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Who was your Paul? Who is your Timothy?

Mentoring is one of today's hot words.  Growing up I never heard the word. Yet, ironically, there was a great deal of mentoring going on in my life back then, and there seems to be a dearth of mentoring in peoples' lives today.  I am not even sure that the people who mentored me would have even been able to put a name or a description to what they were doing - they were just living out the Christian life as they understood it from Scripture.  There were the pastors such as Gordon Rendle and Victor Cornish, who gave me and other young men opportunities for service.  There was Les and Ruthann Snook who took me along as a teenager to speak at their nursing home service each month.  There were the dear senior ladies like Miss Schrag, Mrs. Erb and Mrs. Eckstein who supported and prayed for me in summer missions enterprises.  There were innumerable others - Sunday School teachers, Boys' Brigade leaders, church friends - who each encouraged, challenged, and sometimes even rebuked, with the goal of seeing me grow up in Jesus Christ.  Very little of this could be described as a program of mentorship, but it was mentoring just the same.

Today we are in a panic because such mentorship has declined dramatically.  I applaud those who are seeking to reverse the trend by developing a purposeful program of mentorship.  However, I believe the decline reflects a fundamental shift in our society and by extension our church.  We are busy.  Or at least we have made ourselves busy.  The result has been a steady decline in the time we spend together.  Whereas the bulk of the congregation used to meet at least three times a week (twice on Sunday and then again Wednesday night), we now tend to see each other just once on Sunday.  As I was growing up, it was very typical to be invited to some one's home after Sunday evening service.  The young people were always going out bowling or playing miniature golf or just going for a burger together.  Now we just don't spend time together.

I am convinced that we must begin to spend time with each other if we are truly to mentor the next generation.  We who are older need to remember the Pauls in our lives who encouraged and helped us to develop.  Then we need to pick some Timothys that we know to do those same things for them that were done for us.  The hardest part, however, will be choosing to make time for the Timothys in our lives - to talk with them, eat with them, work with them and even play with them.     
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