earlier, I had decided to live my life as a Christian. This most recent leg of my path to faith had been a solo journey. At the time, I was not involved in any church or Christian community. As far as I knew I had no Christian friends.
It was in reading the Bible that I had found my way to this
new stage of faith. So, I thought I should attend the Bible study.
I went to the meeting, and they were arguing about baptism
and 1 Peter 3:21. The leaders seemed
very sure of their position, and they wanted
to make sure that everyone believed the same thing. I was not impressed by the
gathering.
One person, who was not engaged in this debate, announced
that he was leading a Bible study on the book of Romans, meeting on the second
floor lobby of the Creative Arts Center on Tuesday mornings.
I showed up with my Bible in hand, the red-letter King James
Version I had received in the 5th grade for memorizing all the books
of the Bible in order. There was only and
Robert, the leader, and me. For several
months we met there each Tuesday morning and read through the book of Romans and talked
about what it meant for our lives.
I had gone to Sunday school for years and had sat through
many sermons in my parents’ conservative Baptist church. I had been a faithful participant in VBS in
my childhood. As I noted above, I had
memorized the books of the Bible in the proper canonical order. I knew the right answers to most of the
questions. And as they say, if you don’t
know the answer just say “Jesus.” You have
a 70% chance of being right.
What I did not know was how to live as a Christian. I had
no idea how to take what the Bible taught and apply it day by day in the real
world. I had gotten none of that in my
parents’ church.
This was what I discovered with Robert each Tuesday morning
sitting on the floor leaning against the rough concrete wall: I learned how to take scripture and practice
it day by day as a college student.
Robert and I were finding our way together. He was just a bit farther ahead, having been
at this endeavor longer than had I.
There were several others in that student fellowship who help
me find my way and broaden my faithfulness.
To this day their fingerprints are still on my life and my faith. I am, after 8 years of seminary and 30 years
of ordained ministry, still to a great degree a product of what I learned in
those early days of faith at the hands of others who were on the same journey;
they were simply more experienced travelers at the time.
I thought about Robert and those others as I participated in
the mentor training offered by our Regional Lay Study Program. We are training people to mentor Certified
Lay Minister candidates. We will soon provide
broader training to equip pastors in mentoring all people with gifts for ministry
in their churches.
Robert and those others were mentoring me. They were showing me how to live as a Christian and how to do ministry. The real gift they gave was not
knowledge. The real gift was showing me
how put into practice in my life what I already knew in my head.
This is essentially what Jesus did with his disciples. He invited them to travel with him on a
journey of obedience that he had already begun (Mark 1:16—20). That is what mentoring is: making available to
others the wisdom we have gathered along the way. We walk with them as they travel and build
their own bank of experiences. Someday
they will, in turn, walk with others.
Who has mentored you on your journey? All of us are the product of others who have guided and encouraged us. Is there someone in your church or family or circle of friends that you can come alongside and with whom you can journey together? Let us keep the cycle going.
Jim Kelsey--Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches of New York State.
