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John Hawkins is the Founder of Leadership Edge Inc. and has spent over 30 years helping university students, young professionals, and organizational leaders across America wrestle with the issue of developing a christ-centered leadership lifestyle. Their vision is to bless And redirect culture toward God-honoring leadership.
Show Notes
- Leadership Edge Inc. - https://www.lead-edge.com/
- Sign up for an upcoming mentor training - https://www.lead-edge.com/mentortraining
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 very special guest, John Hawkins from Leadership Edge Mentoring. John, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great. It's good to be with you, Steven.
Speaker 2:Hey. Well, I'm always blessed to see you on the Zoom call. I feel like this is our maybe 5th Zoom call together. And I mean, you're, you're a king of Zoom calls. I mean, I, I know, I know probably your generation isn't known for being, technologically with it, but John, you are a, you're on the, the spear edge, of your generation when it comes to technology.
Speaker 3:I guess, you know, in this pandemic season, I feel like all I do every day is sit on my butt and do Zoom calls. So with that kind of the nature of my business right now, but, you know, grateful to be able to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, you're you're killing it, John. I'd love it. I'd love if you shared about leadership edge with our our listeners, just a little bit about your mission and and who you guys are.
Speaker 3:You bet. Leadership Edge Incorporated is a Christian nonprofit organization that's been around. We're starting our 27th year, so it's been around for a while. Probably to get to know us quickly, maybe 3 things to know about Leadership Edge. We have a Leadership Edge conviction, a mission, and a vision.
Speaker 3:The the conviction of Leadership Edge is that god honoring leadership is born from god centered mentoring. And so we're about building god honoring leaders, and we feel that that's born best in a God centered mentoring relationship. Our mission is to provide authentic life on life mentoring that impacts the entire life of next generation leaders. So it's a very personal mentoring approach, and it is targeted towards next generation leaders, which we roughly define as people between 18 ish to 30 ish is our our spectrum. And then while we do that, our vision is to bless and redirect culture towards God honoring leadership.
Speaker 3:So the idea is as God centered mentoring is happening with next generation leaders, that the net effect of that is that it changes the culture of our country and other countries to to commit to and to begin fostering god honoring leadership. So that's what we're about. We've been around for 27 years, and most of our work is focused in the Raleigh Durham, Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, Dallas, Texas, in the san francisco bay area.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, I love it. And just hearing from my experience of leadership edge, I just went through your training to equip mentors, to mentor men just in that same kind of vein of how are we gonna shift the culture to experience the kingdom of God on earth as believers in the workplace, in our families, in our lives. And yes. I just, I loved the training that you gave.
Speaker 2:We walked through, I think it was around 4 or 5 weekly calls to walk through your modules. And I just wanna, on the front end, encourage any of our listeners to, to walk through that because I thought it was beneficial. Not only if you're intending to mentor a man or woman in the workplace, but also a kid from a hard place of, I, I just think there are so many principles that translated to our kind of demographic and the, the people that we invest in. And so that's before, before we jump into, to our questions, John, I'd love, I'd love just to hear more about who you are. And so if, if you could kind of unpack for our listeners just to paint a picture of who John Hawkins is, and maybe tell us about your family.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, I am, currently the founder of Leadership Edge. I stepped down from being president about 2 years ago, and our new president, Todd Melby, is a dear friend and a godly man and an amazing leader of organization. As I said, I was part of starting Leadership Edge 27 years ago. I'm considered the founder of those my wife and Andy Boyds and some others in Fort Worth, Texas that actually helped us start Leadership Edge.
Speaker 3:I'm married to Janet. We just celebrated our 43rd anniversary a few weeks ago. We have 3 adult kids. Our daughter and her husband live in Southern California. Our older son has been living in New York City, but with the pandemic, he has fled New York and is figuring out his new living location.
