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Zach and Stephen start a new series this week on how to encourage your mentees into being a lifelong follower of Jesus. This week, they discuss some practicals behind how to start a weekly church service within a mentoring organization and the fruit they saw from trying to do so at Forerunner Mentoring.
Show Notes
Zach and Stephen start a new series this week on how to encourage your mentees into being a lifelong follower of Jesus. This week, they discuss some practicals behind how to start a weekly church service within a mentoring organization and the fruit they saw from trying to do so at Forerunner Mentoring.
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Stephen Murray, and I will be joined with none other than Zachary Garza eventually on this episode. He is driving back from Dallas to Waco. He's somewhere in the no man's zone, no man's land, you know, where every 5 to 10 years, they'll put a Buc ee's. That is a Texas reference for you.
Speaker 2:He'll jump on as soon as he gets signal back. But today, we're starting a new series. Hope you join us for the next 4 weeks as we talk about how to equip our mentees to become lifelong followers of Jesus. Really, our main goal and priority as mentors is modeling a relationship with Jesus so that our boys can follow him as well. The apostle Paul put it this way, he said, Follow me as I follow Christ.
Speaker 2:That the example that I'm leading as a mentor is going to give you an opportunity to walk with Jesus in your day to day life. That means that I'm not putting forward a perfect example of what it means to be a man, but I'm putting forward an example of what it means to follow after Jesus. We've all seen in the news statistics around the nones, the non religious. So when when you have these national surveys of people's faith affiliation, non religious is becoming one of the top ones that people will tick on there. And so the way our culture is heading is toward a non affiliation with spirituality and religion.
Speaker 2:And and I think that that's telling. I mean, this is probably a hot take, but we've seen also an increase in this last season, particularly when it comes to social media use and the way our culture is more connected digitally than ever, but more disconnected than ever before relationally in in the physical. And it's not just social media, but it's just it's just how things have gone. We we've created lives and conveniences that have separated us and and kept us from building relationships, building deep, abiding relationships, not just with Jesus, but just with people. And and I I think in a very real way, Jesus came in a very relational way to display and articulate his gospel.
Speaker 2:His gospel message was was centered on people, that God loves people, that he cares for people. Jesus healed people to show us God's heart to restore creation. Jesus met with and dined with sinners and tax collectors to reframe this idea that God doesn't want anything to do with the unrighteous. Nothing could be more further from the truth. God wants to love and restore and connect with the unrighteous and give them life and life to the fullest.
Speaker 2:Jesus came to display the Father's heart, and he did that through dying on the cross for our sins, to restore relationship with God, to give us what we have not found to satisfy and fulfill, God has done on the cross. He satisfied, our penalty for sin, which is death. The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus paid for our sin.
Speaker 2:He was buried, and he was raised from the dead 3 days later so that we might have an intimate relationship with our Creator, with the God of the universe who made us in his image, who who made us to reflect him. And just as a mirror, a mirror will never reflect me much until I'm right in front of it, I'm face to face with it. In the same way, I'm made in God's image and I'm made to be close with God to reflect him, to reflect that image. Jesus has made a way. He's brought us from far, and he's brought us near by his blood.
Speaker 2:And so when I when I'm sharing all of this, my desire for us as mentors is to put our mentees before the throne, put our mentees in front of Jesus, to invite them into that relationship with God that we have. Through our own example, we get to do that. But that example has to be marked by practices, has to be marked by conversations, has to be marked by actions. The things we do and the things we allow them to experience alongside us are the way we do it. So the apostle Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ.
Speaker 2:Well, there was some following that had to happen in order for the his followers to follow after Jesus. And so this series is all about the following. How are we or what practices are we doing that we are encouraging our mentees to follow us in, so that they might catch it. They might catch a vision themselves for following Jesus. We cannot control outcomes.
Speaker 2:You cannot listen to this podcast and be assured that your mentee is gonna have a relationship with Jesus. You can help them make that decision by following after the practicals we lay out in this podcast. Jesus says no one comes to the Father except through him, not through you. So let's make that entirely clear. But implementing these, I hope it helps you have vision for what your role is in helping your mentee develop a lifelong relationship with Jesus.
Speaker 2:Today's episode, we are focusing on church. And we're gonna simplify that down to some bare essentials, because church is a lot of things. I mean, church is potlucks, church is communion, church is serving on the worship team, church is so many different things. And, you know, Acts 2 gives us a vision for that where the apostles are dining together daily, they're worshiping, they're praying, and they're confessing sin, and they're giving to the poor. There are so many there's so much that goes into church, but there are three practices we want you to implement in your mentor relationships or in your after school programs.
