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You know Stephen. You know Zach. But we're 117 episodes in and how much do you really know about our other hosts? We launch a new series this week called "Meet the Hosts". Each week, you'll get to hear about the lives, backgrounds, and perspectives of each of our hosts. Beth kicks us off this week sharing her background and shares the bizarre, God-orchestrated series of events for how she ended up in Dallas working at Forerunner Mentoring.
Show Notes
You know Stephen. You know Zach. But we're 117 episodes in and how much do you really know about our other hosts? We launch a new series this week called "Meet the Hosts". Each week, you'll get to hear about the lives, backgrounds, and perspectives of each of our hosts. Beth kicks us off this week sharing her background and shares the bizarre, God-orchestrated series of events for how she ended up in Dallas working 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 Steven, and I'm here with a special host, Beth Winter. Beth, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great. Thanks, Steven.
Speaker 2:We are back in our get to know the hosts series, letting you know who we are. And today, our very own Beth Winter is being interviewed. I hope you are ready to answer some lightning round questions and tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, why you love mentoring, and what you do currently. Does that sound fair?
Speaker 3:That sounds great. Happy to do it.
Speaker 2:Beth, let's just jump right in. What is your middle name?
Speaker 3:Erin. Erin? Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Is that e r r a a a a Ron?
Speaker 3:E r I n. Okay. It means out of Ireland.
Speaker 2:Are you related to anyone who has a significant clout?
Speaker 3:I don't know that I'm related to William Wallace, but every boy in my, in my mom's lineage was named William. And she was supposed to carry on that tradition with my brother, but she didn't know that and she named him Daniel. And then when he was doing a family tree study in, like, 5th grade, my mom discovered that about her family. And my brother was like, what? I was supposed to be named after William Wallace, and you named me Daniel?
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 2:yeah. That's amazing. Okay. What about Beth? Is Beth does that have significance in your family?
Speaker 3:No. I think they just like the meaning of it. My well, one, my mom read a book, and she there was a character named Elizabeth that she liked. And 2, the name means oath of God. So that's pretty baller.
Speaker 2:Oath of God. Mhmm. Take that one to the bank. That's awesome. That's right.
Speaker 2:Are there any historical figures you aspire to be like or emulate?
Speaker 3:I feel like you're getting to the Joan of Arc thing. Yes. Yes, I am. We're always getting back to that.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna put in the show notes a picture of Joan of Arc that looks exactly like Beth, but just in a suit of armor.
Speaker 3:I was raised on stories of Joan of Arc. My mom, I think, just was, like, hell bent on making sure we were me and my sister were, like, women who didn't take no nothing from no one and felt like leaders. So she raised us on stories of Joan of Arc and Esther and all of those women. And so, anyway, I'm really into Joan of Arc. I think she was a leader who was admirable, and she really loved the Lord, and she's brave.
Speaker 3:So I think she's great.
Speaker 2:How did she go down?
Speaker 3:She was burned at the stake. Yeah. Oh. So I don't know if that's what I wanna emulate. But in her in her, like, last words, she still is so devoted to God.
Speaker 3:Like, no matter what she went through and, like, as she's being burned at the stake, like, the story anyway is that she her words, her last words were, hold the cross higher that I might see it through the flame. So, like, that's so cool.
Speaker 2:What? Oh my gosh. That is awesome. Yeah. Well, you you are a strong woman, and I affirm the things that we see in Joan of Arc, we see in you, but I do not see
Speaker 3:Especially the haircut.
Speaker 2:Burning at the stake in your future.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Beth, what do you do here at 4 Runner? I know you're a host of the You Can Mentor podcast. What is your job here at 4 Runner Mentoring?
Speaker 3:I was recently promoted to the director of programs position here. So 4 Runner, if we haven't said it before, we are a mentoring organization in the Lake Highlands neighborhood of Dallas for boys who need a mentor. So boys who don't have a father figure in the home, we provide 1 on 1 mentoring and then group mentoring, just raising boys in this area to become inner god. So I oversee the programs. I oversee the managers who run the k through 6 program, the 7th and 8th program, the high school program, camps, and our mom's ministry.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by group mentoring?
