Mentor Like Jesus: Exploring How He Made DisciplesSample

Building the Church

On Day 1, we talked about Jesus’ effectiveness as a mentor . . . from eleven to two billion. Remember?

Every one of Jesus’ guys had been taught the Law from birth, so what made His mentoring effective wasn’t information transfer. It wasn’t content either, although His content was obviously good. It was application. The mentoring process Jesus modeled for us led to total commitment on the part of his mentees, and from that group, the church began. Mentoring was the tool Jesus used to build His church.

Today, most churches are bifurcated . . . events for the masses, intensive Bible study, and training for the few and no system for consistently producing the next generation of leaders they need.

Over the past 12 days, you’ve read about the principles and practices that Jesus used when he mentored His disciples. Now here’s the vision: current leaders of your church, each sitting at the end of their dining room table, living out these ideas while pouring out their cups into the lives of 6-8 younger people at a time for nine months to a year. Helping them find and follow Jesus . . . making disciple-makers a few at a time.

Some will move immediately into “paying it forward,” leading their first group right away. Some won’t be that quick. Some will use their gifting in other ways in the church. But all will grow through the process, including the mentor.

Do this a few times . . . through a few generations and you’ll have that core group of leaders God will use to grow and deepen your church.

The results might not show up immediately. But over time, no church can stand still when God grows all-in followers of Jesus and sends them on His mission for His church.

Challenge: Is God calling you to be a mentor? To be the catalyst who gets small group mentoring started in your church? If He is, there’s a free website with all the information and resources you need. It’s radicalmentoring.com.