A Mentor To Emulate

I stopped by to see some friends and deliver some tickets to a play. I could have mailed them, but they only live a mile away, and I wanted the face to face contact. Although I hadn’t planned to stay, when the husband opened the door and invited me in, I welcomed the chance to visit.

It was just the two of us (the rest of the family was out for a while), and we were able to get to a real conversation pretty quickly. That’s how it is with friends. You trust each other, and there’s not much pretense.

I asked about his work. He shared what about his work gave him pleasure, and what was frustrating. I could relate to what he said because I knew his heart and knew why he was doing the work he has now—he has a passion to work with churches and pastors and help them start other churches. Though never a pastor himself, he is the model of pastoral concern that I admire.

The major characteristic that makes my friend a mentor is that he is real. He is himself one-on-one or when speaking to a large group. He cares, and you can feel that he does.

In the first chapter of First Thessalonians Paul said, “You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord…And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.”

I’ve had many teachers and pastors. I’ve had a few mentors. Those were the people whose lives I watched, whose concern I felt, and those whom I naturally began to emulate. Hopefully, others could see in me a model just as I had seen in my friend and a few others.

As the conversation continued he asked about my business. He knew that some health problems had affected it previously. I replied honestly (I couldn’t do otherwise with this friend) that it had gone pretty well earlier, but was slow at this time.

As I was getting ready to leave, my friend did something that reminds me of this passage I recently studied in Philippians (4:9), “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.” He was just being true to himself. But he was also a model for the kind of friend I want to be.

What he did was say, “Before you go, I’d like to pray for your business.”

What a gift! What a model to follow! What a friend!