Speaker 3:Well, some people might see this as just childcare, but we have after school programs. And one of the things that I became passionate about whenever I started here as a coach was just that this isn't childcare. This is group mentoring. And so for the boys to come in and yes. It's technically an after school program, but it's also, like, the coaches who are with them are spending time with them every day, Monday through Friday.
Speaker 3:Ends up being over 500 hours a year, I think is what we figured out, of just intentional time raising these boys into the identity of a man of God, teaching them biblical wisdom, and building relationships with them. So it is great mentoring.
Speaker 2:I think it is telling when our boys have been baptized that they're usually asking their coaches from the after school program to baptize them, not their one to one mentor. And I imagine that's because they're spending 5 days a week with them Mhmm. And Yeah. Disciplining them, coaching them, mentoring them, really building relationship. And, like, we would be remiss if we did not see our coaches as mentors to our boys.
Speaker 2:So you've been overseeing that. What was your background? How did you get to where you're at, this passion for mentoring, group mentoring, and serving single parents through mentoring kids from hard places?
Speaker 3:That is really hard to put concisely.
Speaker 2:We finished the lightning round, and we've gone into
Speaker 3:The narrative section.
Speaker 2:Where we're where we're gonna stay for a while.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Tell us your story.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know. I I was thinking about that. I've thought about it a lot because mentoring wasn't, like, terminology I ever used until I came to 4 Runner. So I've always been passionate about building relationships. And I think just I've I'm pretty, like I've been a defender my whole life, like, even as a child.
Speaker 3:Like, I'm very passionate about people who might be being taken advantage of having an advocate. And to me, like, mentoring is is the opportunity that I see where I can be an advocate. And so that's why I became passionate about it. For a long time, though, I just didn't really see how that would I I didn't know there was careers in this. Like, I didn't know this was an option.
Speaker 3:So the way that I understood how I could help people for the longest time was thinking that I was gonna be a counselor. I benefited from counseling. I went through a mental health crisis at a young age and came through it with the help of counseling. And so I thought, okay. If I wanna help somebody else, if I wanna advocate for somebody else, I can do that through mental health, and I can become a counselor.
Speaker 3:What I learned about myself through starting that degree was I am probably not the best person for somebody to process, like, ongoing things with because I'm just very action oriented, and I'm probably better suited to be the person who is getting in there at the height of the crisis and then taking next step actions to get them the help they need. So, yeah, dropped out of college while I figured that out and was like, I don't know what to do because I actually don't like this at all. And then I just started working random jobs while I was figuring things out, and I would just build relationships with the people that I was in the, like, regular work world with. And so became, like, a point of contact for people to ask all their hard questions to in the food job that I was in. I was a line cook for a while.
Speaker 2:And Really?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I was the only Christian there, and everybody knew it. The restaurant or Okay. This sounds bad. This didn't have to do with me being there, but it was shut down while I worked there.
Speaker 3:So I don't know if I should is that defaming a restaurant to, like
Speaker 2:Well, I think if they've already burned down
Speaker 3:Well, it didn't burn down.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, but you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Closed down. It was called bless your heart because I'm from I'm from West Texas, and that's a very West Texas restaurant name.
Speaker 2:What would y'all make?
Speaker 3:Well, it was supposed it was supposed to be heart healthy food, but it was actually so bad for you because Country fried chicken? No, no, no, no. Heart healthy. So it'd be like salads.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:But all the dressings have, like, gallons of sugar in it, so it wasn't actually healthy. But, yeah. Anyway so, yeah, there was, it was a bunch of college kids that worked there. I lived in Lubbock at the time, and I wasn't in college, but all the other people there were, like, college aged kids. And so they quickly recognized that there was something different about me, and they would ask me a lot of questions that were very personal.
Speaker 3:But I just remember one time, like, this one girl just came straight up to me, and she was like, you're a Christian. Right? And I said, yeah. And she was like, so do you just judge everything that I do and everything that I say? Do you think I'm going to hell?