Speaker 2:If you're a mentoring leader, you're running an after school program, we'd highly encourage you to find a way to establish a rhythm of these three practices, and they are this, worship, Scripture, and prayer. Worship, Scripture, and prayer. These three practices are where we want to sit today because I really believe that they encapsulate a focus on encounter with God. Really, the people of God have always been marked by his presence. In the Old Testament, Moses was like, hey, I don't want to go anywhere without you coming with us, God.
Speaker 2:The people of God would meet in the tent of meeting. You know what would happen in the tent of meeting? They would meet with God. The temple was a place God's presence dwelled, and they met with God together as a people. Now in kind of the era we live within post Jesus coming and dying on the cross and being raised from the dead and the Spirit being poured out Gosh, that was a long sentence.
Speaker 2:When God poured out his Spirit on us, God has called us his temple. We are a place where God meets with us and those around us. Jesus and the scriptures say that where 2 or 3 are gathered, there he is in our midst. And so those those are some some vision for church. Church is about getting in God's presence with God's people.
Speaker 2:And so we we really believe three practices that really encourage a disciple of Jesus or someone who, like our mentee, maybe not have a personal relationship with Jesus but could be invited in, could be invited into worship, could be invited into reading the scripture, and could be invited into prayer. My personal testimony was being invited into worship. I was walking home at 10 o'clock from to my dorm at Texas a and m, whoop, and met a group of Jesus followers who were worshiping in the middle of the night. And it was the first time I had seen church outside of church, if that makes sense. I had been to church services mainly on Christmas and Easter.
Speaker 2:I mean, my conception of church was that there was just this big huge Bible, like like 2 story tall Bible that your family could come stand within and take a picture. I would later find out that that wasn't normative, that that was just kind of a Christmas service kind of deal. But I knew that they sang as well. I knew they sang and they did the Jesus or the Bible pictures and that somebody yelled at them from the front and everybody prayed together at the end. Worship, seeing that outside of the church, lit me on fire, because I was like I I finally got it.
Speaker 2:I was like, they're not singing to perform. They're singing to connect with God's presence. They're singing that God loves them and they love God. And it was a moment for me where it it really hit me at a deep level that I understood what why why they sang songs. I share that because maybe you're mentoring a kid who isn't a part of a church.
Speaker 2:You have a great opportunity to expose them to these practices that don't require any previous knowledge or understanding. You can do that today. So worship, scripture, and prayer. In our after school program, we implemented a church service to kind of expose our boys to what it looks like to experience God's presence along with God's people. And so there are many there's much research that's been done to even articulate how kids who've who've kind of participated in faith community alongside adults are more likely to participate and be a part of a faith community later on in life.
Speaker 2:And so that means that there there's something about kids seeing adults worship, seeing adults read scripture, seeing adults read prayer, and and and being invited into that as well, being invited to worship, read the Bible, and pray with them that leads to their commitment later on in life to be a lifelong follower of Jesus and participate in a faith community. With that research, we were, like, we gotta do this in our after school program. Somehow we gotta figure out I don't know if we get planning center services, we get some worship leaders up here, we ask some coaches to kinda write a simple message and come up with some discussion questions. I want I want Zach now he's back on the line I want Zach to kind of explain how we got this thing rolling to to encourage you. If you're a mentoring leader, if you're a mentor, or you're an after school program coordinator, I think I think this will help you.
Speaker 2:So Zach, unpack that for us. How did we start church? What did it look like? What did it take? Because it it was more simple than we thought.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so I I'm going to break this down and just kinda tell tell y'all how we did it. And my encouragement in this is if you're a mentoring program and if you're trying to create lifelong followers doing a modified simplistic church service at your program. I know that sounds crazy. I know for some, it just might not work, but my encouragement is for you to at least think about it.
Speaker 3:At least talk to your staff about it. But it was as simple as we had the kids sit down. We had about 1 staff member, 1 counselor or coach with every 8 to 10 kids. We sang 1 or 2 songs. We sang the same 1 or 2 songs for, like, 6 weeks straight.
Speaker 3:So the kids learn that one song. We made sure that that song was simple, easy to understand, didn't confuse our kiddos. We had a sermon that was based on scripture that was very short, very simple. It was maybe 8 minutes at max. And then at the very end of that, we gave small group questions to where that one counselor and the 8 kids could discuss that sermon, that scripture.
Speaker 3:And then at the very end, we prayed for each other. Hey. Does anyone have something that we can pray about? And, Steven, remind me how we set the kids up to facilitate prayer time. Didn't we ask some specific questions?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think some of it was related to the message, but in in many ways, the the intent of the prayer time was to model what it looks like to pray aloud so that the kids could then have an opportunity to imitate the leader. And so how how we would do it is the the leader would pray for somebody, and then whoever they prayed for, they would be encouraged to pray for the next person. And, I mean, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:And and just for those of you people who said that would never work in our program, that's exactly what we thought.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Like, it was for the first I mean, for the first while, I'd say probably for the 1st month, first 4 or 5 services, it was painfully awkward. And we thought that no progress was being made. We thought that it was a waste of time, but it's like we committed to doing it. And then week after week, the Lord showed us just a little bit of fruit, just a little bit of progress. Just I can remember I would say this to myself as we're in worship.
