Mentoring by Design

Mentoring and Discipling Through Missional Small Groups

Marton

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498294287
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book was born out of a passion for mentoring disciples for Christ. The author has experienced effective mentoring as a follower of Christ.

Chapter 1

Mentors in the Life of a Mentee

Romania

The model of ministry considered in this book is mentoring and discipleship through small groups. There is a difference between mentoring and discipleship. A Christian disciple is a follower of Jesus Christ. Discipleship is a lifelong commitment to commune with Christ through prayer, meditation, and the study of the Scriptures. The life of a disciple includes other spiritual disciplines such as solitude, worship, simplicity, Sabbath rest, serving with Christ in the community, etc. On the other hand, a working definition for mentoring is, “Mentoring relationships are dynamic, reciprocal, personal relationships in which a more experienced person acts as a guide, role model, teacher, and sponsor of a less experienced person.”1 Therefore, while discipleship is a lifelong commitment, mentoring takes place for a period of time under a more experienced leader in order to develop into a successful leader.

Throughout my life, the theme of discipleship through mentoring was demonstrated over and over again. It seems the Lord was preparing me for ministry from a young age and did so through spiritual mentors who were placed in my life providentially at different times. I was born August 5, 1978 in Turda, Romania. At that time, the country of Romania was under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. It was a very challenging time for the country. As a child, I did not know all the struggles that people were going through, but I remember standing in line with my mom for hours to buy bread. Sometimes we stood in line for hours only to be turned away to have to return another day because everything was sold out.

There are very few memories of growing up in Romania, because in 1987, when I was eight years old we flew to start a new life in America. Yet some of the few memories of Romania include ice-skating across the street at a tennis court that would be flooded and the water frozen. Faithfully, the family also walked to church every Friday evening and Saturday morning.

The biggest memory of my early childhood revolves around the time my father escaped Romania. Mom and us three boys joined our father a few years later in Cleveland, Ohio. It all began when my father was arrested on charges that he had more flour, oil, and sugar in the pastry shop inventory, than was allowed by the government. He decided he had enough of communism and would flee the country. This decision and plan was carried out in the summer of 1985.

I was only six years old at the time and did not know any of the details, but do remember my father leaving and the house being ransacked by government authorities looking for clues to use and convict my father. We did not know for months whether our father was dead or alive, until one day a package arrived from Austria with some chocolate bars and a letter explaining that he was safe at an Austrian Refugee Camp. We were thankful to God for his loving protection over our father and for the privilege to communicate with him through letters.

Moving to United States of America

While our father was in Austria, he wanted his family to join him, but Austria made it a cumbersome process that would have taken about five years. The best option at the time was for him to try to get to the United States of America and within a year his family could join him. There was a Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist church in Westlake, Ohio and my father was able to contact the pastor of the church. The pastor sponsored him to come to America in 1988. The family arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, in the summer of 1989, to be reunited with our father.

What an experience to go through, to leave behind friends, uncles, aunts, cousins, a culture and to arrive in a new country, to make new friends, to learn a new language and a new culture. It was both an exciting and challenging experience even for an eight year-old boy. Since the Cleveland Ohio Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist church sponsored our family to come to America, we became very involved in church life. My two brothers were baptized by immersion in that church, and were involved in the orchestra and choir. Father and mother both became choir directors for the church choir and so the weekends revolved around church. The church had many active young people and a very involved youth and children’s program. The pastor of the church included the children in the church service by beginning his sermons with a Biblical story and he would ask the children questions.

When I was eleven years old, an evangelist came to hold a series of evangelistic meetings at the church. When the appeal was made for baptism, together with my best friend, I made the decision to be baptized. Not only did I feel impressed by the Holy Spirit to be baptized, but also felt the call to full time ministry. Therefore I began planning for the ministry from the age of eleven. I did not know how or when God would bring to fruition the seed of the call to ministry, but I knew that it was God’s call and it was my joy to respond. From the time of my baptism I also became involved in church. I would memorize poems and say them in church, sing songs, etc. During the week I would read my Bible, and witness to my school friends and teachers.

The family’s life in Cleveland, Ohio lasted only three years. My father was enticed to move the family to Atlanta, Georgia because of a job offer from a friend. Father worked in construction, and Atlanta was booming with new buildings and houses. In Atlanta we attended the newly formed Romanian Seventh-day Adventist church. The family again became involved in the church.

A retired pastor from Romania was instrumental in starting up the Romanian church. I became close to him and he encouraged me to continue preparing for the ministry, even though I was only twelve years old. He would spend time playing tennis with me and quiz me on Bible trivia. He had a strong impact spiritually on my young life, preparing me to become a faithful servant of Christ. I learned from the retired pastor that mentoring is not done only at church but during social events, in places like a tennis court, a soccer field, or a basketball court.