Speaker 3:Like, that kind of thing. And we just talked, like, over the soup. I'm just I'm labeling out soup and talking about, you know, this really big thing with this girl, and other people started to listen in on the conversation. And by the time that the restaurant closed down, I was just talking about Jesus every day when I went to work with, like, 4 girls during our lunch breaks.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I just, anyway, again, I just realized, like, the Lord just uses me in relationships, and I can do that anywhere. But I just still felt very, like, I don't know how to make a career out of this. And so I when the restaurant closed down, I was a barista for a while after that. Another random job. And while I was working there, I got the opportunity to start interning in college ministry.
Speaker 3:So that's kinda where I started actually having set mentorships and got to disciple a lot of girls, do a lot of group mentoring. And by the end of my time there, it was kind of there was like a joke in the office that I was technically technically, like, the director of creative ministry and communications, but was called the director of crisis because that's just really where I felt
Speaker 2:this was. People would call you when they were in a moment of great need, and you made yourself available? Like, it because it sounds like people go to the people that either, a, have gone through something similar, or, b, are are looking to help and make themselves available. So you either you were one of those or both of those.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I was both. And at the when I started at The Wesley, I actually remember, like, driving to the interview to start this job was the first time that I got a phone call, a negative medical report that I got. I've had a chronic illness, a chronic pain disorder for the last 6 years that we've been trying to figure out. And I just remember vividly, like, having to stuff that emotion and go into an interview for this job.
Speaker 3:And so that kind of was going on in the background when I started working there. I went through I was married when I started working there. I went through a traumatic marriage that ended with my husband leaving, and it was just a really bad situation. And so yeah. Like and then with my mental health crisis background, like, it ended up just being there was a lot of things that I could relate to a wide variety of people of just relational health concerns, mental illness, and just like trauma or your life not panning out the way you thought it would.
Speaker 3:And so I just really credit the mentors that I had who helped me walk through those things in a way that I was able to see God and then invite him in to make something good out of it. And so a lot of the ministry that I got to do, I felt like, was because if there was anybody in the room who understood pain, they knew it was me. There was other people who definitely did too. It wasn't like I'm the only person who could really know what I'm saying. But something about me is you know what I'm feeling when you look at me.
Speaker 3:Like, I'm not good at hiding it. And so everyone knew that these things were going on and and how I was handling it. And so it just became a real opportunity for when somebody was going through something really hard. You know, I lived in this it was called the shack in the back of the Wesley. I lived there by myself, and I would have girls come knock on my door and ask if they could crash on my couch.
Speaker 3:I would, you know, open my home up to one of the girls I mentored. She lived with me for around a year because of just a hard thing that was going on with an unsafe rheumming situation for her. And, you know, I was always available to answer the phone call for suicide intervention, conversations, and self harm, and picking kids up from parties when they drank too much and making sure they got home okay, and things like that. And, yeah, it was just I when I think about mentoring, I I think of advocating for kids to keep living because that's what a lot of my ministry has been, was just talking to college kids who needed a reason to keep hoping. And also just situations where if there was nobody else in their life telling them like, hey, if you haven't heard it lately, I love you and you've got this.
Speaker 3:That's kind of simply what my ministry was.
Speaker 2:Wow. That's powerful, Beth. When it comes to even just your own process of, you had mentioned for this interview, you had to stuff all this emotion of getting this news, and it's like there's so many opportunities in life where we have to just kinda not let people in. Mhmm. But, really, it's really easy to stay there and not actually find a place to process, find a place to open up.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like you had mentors who were knocking on your door, seeing what you were going through and willing to to just be a not a voice, but be an ear
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And be there for you. And it's it's fun, me having the context of seeing what you've done at 4 Runner, always you being a presence when it comes to anything our boys are going through, anything our moms are going through. You have a ministry of presence because I think that's what you needed when you were going through it. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I that's something I think about a lot. I've had people ask me, you know, when they find out their friend's going through a divorce or find out that their friend has gone through abuse situations, like, what do I do? How can I comfort them? And the the thing that stands out to me more than anything of what people did for me wasn't it wasn't a specific thing they said.
