Ed Stetzer recommends this book for those looking to do mroe mentoring and coaching.  I certainly have a couple of uses for such a book, and I do feel I have some deficiency in my skill as a mentor.  If anyone who reads this feels like passing on an early Christmas gift, this would be a great one!

Talk about a recipe for growth!  I just started thinking about all the connections I am going to be maintaining this fall.  If God is in this, I can’t help but learn something this year.

One thing my leadership courses taught me at ACTS was mentoring is critical to growth.  You need three types of relationships - peer relationships, someone older/wiser/more experienced, and someone younger/less wise/less experienced to speak into.  This way you can give a lot and receive in return, and not burn out.

Peer relationships that are deep enough to speak into my life (and me into theirs):

• Brandon
• Bill
• There could be a couple more but things are still early.

Mentoring me:

• Phil
• Ken

Being mentored by me:

• Harry
• Shane

Even those people I am mentoring, man, they are real God-followers!  I will be learning a ton from them too, no matter what happens.  But from what I have heard/read about people who mentor, they always learn from their students as well, so that’s supposed to happen.

Now the big challenge - keeping connected with all these people!  Luckily there are a lot of systems we can use to our advantage.  And not just technology!

A church planting blogger and his wife that I follow are off to be assessed.  My prayers go with them.  I know for myself, in some ways I look forward to that step for us, and in other ways I am frightened by it.  What if we are the only ones who think we are called?  What if it isn’t God we’re hearing, but our own vanity?

I mentioned this worry the other day to my mentor and pastor, Philip.  He told me assessments aren’t really there to make you question your calling, but more to give you focus on knowing yourself and your giftings, and also your weak points so that you can build a team around you who will make up for anything you lack.  Or, failing that, at least give you an opportunity to work on those weaknesses, to improve.

That helped some.

What also helped is just encountering, randomly, story after story about people who thought they were good at something, but were told they stink, but then didn’t listen and became roaring successes.  I’ve encountered several of these - most recently Sigourney Weaver was told in college she was a crummy actress.  Neil Cole, author of Organic Church, in his book he mentioned that he was told her didn’t have the skills to be a church planter.  I think his results speak for themselves (Read the book).

So, there’s God, bringing these things to me when I need them.  God is still God.  Thanks, Jeremiah, for the CD out at iGo (I took you up on your offer to take one of those ep’s).  I’ve got your rendition of “Who Can Compare” on my iPod.  My heart sings this morning:

If you’re not the one we praise, who will we adore?

For God there is none like you, you alone are LORD!

It occurred to me the first post I did on how we got here, I didn’t really get into much detail about how we leaped from a short term missions trip to Rwanda to where we are right now.  The real impetus came in the fall of 2006.

We heard there was a church planting couple hanging out with our church.  At the time we were attending Cedar Grove Baptist Church, a church of 1200-1400 people in North Surrey.  It’s easy to get lost in a big church like that, but I saw them around once or twice in the halls and at general meetings and such.  It seemed like every time I looked at the guy, Phil, he was looking at me and grinning.  I was thinking, “Who’s this guy grinning at me?” I finally decided that God, or something, wanted me to talk to him.

One sunny day in August, I caught up to him at the bike racks (seriously!)  I was just curious at that stage about what their plan was to plant a church.  I had no idea how one goes about planting a church at that stage.  He invited me out to their core team small group.  At that time, it consisted of themselves and two other couples.

I went home and asked Cheryl if she’d like to come.  She was fine with me going, but “I am NOT interested in planting a church!” (more…)