Speaker 3:And our younger son lives in Evansville, Indiana, where he's a professor at University of Southern Indiana. We have 3 grandkids. But the most important thing to tell you is that, a few weeks from now, I will celebrate by God's grace that it's been 50 years that I've been a Christian. I was 16 years old and was as lost as lost could be, and someone invited me to a Young Life camp in the mountains of North Carolina. And by the grace of God, he saved me and told me he loved me and wanted me and wanted to use me to serve his purposes.
Speaker 3:And I couldn't believe any of that was true, but he proved to me that it was. So, really, the most important part of my life and the only way I know how to understand my life is that by the mercy and grace of the lord Jesus Christ, he saved me and has continued to work in and through me for now almost 50 years. Live in Durham, North Carolina, and, I think I'm just a blessed man. That's how I would put it.
Speaker 2:You sound like it. 43 years and Yes. 50 years with Jesus. I mean, just incredible, incredible story. It is.
Speaker 2:And I'm I'm excited. Well, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, both my wife and Jesus took a risk when they signed on with me. And so, I'm grateful for the both and their their graciousness.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. Well, I I can't imagine 2 better people to spend that much time with Janet and Well Janet and Jesus. So It's
Speaker 3:been it's been good. That's for sure.
Speaker 2:Well and you also mentioned that you and your family are going to Yosemite, and you're gonna Yes. You're gonna try and free solo El Capitan, I heard.
Speaker 3:Well, we watched that movie last night, and I'm telling you, I sweated the whole way through it. I I have a fear of heights. And so watching that movie, I was just, like, nervous. So I'm very glad next week to see El Capitan and to stand at the base of El Capitan and look up on it. But anything more than that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, I'm I'm glad to hear your amygdala is still functioning properly after all these years. Yes. Well, that's
Speaker 3:so true.
Speaker 2:You have a right understanding of what you should fear. So other than Alex Hommi, that guy is crazy. Oh man,
Speaker 3:that guy, he is amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, John, I'd love, I'd love to talk more about your work, with leadership edge, ask you a few questions. One of the things that, that stood out to me in your training was just your focus on the personal vision statement. And I I feel like every mentor, when you share this, should just lean right in. And so I I'd love if you could share share about the personal vision statement. What is that?
Speaker 3:I'd be glad to. We we learned early on that mentoring kind of turns into a bowl of mush after about the 3rd or 4th meeting. And what we mean by that is, you know, the mentor and mentees sign on and probably both of them are excited, and they kinda get started. And then the 3rd or 4th meeting, 1 or both of them are sitting there wondering, why are we here and what are we trying to accomplish? And so we realized that, and then we also realized that with those that had been mentored through Leadership Edge early on, that they seem to really thrive well while they were in the mentoring relationship.
Speaker 3:But then 2 or 3 years later, they were just kind of back where they were. You know, they they had lost kind of the edge of their love for the Lord, their commitment to him, and them seeing their lives through a God centered frame. So as we were thinking about that, I I just began praying and and asking God, you know, God, is there like a a biblically based God centered vision that our mentoring could be built around that would be something you would kinda put into their hearts to where both while they're being mentored, but, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years after their mentoring experience would still give guidance to them. And so the Lord brought us to what we call the personal vision statement, and it is by god's grace to step forward as god's man or woman, my spheres of influence, to serve his purposes for his glory. So I'll say that one more time.
Speaker 3:By god's grace to step forward as god's man or woman, and my spheres of influence to serve his purposes for his glory. And as we began to use that as we, in our early mentoring sessions with new mentees, began to unpack that phrase by phrase, looking at it both biblically and practically, it began to have a transformative effect to where they began to have a way to understand their daily life. But the great thing was, as we've done surveys, from people who have been mentored, you know, 5, 10, 15, even 20 years after the mentoring experience, they still talk about the current impact that the personal vision statement has in their lives now to where it's it's kind of the lens through which they understand their daily lives. So it's just a great tool that I think is ingenious, but the reason it's ingenious is because it came from God, and it just has been a great tool for the speakers.
