The Dawn Treader

"I was asked recently by a person with whom I enjoy a mentoring relationship why I spent time with another person in such a relationship. In other words; “What did I see in that other person? Why would I invest in that relationship?”

Sam Metcalf, President of Church Resource Ministry

Let's face it.  God has hard-wired us to be relational creatures.  We need each other to grow.

Each of us can think back over our lifetime and identify a handful of people who have had a significant impact on our lives.

I have selected G.K. Chesteron as my main historical mentor for 2007.   Chesterton's influence is prodigious.  The list of thinkers and influencers that Chesterton shaped included such luminaries as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mahatma Ghandi, Michael Collins, Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, Orson Welles and Philip Yancey.  C.S. Lewis, in fact, looked to Chesterton as his spiritual father.

Chesterton died the year my father was born [1936] at his home in England.  Fortunately, Chesterton left us a few things to read.  He wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays and several plays.   It is said that he dictated most of his books to his secretary and ostensibly made very few revisions to the first drafts.  Chesterton was famous for his debates with the skeptics of his day.  He usually won and developed cordial relationships with them at the same time.

I invite you to join me in making Chesterton your historical mentor for 2007.  That includes you atheist readers as well.  Let's sit at his feet and learn.

First up will be Chesterton's apologetic for his Christian faith.  A book known as .  It is 9 bucks plus shipping ... or you can go check it out from your library.  At 168 pages long, it should be within the reach and attention span of any blog reader.

Idols. 

John Williams saw thousands of these kinds of idols in the Society Islands as he took the gospel to the Polynesians  in the early 19th century.

The worldview of the Polynesian people was based on keeping the gods from getting angry.  Appease them.  Appeasement often meant taking your newborn to the marae (temple) and sacrificing it.  Worship was quite a messy business.

The idols played a significant role too.  They ostensibly brought power. 

How did a missional thinker like John Williams approach kingdom work in the idol infested Society Islands of the Pacific?

Meet my mentor, John Williams.  He was martyred  in 1839 in the New Hebrides (in the Pacific).  He is mentoring me in how to approach life missionally.

In his seminal work on leadership, Dr. Robert Clinton uncovers seven major leadership lessons.  One of those lessons is that "Effective Leaders See Relational Empowerment As Both A Means And A Goal Of Ministry."

Two NT leaders who demonstrated this were Christ and Paul.  Both used mentoring for applying this principle.

What is mentoring?  Clinton defines mentoring as "a relational experience in which one person, the mentor, empowers another person, the mentoree, by sharing God-given resources."