Mentor Training

One of the things I really enjoy doing is training new mentors to match up with kids in Homewood. New mentors usually have some fears or anxiety that they bring with them into the match, and over time those fears are usually resolved as they develop good relationships with their mentees. It's amazing how powerful relationships can be. Last night I trained a group of seven new mentors, including three men. What really excites me about the men that attended last night was that they are all very busy men with jobs and families and the whole deal, yet they have been prompted by God to mentor high risk youth in Homewood and they are being obedient to that call. Mentoring is all about being obedient to something that God is asking us to do, even if we don't know how it's all going to work out. That's the mystery of being in a relationship with God... he often asks us to do risky things in order to accomplish his purposes. There is no finer example of that than mentoring.

When I train new mentors, I love to share stories about my past failures and successes in mentoring. I've done just about everything wrong in mentoring, but I've also done some things right. Thanks to God, most of the kids I'm mentoring are turning out pretty well. Still, every single week of mentoring is filled with ups and downs, pain and break throughs, excitement and disappointment. Sometimes I really connect, and other times it's a big struggle. I shared with the group of trainees last night that just this week, I set up a huge opportunity for a mentee of mine. He promised he would be there, then he didn't show up. I eventually tracked him down, and the whole thing ended up working out very well for him, but it was a major battle to work with him this week. In the lives of my mentees in Homewood, I know that I am stepping into their lives to intervene when they might be on a path to destruction. That's what our LAMP mentors do, and so that's what they need to be prepared for in mentoring training and ongoing support. God is calling us to intervene in the lives of at-risk kids in Homewood so that he can work through us to accomplish his purposes.