Speaker 2:I I love it, and I I even I'd applied it in my discipleship group as soon as I walked through it the first module. And
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I just think that. As Christians, we are looking for ways to grow. I mean, we, we just kind of assume and can acknowledge personally that we all need to grow and develop in our relationship with God. And it's hard to define or find ways to do that consistently, with a framework, and, and find, find that biblical framework to work from. And so having this personal vision statement, how, what does it mean to step forward?
Speaker 2:What does it mean to be God's man? What does it mean to, I, I just, I love how you break it down and that that is a, a framework for every mentor to not only talk about what their mentee, but also live out in their own personal life. And so, yeah, I wonder. Yeah. Even, even just in this situation, John, you are the mentor, all of our listeners and me, we are the mentees.
Speaker 2:And so I I'd I'd love to hear just, I don't know. How, how does the personal vision statement influence the way that you mentor and could could you kind of walk us through a a brief unpacking of the personal vision statement?
Speaker 3:Be very glad to. So what what we do in Leadership Edge Mentoring is we we don't cram that vision down their throat. Like, we don't say, you've gotta own we basically say, would you just try this on for a while and just see if God begins to confirm it in you? And so then for the 1st 8 weeks of the mentoring relationship, we slowly unpack that phrase by phrase. So 1st week that we meet, we talk about by God's grace, and we have materials on our learning management system where we have scripture verses that talk about what it means that my life is by God's grace.
Speaker 3:We have some quotes from theologians like Tim Keller or Don Stott or others that support that. And then we have some, like, reflection and response questions. So we just slowly kind of purposefully go through the vision statement to understand it biblically, but then we begin to think about it in terms of, like, this week. Okay. So this week, how am I gonna need God's grace to live out my life?
Speaker 3:And one of the things that we wanted with the vision statement was we wanted it to be, like, simple enough and not so overladen with spiritual terms that it wouldn't work in a secular context. You know, like, I I had a consultant with a major consultancy call me one time from Atlanta, and he said, you know, John, is it really possible to sit in a cubicle by myself for 6 hours a day working on an Excel spreadsheet and bring glory to God? And I said, well, if it's not possible, you should quit your job today and go to seminary. I said, but the truth is, it is possible, but it's not just by being there. You've got to know why you're there.
Speaker 3:And so we felt like, you know, by god's grace to step forward as god's matter, one of my spheres of influence to serve his purposes for his glory, that would be simple enough and relevant enough to where that guy sitting in the cubicle, working on the Excel spreadsheet could have a sense of, yeah, this is possible. Especially in the phrase, to serve God's purposes. What are God's purposes for work? And sometimes we think about work in terms of, well, work's okay if you get to share the gospel, or work's okay if you get to lead a bible study at lunch, or maybe work's okay if you make enough money to support missionaries. But the other 8 hours you're there don't really have much meaning.
Speaker 3:And that's completely not biblical, but you do have to do some work in understanding what are God's purposes in this job. And one interesting way to come about that is just to ask yourself, last night when you were asleep, what was God doing? And, you know, we quickly can say, well, he was saving people, and, certainly, he was saving people, and he was helping people to mature in their faith, and, certainly, he was doing that. But on top of that, the Bible says, well, he was restraining evil, and he was establishing righteousness, and he was providing for all of creation, and he was sustaining creation, and he was declaring his glory. You know?
Speaker 3:So we have to understand god's purposes broader than just evangelism and discipleship so that we can understand a vision for our lives that that includes every minute, every hour, and not just the ones in which we're doing spiritual kind of things. So does that get to that, Steven, in terms of how we use it and a little bit more of the why behind it?
Speaker 2:I love it. And I I even just as you've been talking, I'm I'm picking up just the. As a, as a mentor coach, one of my jobs is to equip and support mentors. And the personal vision statement isn't about just making mentors better. It's a it's about acknowledging what God's doing.
