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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 network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring organizations through resources and relationships to love God, love others and make disciples. Learn more at you can mentor.com or follow us on social media. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Hello. You can mentor listener. This is John b, and I'm serving up your mentoring minute. Alright. So I love youth ministry.
Speaker 2:I am the product of a healthy youth ministry from the 19 eighties and the early nineties that loved me well and that gave me the chance to realize my identity and purpose within within a group of youth workers and teenagers who were my community during those very formative years. I also was blessed by a youth minister named Troy who encouraged me and equipped me to the point that after high school and some consider considerable wrestling with the call, by the way, I became a youth minister as well. So church leadership through associate pastoring, music ministry, and youth ministry was really my only full time occupation before taking on the role as an executive director of a nonprofit that has been what I've done for the last 7 years. And listen, as much as I love supporting teen teenagers and watching them realize their IPC, right, their identity, purpose, and community in Christ, there's an element of highly developed mainstream youth ministry that, I'll be honest with you, I really don't love, and that is the entertainment factor. Alright?
Speaker 2:So all too often, there's this kinda high priority in the church to keep our children, teenagers, and even adults, I think, engaged by entertaining them. Right? It can be seen in the games that we play, sometimes the songs that we sing, and and even the sermons that we preach. Smoke machines, stage lighting, videos, and pastors maybe not dressing age appropriately, can be distracting. Now listen.
Speaker 2:Hear me hear me say this, friends. I'm only being funny and cute or trying to be at this moment. Okay? So if you, are a smoke machine operator at your local church, listen. We need you because it takes all kinds.
Speaker 2:But my particular experience has been not really to respond as as favorably to some of those things. Alright? Alright. Disclaimer over. So one particular week, I was working on, Wednesday night's bible study after coming up with and making purchases for that night's fun stage game.
Speaker 2:I had already planned out that evening's meal with one of our volunteers and needed to start getting, to cleaning the youth room from the previous Sunday night. And it dawned on me in that moment what a lot of what we do as youth workers was to create an environment for our youth, okay, in hopes that they will enjoy their time together and, of course, invite friends to the carnival of activities that we present on a weekly basis. Right? But the problem was that there was no real opportunities for the youth themselves to invest their times or efforts into the ministry. Are you following that?
Speaker 2:It was for them, but it didn't really give them an opportunity to kinda put their mark on it or to make it even better on their investment of time or effort. So in Samuel actually, first Samuel chapter 15, Saul, he's commanded by God to wipe out his enemies. But instead of doing so, he spares Agag the king and holds back some of the best livestock to make offerings to God later. Samuel reflects God's anger by telling him that obedience is better than sacrifice and that because Saul was rejected or had rejected God's word, God is rejecting Saul as king. This is a very intense passage of scripture and I highly recommend you check it take a look at that.
Speaker 2:1st Samuel chapter 15. So this passage reminds us that God is serious about obedience. We must remember that what we do with God, obedience, is so much more important than anything that we could ever do for God, sacrifice. Right? In my own youth ministry, we began actually giving students the opportunity to share in our planning and giving them projects to work on and invest in instead of simply showing up each week to be entertained.
Speaker 2:Within your mentor and mentee relationship, guys, you can start thinking of what you can do with your mentee as opposed to what you can just do for them. You want an example? Well, here's one. What about what about mowing an elderly person's yard with your mentee instead of maybe just taking them to a movie. Right?
Speaker 2:Giving them an opportunity to feel the pride of work that you guys can do something together, that some work can show off their ability and their opportunity to invest in something. You'll find that they will thrive in that moment and that they will share in that and find that, it really is gratifying to serve someone else. So don't forget with is greater than 4. Alright. And that was your mentoring minute.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening. We wanna remind you, dear friends, that you can mentor.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to the You Can Mentor podcast. Please share this with other mentors and download our free resources on our website. You can also order Zach's book, You Can Mentor, or John's book, Mephibsheth, on Amazon. Lastly, we'd really appreciate it if you gave us a 5 star rating on whatever listening platform you are tuning in on. If you'd like to connect with us further, please contact us through our website because we're always looking for new guests or connections.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And remember, you can mentor.