Listen to podcast audio:
How do we find a good mentor? What qualities are necessary to become a good mentor ourselves? This week, John Bailey and Mark Renfroe share their personal experiences with the mentors who defined their lives, the types of mentorship relationships they have had and the qualifications of good mentorship.
Key Points from the Podcast
-
Mentorship can be misunderstood. Jesus is our true, ultimate mentor; he often works through others. Apart from Christ, we cannot truly mentor people in a spiritual sense because it’s involves a growing understanding of scripture and depth of relationship with the Holy Spirit.
-
Some elements of mentorship and influence can happen through listening to someone preach or reading someone’s books, even someone who’s no longer alive like the writers of the Bible; but the best and most effective mentorships happen in-person, in an active relationship with someone who is present in our lives.
-
Everyone is being mentored by somebody, whether we realize it or not. Is that person who is influencing our life trustworthy and spiritually mature?
-
Only sharing our successes rather than our failures will build walls between us and others. Honesty about where we’ve made mistakes is vital to helping others walk through those areas without falling into the same issues. It also demonstrates how to handle failure with grace and maturity.
-
Secular mentorship may involve someone who can help you understand finances or a career path better, and those relationships also have value at certain stages of our lives.
-
There are three types of relationships we should all aim to have: someone who’s older than us speaking into our lives, someone who’s a peer and mutually edifying, and someone younger than us whom we’re investing into.
Bible Verses Referenced in the Podcast
Matthew 28:18-20, 1 Timothy 1:1-5, Titus 1:4-5, Acts 22:1-23
About John Bailey
Pastor John Bailey serves as the Chief Operating Officer at World Challenge. John came to know Christ in jail after some difficult struggles as a young man, and God has done a powerful work of transformation since! Spending 13 years in Next Gen ministry, he excelled in discipleship and helping young leaders discover giftings to serve God. John was called next to serve as a missionary and pastor in Western Europe. John and his family then returned to plant the Springs Church in Jacksonville, Florida. Today, the church is a thriving body of believers excelling in outreach and missions. John has now brought his giftings and vision to World Challenge, accelerating the spread of the gospel in America and around the World.
About Mark Renfroe
Mark married his college sweetheart, Amy, with whom he has four adult children—one girl and three boys. The Renfroes have been involved in field missions work for 30 years. They served in the Arab community of San Francisco for four years before becoming foreign missionaries in 1995. Mark was asked to serve as the Area Director for Assemblies of God World Missions in 2007. As part of his role, he led missionaries and interfaced with national church leaders in the 18 countries of the Arab World. In 2017, Mark created Reaching Africa’s Muslims, an initiative to mobilize, equip, and deploy indigenous African missionaries to reach Muslims on the continent. Mark has graduate degrees in Intercultural Studies and Executive Leadership. He currently serves as the Chief Missions Officer for World Challenge in Colorado Springs.