Speaker 3:It was just that they would sit with me. Like, they would go to appointments with me. Wow. That makes me, like, really emotional. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It was just like there really is so much power in just being present.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, and I've seen you do that again and again, the stories that have come out of our own mentoring program, where someone just needs you to be there. And I love that your experience in college ministry is college students who feel like I have no one to go to. And I wonder how much of that is symptomatic of not having father figures, not having people that you're looking up to when you're in grade school, not having a, I guess, social capital where that's a normative practice where people are showing up for you that aren't necessarily your parents. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And and even parents, it's it's difficult to be that for your child. Yeah. So I, yeah, I don't know if you have thoughts on your your movement from investing in college students to now you're working with, really, I mean, elementary, junior high, high school, kids that haven't really processed all of these things
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That your college students were experiencing, but the way they process it is probably a little different.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah. But at the end of the day, it's really not that different because whether it's a kid or a 70 year old woman, like, everybody has kind of the same basic relational needs of, do does anybody love me? Like, does anybody see me? And that's a question everybody's always asking. And so whether you're mentoring a kindergartner, a 7th grader, and whether whether they have a father figure, a mother figure, or they have both parents, those questions can still be there.
Speaker 3:Because that's the thing that stands out is a lot of the kids are all students that I mentored or discipled. They came from 2 parent homes, but there were still relational needs there that even just maybe in moving away across the country to go to college, all of a sudden there's this void of somebody being there for them. And so, yeah, I think we can just keep it simple by remembering that those are the needs everybody has.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's good. Okay, Beth. Anything else you are interested in, passionate about, anything that would help our listeners understand you? Because I I think it is helpful for you to not just be a a voice, but you're a person, and so your perspective is colored by just who you are.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:I'm a bad person to ask about what I'm passionate about because it changes rapidly and frequently. And, also, like, I don't know what my hobbies are. Like, I really don't. I would try to think about it. Maybe I'm really boring.
Speaker 3:I read a lot of books, and that's what I'm interested in. I watch basketball, hang out with my family. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know. When you your the program that you're in at Texas Tech Mhmm. Was drug addiction and
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was Is that the
Speaker 2:one you dropped out of?
Speaker 3:No. I finished that one.
Speaker 2:Good job.
Speaker 3:Oh, I guess I should clarify. I finished college eventually. It was a struggle, but we made it. Yeah. I had a degree where I got to study addiction disorders and recovery studies, human development and family studies, and psychology.
Speaker 3:So still got the psychology in there. I just didn't go counseling.
Speaker 2:So you were studying that stuff, as well as you were practicing very practically. You were serving students who may have been suffering from the effects of those things.
Speaker 3:That's actually why I went back to college, was because I started out in ministry, and I felt limited by how much I could do. Like, I would be sitting across from these girls who are just going through really hard things, like talking to girls who I'm the first person they told about their rape experience or, you know, the first person that they've told that they are really struggling with an addiction. And I just I didn't know what to do with that. And so I decided if I wanted to be the best, like, college minister for these girls that I could be, I needed to further my education somehow. So that's why I ended up choosing that major, was just to be better at my job and ended up getting, like, the opportunity to learn a lot about refugees in that time as well, became super passionate about that, and disrupted a lot of classrooms with some arguments on that.
Speaker 3:But yeah. And then so whenever I decided that the Lord was asking me to move to Dallas, the only things that I had in mind for that was just I really wanna do work that serves women, children, and refugees. And came here to do social work, thought I would end up in casework for that, dreamed of the possibility of doing international casework with social work. But, yeah, I ended up working here at forerunner, and I get to serve all three of those populations here, which just still blows me away that that's a thing. So yeah.
Speaker 2:I always love that story where you said you and your roommate wrote, like, a paper about Myanmar
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And now you're both in Dallas serving.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We we wrote a paper about we were in this class called perspective perspectives of Christianity or something like that. And we had to write a paper of how we would reach a people group and share Jesus with them. And we wrote about moving to Dallas, which wasn't even in our plan to do at that time, but we were just like, well, this is where the people group are. So we're gonna be in Dallas.
Speaker 3:We're gonna open an after school program to take care of their kids while the parents go, and they're kind of invited into relationship with Americans who can be bridge builders for them as they learn about the culture and things. And we were like, and we can have sports for the boys, and, like, they'll have opportunities to do, like, dance parties, and we'll teach them the bible. Like and it's all the things that we do here.