Speaker 2:And Yes. In all of life, it's more of a holistic. And so as a as a mentor coach, my concern is not just making sure you're being a good mentor. It's making sure you're seeing the grace of god in your life and pointing out and caring for the whole person. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so when I I I find myself asking questions like, well, how is it going with your mentor relationship? If I just ask that question, am I actually helping this mentor, or am I am I being a good coach for my mentors? I, I would say that the personal vision statement is probably a better spot to stand from as a, a mentor coach or support team. And so that's just something that I, I was thinking about as you've been talking is, is how does this translate to maybe our context where we're mentoring kids from hard places?
Speaker 3:And Very much so. And, you know, part of the behind this scripturally is Proverbs 2918 in the New American Standard Translation that says, where there is no vision, the people go unrestrained. And, basically, what that means is they just wander off. There's nothing that focuses them. You know, we we could argue, well, it sounds like the goal is to live a life that's unrestrained, but in Proverbs, that's not the case.
Speaker 3:Proverbs, there there needs to be a focus. There needs to be something that that defines me and helps me to know where I'm heading every day. And so I think with the, you know, the young folks that Reiner works with, I think that part of what they need is a vision. Part of what they need is, you know, a biblically based God centered vision for their lives, but also men and women around them as mentors who are giving them pictures of what it really looks like to try to live out that vision. And it's gotta be all, like, it can't just be the perfect times out without vision.
Speaker 3:It has to be that you know, for me, it has to be the times where last yesterday in staff meeting, I had to ask one of my our staff members their forgiveness because I had consistently not delivered something that they had asked me for. To where living out the vision of serving God's purposes and our spirit is influenced by his grace and for his glory, it has to be modeled in all in all ways, not just the right ways. And I think with youth, there's such a need for this because I I think if you think about the world that they've grown up in, there's anything but a coherent biblically based god centered vision that's being given to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'd love to hear just in in terms of feedback that you've received from college students who've walked through this. I I was talking to a a guy recently. Ricky Zorn was the guy who, yeah.
Speaker 2:Who told me to jump in. And I believe he was either coming out of college, just young business professional, who jumped into this. Could you share some testimonies of just some, some men who found this to be really helpful for their own life?
Speaker 3:Well, we we mentor men and women, but but Ricky was mentored, while he was an undergraduate at Harvard, and we were working in Boston at that time as well and, had several guys who invested in Ricky's life. And he's a dear friend and brother to me and and he's actually part of our city team there in Dallas. I think that what's sometimes interesting is, you know, with the generation now, they have been told how special they are and that everything revolves around them and that they're each their own unique little snowflakes. And so I think they're a little bit surprised that we're not helping them draft their own vision statement. And we're not against that at all.
Speaker 3:We we do think that God guides us to kind of specific visions of life that he calls us to. But we felt like it was really important for, especially this generation, to feel kind of the solidarity of a vision that God's called every Christian to. So this isn't just around me and my gifts and my passions and all that. It's around what is what again is a biblically based, God centered vision that God's called every one of his followers to. Because what happens then is they can fill the solidarity of the Christian church, both present and historical, and it helps them to gain the brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are maybe doing different things in life, but at the bottom, they still feel the same call of by God's grace to step forward as God's men or women.
Speaker 3:So we have what we call alumni all across the country and now in other other countries who are in relationship with each other. And they live in different cities and are doing really different things. But there's that solidarity because they know we're both called to and living out the same vision for our lives. So I think one of the feedback pieces is they were expecting this to be all about them, and it's not as much all about them as it is about all of us, what God's called all of us to. I think the other thing is is once they try it on, we've never had one person who, after going through it, said that just doesn't fit.
Speaker 3:I don't feel that fits with me. And and it's been, you know, a good help to every one of them. It's interesting how it just, maybe a year ago, I had a former student that I'd mentored at Duke. He's now in his early forties, brought his family and kids, spent a few nights with us. And he sat down at the in our kitchen table, one of the mornings having his quiet time, and I walked in there.
Speaker 3:He said, let me show you this. And it was a old copy of the personal vision statement from probably 20 years ago. And every morning, he reads that in his devotional time and and just ponders God's calling in his life for today. Yeah. That was a cool story.