Speaker 3:No kids are singing. This is a waste of time. This isn't working. Then I'd look over, and one of our 2nd graders has his hands lifted up because he's sitting next to his counselor who he loves, who has his hands lifted up. And I'm not saying that you have to, like, lift up your hands in order for it to, like, count as worship, but what I am saying is something was happening in the heart of that kid to where he was trying to experience God or he was experiencing God.
Speaker 3:The needle was moving. Yeah. And that's all that we wanted. So if you're a mentoring program, I encourage you just to think about it. If you are a mentor, I encourage you to take your kid to church.
Speaker 3:Take your kid to small group. Take your kid to your community group, to your bible study because so much more is caught and taught. And, yes, the lie is it's gonna be boring. The lie is they're not gonna understand. The lie is all these things.
Speaker 3:And that that might very well be true. But you never know what exposing them to the rhythm of consistently being a part of something greater than yourself, whether it's a bible study or small group or a church service. I mean, if you take your mentee to church for the next 5 years and they get in that habit, When they leave and go off to college or go start their own family, they're gonna they're gonna think back to the time, man. I I remember when every Sunday I went to church, and I liked how it felt. And I got to know these people there.
Speaker 3:I mean, you just never know. You never know what the Lord's gonna do. So yeah. So that's kinda my thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which, I mean, even even just as an adult, me making the practice of of going to church is inviting the Holy Spirit to work in my life. Like, we can make it so much about what we do, but really getting into the room is saying, God, I'm here, and whatever you wanna do, show it to me. Reveal what what you're up to. And, like, there's that passage where Paul talks about, like, if if the work of God in your life began by the Spirit, why why do you think it wouldn't end by the Spirit, like, and not the works of the flesh?
Speaker 2:And so when you get in a room with a bunch of children and and you just invite God to come and move, more often than not, he's gonna do things spiritually that you're unaware of. Like, all of these things are very spiritual experiences. Worship is a spiritual experience. Reading the Bible, reading God's word is allowing God to speak not only to your mind, but to your spirit. Prayer prayer is is is relating with the God of the universe and and speaking with him, and God is doing so many things in our hearts in in the deeper places of of who we are than just engaging our mind or intellect or all of the places that we wanna focus because, I mean, just as adults, those are the things that we're more focused on is, well, how can we impart lessons or some some kind of, you know, equipping or training?
Speaker 2:But, really, God's God's intention is to work in the heart, like, in the deeper places, and kind of when you when you're at church, God is at work in the deeper places.
Speaker 3:Most definitely. And and just like this this exercise of exposing your mentee to church, and I'm about to talk about 3 things that, like, no mentor really wants to talk about with their mentee, but you're teaching them how to sacrifice, how to sacrifice your time. Hey. I would rather be sleeping in. I would rather be watching football.
Speaker 3:I would rather be doing some other things, but I am going to sacrifice this time to the Lord, and I'm just gonna see what he does. Right? You're teaching him about that. You're teaching them about obedience. Right?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:It's, hey. There's times whenever I wanna go to church. There's times whenever I don't, but I'm gonna be obedient because the Lord says that this is important and that we need to be a part of the local body and that Christ loves the bride whether I think it's fun or if I have a desire to go or not, he kinda asked me to obey him in this. And then the last thing is just spiritual disciplines. Like, I'm never gonna pull my mentee to the side whenever he's young and be like, hey.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about it so you could discipline yourself in the Lord. Like, that's not gonna go over very well. But if you can teach him or her about what it means to kinda grow in these spiritual disciplines of prayer and of reading scripture and of worshiping, like, times whenever I have been in a church service and I have been so angry at God. But the worship song says, God is good. God is good.
Speaker 3:God is good. And finally, I'm like, okay, Lord. I'm not feeling this, but I'm going to discipline myself, and I'm going to proclaim your goodness despite of what I feel. And I started out with singing, God is good. Then I sing it a little bit louder, then I sing it a little bit louder.
Speaker 3:Then all of a sudden, something breaks, and I can experience God's love that trans that that is so much more than my feelings. Right? Like so part of this, like, getting them used to church, getting them in the rhythm of church, exposing them to church is exposing them to discipline, to obedience, to sacrifice, and the lord loves all of those things. It's being with other believers. Hey.
Speaker 3:Look. It's hard to be in relationship with people who are different than you, but that's what God calls us to. Why? Not because it's easy, but because it's good for you. Right?
