AAEVS - Practicing Discipleship (Part 2)

Mentorship

Mentorship is a neglected ministry; probably because our culture glorifies the self-sufficient person, the one who follows his own path alone and learns from his own effort with little assistance from others. Sadly this notion has gotten into the church to the point that Titus 2 mentorship is just unheard of today. This is sad because people usually do not discover by themselves how to think and act godly. Reviving mentorship is going to take study and mortification.

Titus 2 is a familiar passage, especially with those who are interested in gender roles. It gives instruction on exhorting four natural groups of people in the church: not-so-young men, not-so-young women, young women, and young men. From the structure of the passage, the older folks should mentor the younger.

By God's wisdom, He made male and female to bear His likeness on creation. They had distinct, defined roles and at the same time were both equally "Adam" in the persons of man and woman, reflecting the Trinity. But they sinned, bringing chaos into the created order and distorted in many ways the roles they were made to perform to His glory.

But Christ the last Adam came to restore the natural order and, in doing so, the roles that Adam and Eve were made to do. He exemplified them in making a bride from His pierced side and resuming, together with His bride which is the heavenly Jerusalem, the work that Adam and Eve forfeited in the garden. In this ministry, Jesus takes guys and girls and He transforms them into men and women to once again reflect God's image to the world. So as Paul is exhorting Titus to disciple his flock in mentorship, he is by the Holy Spirit making it possible for the roles to be played again.

So how does he do it? He gives certain character traits that each natural group should think like and develop into habits (of course that's not all that needs to be taught, the general things need to be taught as well.) Let's look, from older to younger, at the men first then the women.

The older men are to embody six attributes: sobriety, reverence, temperance, faith, love, and patience. The first three restrain their silliness; the last three expel unwarranted "What If? Why Me?" doubts, cynicism, murmuring, lack of interest in others, etc.

The older women, indicated by the word "likewise," have a similar character with a different angle. They are to be reverent in their behavior "as becometh holiness" and not be false accusers. (Literally, the word means devil.) They are not to be slaves to pleasure but be teachers of good things. (What good things? Micah 6:8)

Now moving from the mentors to the mentees, the younger women are to be husband-lovers and children-lovers. They are to be self-controlled, chaste, and women of good works. They are to look after their homes and be ranked under their husbands.

The younger men, also indicated by the word "likewise," have a similar curriculum summed up in sober-mindedness. They are to be wife-lovers and children-lovers. They are to be self-controlled, pure, and men of gracious and unwavering prayer. They are to provide for their homes and listen to their wives according to knowledge.

(Now with giving instruction in married life, I know this brings up the question of celibacy; what if there are people who God calls to be permanently single? Wouldn't the curriculum be useless to them, if not down-right insulting? I don't think so, because both callings are parallel in their direction and are similar in their ministry. Celibates should learn to minister to children, physical and spiritual. They should learn to resolve conflicts between one another. They should learn to love God and one another with their time and energy.)

All of this is taught so that the word of God would not be blasphemed. In the Apostolic Age, the early church was tempted to degrade marriage and family as useless and worldly in the Kingdom. Paul contended to keep the Christian family from becoming dysfunctional in the Messianic Age; so that those outside the faith would not accuse God of commanding His natural and moral order to be neglected and annulled.    

So how do we initiate a mentorship? In our church, we have two older men and two older women (as counting their children's high school gradations.) Not very many, but mentorship doesn't just have to be in our church; our sister churches have older folks to exhort us too.

The mentors have to be available and the mentees have to be correctable. For mentees, it can be as simple as asking someone you trust, "What areas do you think I need to grow in?" This needs to be asked with humble and submissive motives not with arrogant and angry retaliation. For mentors, you should ask how much the mentee knows about the subject being discussed (this is what I wished I had said back on the post on counseling.) This is so that you are able to more accurately apply wisdom to the situation and hold the mentee accountable for what he or she knows.

(I will stop the post here for time's sake. Hopefully this will give us a foundation for more ideas how to implement mentorship into the church.)