Speaker 2:Wow. I feel like the the personal vision statement is something that could you could stick with for 50 years with Jesus, maybe. And I I I recently interviewed, Robert Lewis, and he said, if you wanna catch a vision for biblical masculinity, you might as well just read the first couple chapters of the book, in, in Genesis. And, and, and maybe if you have that old of a, a vision for masculinity, you're gonna be okay. And so I, I love how you framed the personal vision statement and grounded it in biblical principles so that it could be something that is with you for your whole life.
Speaker 2:And I love, I love that testimony. Yeah. You had mentioned that kind of this is for all of us, that really we were made to be mentored. We were made to mentor. And so maybe I should change the name of my podcast to reflect that because we, I mean, that's, that's, I mean, there's not much belief there.
Speaker 2:You can mentor. I mean, they're like, you were made for this. You you were made for it. And like, I'm, I'm just, I'm challenged by that. And I love if I'd love if you could unpack a little more of that, like, why why are we made for this?
Speaker 2:Are we born for these these kind of relationships?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, you know, Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of The Navigators Ministry, who is just a still going on, but very historic organization around discipleship, he had a talk that he would do back in, I guess, the forties fifties called Born Through Reproduce. And he talked about how just as our bodies physically are born to reproduce, either men or women coming together, you know, as to bear children, spiritually, we're born to reproduce. I do think that that is the case. I think that if you if you did a study through the New Testament, both the gospels, the book of Acts, and the epistles, one of the themes that you we usually miss, but then when you start looking for it, you see that it's throughout it, is this whole theme of modeling and imitation.
Speaker 3:And that's exactly what Jesus did with these 12. He he modeled for them, but not just for them, but for every believer, what it looks like to live as god's man, as as god's person from both his humanity, but also his submission to his father. And then as you get into Paul's epistles, I think in every one of his epistles, beginning with the earliest written to the last one, second Timothy, there's this theme about him being a model for them to follow, them imitating that, but then it goes into the next generation to where the 4 Thessalonians, you know, I was a model for you, and he says, and now you're a model for the whole region. And then in second Timothy 22, which is quoted a lot for the things which you referred from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who'll be able to teach others also. And in that, you have, like, 4 generations.
Speaker 3:So I think we are we are born spiritually born to have Christian influence in each other's lives, to kinda have that life on life influence where it's not perfect, and it's not even good unless it's in Christ. Now Paul was very explicit, you know, follow me as I follow Christ. And so this can't be a little personality club or a cult club or some kind of legalistic about, you gotta do it the way my mentor did, but it has to be that life on life. I'm following Jesus. Here's what he's teaching me.
Speaker 3:I wanna share this with you, and probably there's some stuff in here that you should do. And then that goes through the Christian generations. I think to sum that up, I think in the New Testament, if you went to the New Testament with the question, how do I learn to live as a Christian? It's impossible to answer that question without the idea of modeling limitation of life on life influence that moves through the generations of Christians. So absolutely.
Speaker 2:Wow. Yeah. That's really good, man. I wonder if you could share I think I think there's some temptations in mentoring to where, I think hearing you're made to reproduce. Well, what, what are we made to reproduce?
Speaker 2:Are we made to reproduce ourselves? And, okay, not fine. And, and, and so, I mean, I think, and it's, it's natural for, for us to bring into a mentor relationship, everything that we have, and we try to impart it into somebody. And that that's our greatest contribution is whatever, whatever we are, we try to make someone like us. And I I wonder if you could speak to why why that's not the goal, and what's what's a better vision to to work toward?
Speaker 3:Well, 2 of the 2 of the misdirections that we sometimes come to mentoring with. 1 is what I call the dump truck method. Okay. Menti, you sit there, and time after time after time, I'm gonna dump on you all of my wisdom. And we say that laughingly and, you know, when I describe it that way, we can see how mistaken that is.
Speaker 3:But we really do think that a lot of times. That they just need to kinda sit there passively, and I just need to dump all my sage wisdom on them. So that's kind of misdirection 1. I think misdirection 2, it's kind of the what I I think is false humility of, well, who am I to think I have anyone to offer anything to offer to anyone? Isn't that arrogant?