In Atlanta, I started attending church school. The Romanian Seventh-day Adventist church met in a large American Seventh-day Adventist church that also operated a church school. It was a small school with approximately twenty to twenty five students from first through eighth grades. I really enjoyed the spiritual emphasis in the school. It was a great place for me to grow spiritually and to draw closer to Christ because Christ was uplifted.

During my last year at the church school tragedy struck our family. The family went to church to celebrate the New Year; 1991 was about to be history and 1992 was about to begin. Father was still at work, trying to finish some work on a house. He was planning to come to church later that evening. As we were playing in the church’s gym with friends, we received a message that we needed to leave the party and go straight to the hospital. Father had an accident on the job and was at the hospital. He fell from the second floor scaffolding and landed on his head. The doctor at the hospital said that if he had hit his head a couple of inches higher, he would have died on the spot.

He broke one of his cheekbones and shattered the bones in his wrist. They put a plate in his face and had surgery on his hand. Since the family did not have health insurance, that put a heavy financial strain on the family. Father was the only source of income for the family, so my brothers tried to support the family financially for the next eight months.

After finishing eighth grade that year, the Lord opened up the opportunity for me to attend Atlanta Adventist Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist high school. While at Atlanta Adventist Academy, the Bible teacher, also had a spiritual impact upon my life. He would take time to pray with me, and his door was always open to answer Biblical questions or challenges that I was going through. The four years at the Academy was a time of spiritual growth, understanding spiritual things from an American culture instead of an Eastern European culture.

After finishing high school, my older brother convinced me to go with him for evangelism training at a small institution located in Hermosa, South Dakota called Mission College of Evangelism. We packed up a few things and started out for a road trip from Atlanta, Georgia to Hermosa, South Dakota.

Mission College of Evangelism was located in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. The scenery was gorgeous; it really gave me the opportunity to come close to the God of nature and commune with the Creator of all things. Spiritually it was a powerful experience, to spend time with God in the Holy Scriptures, to have time to pray, and to learn how to witness effectively. It was exactly what I needed at the age of eighteen in order to grow close to God and to think about where God was leading me in His service.

The director of the school often encouraged me that “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”2 One day the director asked if I would be interested in becoming a Bible instructor for a church. The proposition was scary since during the classes it was evident that giving Bible studies was my weakest point, but then I claimed Paul’s words to the Corinthian believers, “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”3

I had a Romanian friend from Atlanta that also came to Mission College of Evangelism with us. He discouraged me and said that it could take from six to twelve months before any openings come up for a Bible instructor, so I should not get my hopes up. That was not the case, in fact, the following day I spoke on the phone with an associate pastor from a church in Wichita, Kansas.

The interview over the phone went well and they wanted me to drive to Wichita to see the church and to interview with the board members as well. After three weeks of training at Mission College of Evangelism, I went to Wichita, interviewed for the position and they hired me to be their Bible instructor. I was only paid a hundred and fifty dollars a month, but they gave me a place to stay and food to eat. I lived with the associate pastor and his lovely wife, O. J. and Millie Mills. They had been serving in the ministry for over fifty years by the time I went to live with them.

Living in their home for one and a half years was one of the best educations a young man could receive for the ministry. One of the first lessons I learned was the importance of spending time with the Lord in prayer, meditation, and Bible study. O.J.’s office was next to my bedroom. Early in the morning, around five o’clock, the office light would come on as O.J. in his early eighties, would commune with God.

At breakfast we would always discuss the Scriptures. Many times the topics would come to issues with which I as a young man was struggling. Could it be that the Holy Spirit communing with the elderly pastor inspired him to bring up topics that would benefit a young man entering the ministry? The answer was a definite “yes.”

During the year and a half that I was doing Bible work in Wichita, I gained much experience in learning to talk to people, share the gospel, and teach the Bible. I would go into people’s homes and study the Bible with them, as well as go on visits with the senior pastor of the church. The senior pastor of the church, had a two-church district. When he was on vacation, he would allow me to preach at his smaller church that had an attendance of about ten to fifteen. That gave me the opportunity to practice my preaching skills. The pastor also had a huge impact in my life when it came to practical lessons in the ministry. He often invited me along for a hospital visit. He would then explain how hospital visits are to be conducted, what to talk about and what not to talk about, how short or long the visits should be, and so on. Other times he would invite me to an anointing service and explain how to anoint the sick. He would also invite me along on Bible studies and I would listen and le...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Mentors in the Life of a Mentee
• Chapter 2: Elijah’s Effective Mentoring
• Chapter 3: Jesus, the Greatest Mentor
• Chapter 4: Mentoring in Early Seventh-day Adventism
• Chapter 5: Mentoring by the Design of the Holy Spirit
• Chapter 6: College Campuses and Mentoring
• Chapter 7: Mentoring in a Church Setting
• Chapter 8: Mentoring in Youth Ministry
• Appendix A: Life Group Information Sheet and Leader Covenant
• Appendix B: Sermon Series On Discipleship
• Bibliography