thrive community

I’m a nostalgic person at heart. I hold on to things and enjoy recalling the stories that go with them, especially things that center around experiences I’ve had with people. They represent a connection that has seemed to bind us together on a deeper level. It’s the creation of stories and having people who know your stories. 

Everybody wants to be known, to feel included and to be connected. Take FaceBook and Twitter for example. These social networks were created out of an incredible need that people have to know people and be known by others, even on the most trivial of levels. People share who they are, give updates on what they are currently doing, share photos, join affinity groups and discover new people to be connected with. FaceBook has an estimated two hundred million users while the newly established Twitter has attracted over fourteen million users in the U.S. alone and is rapidly growing.

Knowing someone goes beyond the cognitive and the informative to the intimate and the spiritual. It’s a divine experience that comes from engaging our heart with another human being. But offering insights ABOUT you is different than offering experiences WITH you. It’s how we move from the fictional person we want others to think we are to the person we are in reality. It’s where “knowing” genuinely happens.

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A spiritual mentoring relationship can be like no other you’ll ever have, but finding one can be a very challenging task, especially when you don’t know where to begin.

We all need someone to learn from, to be a sounding board for decisions and to help us see our potential. The growing desire for someone further along in the faith to encourage us, teach us and give us guidance in life is easy to detect, but the hard part is discovering who a spiritual mentor could be or should be.

It’s vitally important that you find someone who is able and willing to do life with you. But there’s more to it than just what your mentor will bring to the table. It involves what you bring to the relationship as well.

The greater search is to discover what this relationship will require of you. A healthy mentoring relationship is a two-way connection of giving and taking, investing as well as receiving. Expectations will flow both ways so you and your mentor have a great deal of searching to do and clarifications to make.

Here are a few things to think about as you begin this process…

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Matt Chandler, Lead Pastor of The Village Church in Dallas spoke about the lack of honesty in churches and with many Christians. With humor, he addressed the seriousness of our insane tendency to wait to get help after everything has blown up.

“Without the cross of Christ, you can boast in your moral accomplishments which creates churches that look very much like Stepford wives. Where everybody is pretty and smiling and great! And if you notice in those types of churches, no one has small problems, everybody’s house just burns down. I’m not saying that their house actually burns down, I’m using an analogy here. I’m saying that no one ever has an electrical problem with the light switch and says, ‘For some reason this light doesn’t work.’ They can never have an honest conversation and say, ‘This switch is supposed to turn the light on.’ Everybody instead says, ‘MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE!’

You don’t ever hear anything until the marriage dissolves, somebody gets murdered or somebody gets fired for embezzlement. You pick up on that? Nobody goes, ‘I have a lust problem, it’s kind of continual.’ It’s like they’re beautiful, they teach Sunday school, they…  ADULTERY! I’m not making this up. It’s Deacon, it’s lead out in communion, it’s… 20 years in prison for embezzlement! There is never any… ‘Hey this switch isn’t working.’ There’s just… ‘My house just blew up!’”

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