Speaker 3:And I'm just a lowly Christian, and what do I have to offer? Or how could I even put myself forward as a mentor? Isn't that arrogant? I think those are certainly 2 misdirections. I think kind of the right approach is you're being called to become like Jesus.
Speaker 3:I'm being called to become like Jesus. I'm a little bit ahead of you. I'm glad to share with you what I've learned, but this is really gonna be about both of us being encouraged. And I take that straight from scripture, Romans 1, verses 11 and 12, where Paul says to the Romans, for I long to see you, in order that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is, that we both may be encouraged by each other's faiths, both you and me.
Speaker 3:So the first part is the older Christian saying, yeah. If God's given me something that would be helpful to you, I'm really glad to give that to you. But what this really is gonna be about is is I see you choosing to trust Jesus this week, even when it's hard, that's gonna encourage me like crazy. And, hopefully, when you see me choosing to trust Jesus when it's really hard, that's gonna encourage you like crazy. To where it's a mutuality, really, of brotherhood or sisterhood, not so much a hierarchical mentor and mentee coming around, each bringing any gifts that God's given them to give to the other, but mainly just encouraging each other by their examples of trusting Jesus even when it's really hard.
Speaker 3:I think in in Hebrews 137, it says, remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. And so there's 3 commands in there. You're to remember your leaders, those who gave you God's word. You're to consider how did their lives work out? But the only thing in that verse that you're to imitate is how did they trust Jesus?
Speaker 3:So I think what prevents us from dump trucking is realizing that this is really about 2 brothers, 2 sisters coming together to be mutually encouraged, trusting Jesus when it's really hard, and that which pushes against me being, well, who am I to say I could mentor someone? That's like, well, you're called to this, and all you gotta do is put forward. Are are you trusting Jesus? How is this working?
Speaker 2:Wow. Yeah. I I think that's so disarming if you're a mentee to hear your mentor say something like that of, I mean, there's just a, an authenticity and integrity, a humility that is just very attractive. And I, I think probably something that intimidates a lot of kids in mentor relationships is just feeling like this guy's gonna expect a lot from me. He's going to, he's gonna share a lot.
Speaker 2:That's gonna go over my head. He's going to, I, I, I guess, place an expectation on me that I could never fulfill. And what, what you're saying is that, a mentor who's following after Jesus is walking in humility is wanting to walk in mutual encouragement and to, to really be open enough to share their strengths and their weaknesses and, and to call them the mentee. I, I love what you said to imitate their faith, not just, yes, not just the, the, the stuff that's off or, but I think it requires them to see more than just your faith. It requires them to see, or even, I guess you have to express as a mentor, your failures or your shortcoming.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, one of my mentors used to tell me, he said, people are challenged by your strengths, but encouraged by your weaknesses. And we should put them both forward. You know, the things that God has made us strong in, we should put forward, you know, as an example for others, and, hopefully, that will challenge them. But the thing that will encourage them is our weaknesses, the that we've got our stuff, that we've got our problems.
Speaker 3:Because as we see that they've got their stuff, then it kinda makes it okay that I've got my stuff. You know, I was I was on a a web meeting just this week with a a wonderful young man, very bright Harvard Business School grad, been involved in some really, I guess, big time business kind of things. I've been a mentor for him through the years. I'm probably, I don't know, 30 years older than he is, something like that, 25 or 30. And in the web meeting this week, he said, you know, John, the thing I've come to realize is you are one of my closest friends.
Speaker 3:And and I said, that's what I've been thinking all along. And I said, I know that you've thought of me as your mentor, and I guess, technically, I've been one of your mentors. But from the first day I met him, and I reminded them for for the first day I met him, I said, oh, we're supposed to be friends and we're brothers. I think that there is, long term, kind of a leveling out of the hierarchy to where it's not so much the mentor up here and the mentee down here, but really just kind of a commonality of brotherhood or sisterhood that is deeply meaningful for both.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how I mean, you you kinda shared the dump trucking, which is a place of pride. I have everything. And then the other side of that is this false humility. I have nothing to give.