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And, I mean, I just can't stress enough that culture seems to be going the way of, church isn't that important. But culture might be going that way, but I don't think that's the way Jesus is going. Like, I think Jesus would say church is very important, and I wanna convey that to my mentee as well. So Yeah.
Speaker 3:And Sorry. I just kinda went off, man.
Speaker 2:Come on, dude.
Speaker 3:Like, I just
Speaker 2:Well, I love it. And and, I mean, even just to to contribute to that thought as well is that there there is a place for gathering with local congregations, and there is power when you're together with 50, a 100, 200 people who are in agreement singing the same thing, reading the same thing, praying the same things. There there's just power when when you're in those moments with with a gathering of people, and I think I think we're designed for those moments to encounter God together. But I I don't wanna minimize the impact of sitting on your tailgate at an apartment complex reading the scripture with your mentee, that that meeting with God is not dependent upon a place or a tabernacle anymore, that that God meets with us when we gather twos and threes. And so mentor who's maybe you don't maybe you're not on the worship team, do not be afraid to turn on a worship song and sing with off off tune, whatever you got.
Speaker 2:Give it to the Lord and and allow your mentee to experience and imitate you in singing, in singing what's true about God and what's true about us because of his love. Reading the scripture, like what I've done with my mentee, is like right now we're reading through the book of Matthew. He'll read a verse, I'll read a verse, I'll read a verse, he'll read a verse, Just back and forth. And then at the end of the chapter, I'll ask, well, what what did we learn? What did we take away from this?
Speaker 2:And it's just very practical. I mean, he's gonna run into a name that he doesn't understand. Help him say he's a rebel. I mean, it's not that hard. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:But but learning how to do these things on on your tailgate in an apartment complex is inviting an encounter with God every time you do it. And so, just really wanna encourage you. Do it in large gatherings. Invite your mentee into that, but also invite him into the the small moments where it's just you, him, and God. I think those can be just as powerful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Steven. Because if our main goal is to create a lifelong Jesus follower, a mentee can't be what he can't see. And so it's up to us to expose them to be the example, to give them someone to emulate. Who we want our mentees to be, we must first become. So if we want our mentees to go to church, we need to go to church.
Speaker 3:If we want our mentees to read the scriptures, we need to read the scriptures and so on. And it's so much more powerful if we can do it together. And, yeah, it's gonna be messy. You're gonna mess up. Even if you're not a great prayer or a great singer or anything like that, just like you were saying, Steven, still do it because your mentee is gonna gonna say, well, Zach doesn't have a great verse, but he sings.
Speaker 3:I guess I can too. Right? Well, Zach doesn't know what this verse means, but he's gonna gonna try to look it up. I guess I can too and so on. So yeah.
Speaker 3:So look. Like, this is this is definitely a mentoring best practice. Like, we aren't saying that you have to take your mentee to church. We're not saying that if you're a mentoring program, you have to start a church service. But what we are saying is it might be helpful, and I just want you to pray about it.
Speaker 3:I just want you to to think about it and and and to and to talk about it. And what are the foundations that could come from from doing these things? So I guess that's it, man. Worship, prayer, scriptures. How do we build the foundations today to where our mentees can do those three things for the rest of their lives so that they can encounter the presence of God, the love of God so that they can feed themselves, fish for their own fish, dig their own wells, and be a believer that is self self sustaining.
Speaker 3:It's a hard word to say.
Speaker 2:It's good, man. Well, that's the first episode, the lifelong followers of Jesus series. I don't know if that's what we're gonna call it, but, man, I I'm pumped up. I wanna go do these things. So, lord, bless us as mentors, as we not only disciple our mentees into the kingdom of of literally bringing them before you in worship and prayer and reading your word, but I pray that you would do a work in us that just makes us hungry for your word.
Speaker 2:God, draws us in to to worship you and bow down before you in reverence and and ask of you to bring heaven to earth. And so I I just I pray over our mentors that that we would all grow in these disciplines, that are all about just abiding in you, meeting with you, allowing you to to transform our lives. We love you.
Speaker 3:Yes, Lord. And I just pray that you help us do whatever we can do to get our mentees in front of you. That we knock down every obstacle, that we overcome, every lie to just get them into your presence, Lord. And, yes, it might not be the perfect church for a mentee, and there's so many reasons why society and culture is telling us to not do this, but I pray that we encourage and in faith do this so that they can encounter more of you. Lord, we're grateful.
Speaker 3:We love you. Amen. Amen. Alright. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this new series.
Speaker 3:Steven, bird dog, you're the man. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Have you made it to have
Speaker 3:you made
Speaker 2:it to where you're trying to go?
Speaker 3:I'm I'm, I'm editing now.
Speaker 2:I was, like, petrified of, like, losing signal with you and wondering what happened. So Yeah. Press the word.
Speaker 3:But if you guys didn't hear anything that we said, hear this. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:You can mentor.