christian living on Mentoring

There is nothing that more tends to strengthen the faith of the young believer than to hear the veteran Christian, covered with scars from the battle, testifying that the service of his Master is a ha...

The Master & His Workshop I remember first walking into my friend Andrew’s new workshop, housed in a colonial-style barn and situated on an expansive wooded acreage on the Eastern Seaboard. Thin...

We’re all tempted to come to Jesus for what we want from him, rather than coming to him for mentoring, training and teaching about what he wants our lives to look like.

A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.

Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...

A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...

My mentor is José Rojas. He was a spiritual adviser for two US presidents. On one of our first phone conversations, he said to me, “What if you’ll actually get to where you want to be quicker by slowi...

In seminary I had read about the phenomenon of transference, whereby human beings sometimes transfer the feelings they have for one pivotal person in their lives to another pivotal person in their liv...

The best mirror is an old friend.

Mothering or nurturing is not just a calling for women who have biological or adopted children. Mothering is a calling for all women. Every Christian woman is called to the spiritual motherhood of mak...

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, of building a personality beyond its normal limitations.

It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.

Very simply, a virtue (or vice) is acquired through practice— repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and ...

A leader is a dealer in hope.

I love the following story because it illustrates both our natural defensiveness when we are attacked and the potential for transformation. As the illustration demonstrates, this is only possible when...

Leaders are rarely the first ones to see an opportunity. They are often the first ones to seize an opportunity.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

Spiritual Direction is a relationship initiated by a spiritual seeker who finds a mature person of faith willing to pray and respond with wisdom and understanding to his or her questions about how to ...

Compassion must become the core and even the nature of authority.

Gracious God, forgive us for the opportunities we’ve wasted. You’ve placed us in the perfect situation to help raise other people up, so they would be equipped to follow you. But we squander those opp...

If it’s free, it’s advice; if you pay for it, it’s counseling; if you can use either one, it’s a miracle.

Spiritual direction, therefore, explicitly acknowledges what is often only implicit in other forms of pastoral care: that the directees' desire for more life, more integration, more union with God...

Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

You cannot expect people to seriously consider your idea without accepting the possibility that they will challenge it. Accepting that process of engagement as the terrain of leadership liberates you ...

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal pa...

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain an...

Fellowship means among other things that we are ready to receive of Christ from others. Other believers minister Christ to me, and I am ready to receive.

Gracious God, we admit that though You have sent each of us out with the task of raising disciples, we often neglect that task. We remain content, stagnant, in our Christian calling, while we regularl...

Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one's own search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search but do not know ho...

In More Give to Live, Dr. Douglas Lawson provides evidence that the urge toward generosity begins early in life. He describes a continuum that he calls the “Giving Path.” This path begins with parents...