Speaker 2:I mean, from your own from your own story, can you share just how, how you've moved from those into this place of, I, I don't have everything to give. I don't have nothing to give, but I do have Jesus to give like, and I I just love to hear some just personal testimonies of of you recognizing that and you growing in
Speaker 3:that. Well, this could take a long time. I'll try to be concise. I I, I think by nature, I am a fixer, and maybe most men are kinda oriented to this. And so in my early days of mentoring, I just thought it was incumbent upon me to fix the guys I was meeting with.
Speaker 3:And so I was I was pushing them. I was, getting in their face a lot. And not that that's wrong. Sometimes it's good time to push. Sometimes it's good time to get in their face.
Speaker 3:But my problem was my motivation and my understanding of my role. And it was, well, it's up to me to fix them. And so I had my wife and I had done premarital counseling for this couple in when we lived in Fort Worth for 18 years, and so we were doing premarital counseling for this couple, and they eventually got married. So I was meeting with the husband maybe a month or 2 after their marriage. And, and the husband was doing some typical boneheaded things that new husbands do in his marriage.
Speaker 3:And that's all normal. What was weird was, in that breakfast I had with him that morning, man, I just laid into him, I got in his face, I was, you know, just just, yeah, fixing him. And so this is a very gracious man, and he was very gracious to me and very teachable, and so I tried to find something good from all that. But so I walked out of that restaurant to my car that day. I was rebuked to the core of my being by the holy spirit.
Speaker 3:And I felt him saying to me, what in the world were you doing? And what were you trying to do? And and I just saw my foolishness. You know, that was like the holy spirit pulled back the curtains. I just saw that I had misunderstood my role, but more than that, I had been very arrogant and very really even condescending and very unaware of my bone headed stuff in my marriage and all the stupid things I've done in my marriage.
Speaker 3:And I just god just rebuked me, and and I just felt that something really needed to change. And so it was really at that point that I began to see maybe a call to a a deeper humility and really a deeper commonality in mentoring, that though maybe I'm older, maybe I'm more experienced in some ways, This is still at its core brotherhood, and I've got nothing over him, and he has nothing over me, and we really are there to help. And because of that, when when I'm mentoring now and, you know, because I'm, like, 66 years old, most of the people I mentor are, like, way younger than me. Like, some of them, you know, like, 30 years younger than me, 40 years. I always insist that there is some time each session that I tell them how I'm doing, and I always try to be fully honest.
Speaker 3:And at the end of the time, when I'm telling them how I'm doing, I'll say to them, does this give you a do you feel like you really know how I'm doing? And I'll tell you anything, but I don't wanna bore you. And that just kinda sets it up that this is a mutuality. And, you know, you do that with discretion and with discernment. But I find that it's good for men to not have secrets anyhow, and as fully as possible to be as fully transparent about how you're doing.
Speaker 3:Because if you mentor long enough, you're gonna walk into a mentoring meeting where you're not doing well at all. And you can kind of fake it and shake it through that mentoring meeting, and and, you know, maybe sometimes that's what you should do. But there's just a lot of benefit of just saying, you know, I just need you to know I'm not in a great place today, and I want us to still meet. I'm gonna try to full be fully honest with you about where I'm at, but I'm not in a great place. I I remember one season of life was so hard for me.
Speaker 3:At least with one of the guys I was mentoring, I I said to him, I said, you know, if what you're needing right now is a man who's got it all figured out and put together, then you need to find another mentor because I am as undone as I have ever been in my life right now. But I'm glad for us to continue to meet as long as you're good with it.
Speaker 2:Wow. Wow. I I think that's that's huge for our mentors to hear. And, I mean, most of them are, are mentoring kids in grade school. And, I think there is a temptation to when you're having a, a rough week or rough day to just put on.