Speaker 2:Best evangelistic strategy I've ever heard.
Speaker 3:Sports dance bible. Yeah. But yeah.
Speaker 2:It's happening.
Speaker 3:It is happening. And I remember the first boys that we enrolled from Myanmar, which they were called Burmese boys, but now it's called Myanmar, not Burma. But I remember when the program coordinator at the time said we were enrolling some Burmese boys, I was like, did you say Chinese? And he said, no, Burmese. And I was like and I'm sure he was like, what is wrong with you?
Speaker 3:Because I'm like, what? My paper. And he's like, what is your deal with Burmese people? But I was internally like, wow, this is really bizarre. This is very bizarre.
Speaker 3:So, yeah.
Speaker 2:It just reminds you that we serve a God that is crazy, in love with us, and intentional about where He places us, that He hedges us in. And He knew you were coming here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's been several of those things that have happened where, like, the Lord spoke something or did something that I've seen come true here. Like, another thing is when I was praying about if I should move or not, because it was a really hard decision for me to leave college ministry because I loved it. I was in the back of the basement where we had worship, and it was like the best night of ministry ever in my experience of being there for 4 years. Everything was like 10 out of 10.
Speaker 3:The Lord was moving. People were, like, surrendering to Jesus. Like, in the ministry profession, you couldn't have asked for a better night. And I just remember being in the back of the room praying about that, and I was like, man, like, this is a great God. Like, I don't wanna sound ungrateful for this.
Speaker 3:But if I'm being honest, I would much rather be in a room full of, like, loud, crazy kids just, like, full of chaos. And that is what I have entered into, and so unintentionally. So the Lord just does that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Beth, when you're on the podcast, what should people expect to hear about? When you're sharing your insight, give us the color of of what you you usually will speak to, whether it's an issue, whether it's just I know you always talk about the brain.
Speaker 3:I do.
Speaker 2:So you're you're very passionate about the brain. What else should people expect you to speak into?
Speaker 3:I think I'm just something I'm always thinking about is how other people are experiencing the world. And so just thinking about perspectives and how we can honor people better with the way we speak about things that are hard and understanding trauma and, yeah, relating to hope in that way of having gone through hard things myself and being able to empathize with some of what our kiddos are going
Speaker 2:through. Come on. Well, Beth, on our website, we are going to tag you in every episode you're in. So if people like Beth Winter, they can view every webs every episode that you are featured in, and I think those people are gonna have a great time.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's so fun.
Speaker 2:I didn't know what to do. Too.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes. Please do that with everyone if you're doing that.
Speaker 2:Anything else, Beth, that you think would be helpful for our listeners to know about you? Who got Mavs. And I would say that what you said about you being a defender is absolutely true because you defend me, my time. You defend me in multiple different ways. In ways that I don't expect, but I always appreciate.
Speaker 2:You are the Joan of Arc at 4 Runner Mentoring.
Speaker 3:Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that makes me.
Speaker 3:It's good. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:Okay. Cool. I know there was some guy that betrayed Joan of Arc. I don't wanna be that person. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't be that guy. The king of whatever.
Speaker 2:King Henry?
Speaker 3:Something like that. The 7th or something. Yeah. I'm just another big I mean, a big part of my role here is just keeping the kids safe, and so that's what I see being a defender come into play. And I like I said, I've been doing that since I was a little kid.
Speaker 3:I chased down my sister's bullies on my bike. I have physically harmed another child in defense of my brother. You know, I just
Speaker 2:You advocated for Daniel's name to be changed to William.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess so. Yeah. I guess so. But, you know, somebody's gotta do it.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. Well, we're super glad to have you as a host on the podcast. You are beneficial. Your perspective gives gives more diversity to the conversations we have. So thanks for being a host.
Speaker 2:You are not a new host. You are an old host. Kinda like that Ben Rector song that talks about you can't make old friends.
Speaker 3:We do really love that song.
Speaker 2:And it's a good song. Well, really appreciate you, Beth, and look forward to having you on the podcast in the future. Thanks, Beth. Anything anything you wanna say to the the listeners out there?
Speaker 3:You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Boom.