentor potential leaders, and then support them.  Who will teach them if we don’t?