Speaker 2:The, the mentor hat and, and say, okay, we're just gonna push through this. But I, I think there are safe age, appropriate ways for mentors to share how they're feeling. And, and that, that could actually be for the mentee's benefit, not just for their own like benefit. Like, it's not sharing your feelings with your mentee. Isn't a counseling session where you're, letting it all out, but it's also it's, it's helpful to be real.
Speaker 2:And I, I mean, that is that's powerful, to hear that from you, John. Yeah. I, I wanna ask you just, I mean, to, to kind of close our time, just any practical tips for mentors to make mentoring less about them and more about, I mean, really, I think the temptation is to make the mentor relationship about what we want for the kid, not what God wants. And so practically, how do mentors make the mentor relationship less about them and more about what god wants for their mentee?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, you do have to come to believe that's the best. I mean, you know, we we can ask the question, how do you make mentoring more about and less about yourself? Well, you have to actually come to believe that it's better if it's more about God and less about myself. Because if you don't believe that, then you're gonna keep trending towards being about yourself.
Speaker 3:I think that that, part of what we've been saying about, you know, humility and transparency, I think that it's a good kind of setup or pathway to this being about god and not about ourselves. But I think also, you you come to when you sit with the mentee, you know, hopefully, in your heart, there is a heart of love for that person. And it's not because you're such a great person, but somehow God's put in your heart a love for them. And you're really wanting to give them the best that you have to give them, And over time, you know the best you have to give them is Jesus and and God. And for them to come to understand, you know, the father, son, and the spirit, but also understand the the course of life that God's called them to.
Speaker 3:That, you know, if if somehow you can check that box, then it's not so much you succeeded as a mentor. I think it's like you've loved them well. You've you've cared for them well. You've given to them well. I think that they're really one of the primary indicators of how much the mentor sees that this is all about God and not about themselves.
Speaker 3:The primary indicators of that is their own prayerfulness around the mentoring. Like, are they praying before the mentoring meeting even begins? You know, praying for the relationship, praying for the young men or women that mentoring. Do they begin the mentoring meetings with prayer? You know, if if, you know, if the kind of mentoring they're doing, if that's good, either out loud or at least within themselves.
Speaker 3:They're praying, god help, god guide. In leadership management mentoring, we encourage that mentoring meeting begins with prayer, they all end with prayer, and that there's prayer in between. Because I think that the prayerfulness is the indicator of how large God is seen in this, that we need to hear from him. So I think you have to come to believe it's about God, and that's the best. It's motivated by your love for them and is indicated, yeah, by the prayer promise, I think.
Speaker 2:That's so good, John, and so practical. So mentors, even just in the leadership edge training, John shares about how the holy spirit is the master mentor.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And he he's leading the charge and cares more. I love I love how you said mentoring is less about becoming a great mentor and more about loving them well. And Yes. At the end of the day, if we've loved them well, we've we're a great mentor. So, John, thank you so much for for all of your insight today.
Speaker 2:And if if anyone's interested in contacting you or or getting in touch with Leadership Edge Mentoring, how can they do that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, my email address is jhawkins, jhawkins@leadedge.com. So lead edge.com at the website, lead edge.com. You can find all kinds of information, all kinds of material support, and there also will be an announcement there about our next mentor training. And it's very cheaply based.
Speaker 3:It starts the 1st week of August, and and they can sign up for the mentor training if they would like to at our website. So we'd love to get hear from you by email if you wanna reach out to me or please go to our website if we can be of help. And and and we love what 4 runners are doing. You know, I met Zach Garza, a few years ago and was just so impressed with what god had put in Zach's heart. And and Steven, as you and I have gotten to know each other, just so grateful for the kids that you guys are influencing and and carrying you on.
Speaker 3:So just keep moving.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you, John. We really appreciate you. And, yeah, yeah, just thank you so much for investing in our mentors and we'll put your information in the show notes so anybody can connect with you and yeah. Highly recommend jump into one of these trainings in August or, or the next one.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much, John.
Speaker 3:You bet. Thank you.