Mentoring Works

By Doug Franklin March 13, 2012

So if standing up in front of students and talking for 30 minutes is not creating any real change in students, then what works? Yesterday on my blog I railed against the ineffectiveness of large group teaching. My point is that students don’t change much about their lives because you spend 30 minutes preaching at them. Real change happens though relationships. It’s why Jesus spent 3 years walking the road of life with his disciples. So how do we do that in the context of modern life and church culture? Parents are not going to let their students spend three years hanging out with the youth pastor. We need to rethink discipleship and take a new look at mentoring. Mentoring is an old idea but very effective at making real life change happen. I know more about the love of Christ because how I saw it lived out in my father’s life. I believe today we need to think about spiritual fathers in the lives of our students. Mentoring takes lots of adults and its effectiveness can’t be measured real easily, but when real change happens it’s because someone got into the mess of another one’s life. When are we going to stop looking for a short-cut to discipling students?