I can remember my grandmother showing me how to bait a hook, and my grandfather teaching me how to distinguish the tension in the line that is caused by a river’s current from the pull of a snagged trout. I don’t mean I remember the idea. I mean I can see in my head some clear pictures of them teaching me – of a silver fish in the bottom of a gray bucket, of a yellow kernel of corn in my hand next to the hook, of Granddad smoking his pipe on the bank. That was almost 40 years ago. 40 years ago, I had thousands of experiences each day, but that one I can still picture.
I can remember my youth pastor teaching me how to read the Bible. We were having a Bible study in a dusty upper room of a church, back when churches still had libraries, and we sat on the floor in a circle, and he showed me how to think through the biblical text. We were reading Isaiah. The carpet was green. I can see us sitting there.
I can remember a leader in my college ministry at church teaching me how to articulate a rational defense of the Christian faith. We sat in the basement of his house watching VHS tapes of William Lane Craig debating other scholars. We would pause the tape to debate the points that he made, and also to talk about our girlfriends and our desired careers and the news. I can remember the very intense look my friend would get when he mulled over philosophical questions. He’s now a philosophy professor who teaches at the same school as Craig. I picked up a book in a theological library the other day because I saw my friend had written one of the chapters, and he had written about a subject I remember us arguing about one night.
Mentoring is not the act of an expert passing on a field of expertise. It’s the moment that someone who is passionate about one of their interests stops to show why it matters to someone else. What matters in that transaction is not that someone with a professional certification educates someone else. What matters is that a memory is made when two hearts and minds gather around a topic of a similar interest.
Imagine what would happen if everyone who is passionate about Jesus took just a moment this week to talk with someone else about what Jesus has done for their marriage, their morals, the meaning of their lives, their parenting, their friendships, their prayer life, or their inner peace. Imagine if all they did was share a question they wondered about concerning Jesus so that two people could wonder it together. Mentoring is making memories that Jesus can use for the rest of someone’s life, and everyone who follows Jesus ought to be a mentor.
This week can pass by forgotten, or it can live on in someone’s memories for the next 40 years.
Hardwired 
Wow! Great post. Brought back powerful images of my spiritual mentors, several of whom were, ironically since I was not a Presbyterian, Presbyterians. In my teens Janet, a single Presbyterian missionary in Hong Kong, was our Christian Endeavor leader. When she shared the Word with us her face lit up like an angel. Listening to her on Sunday afternoons created a passionate desire to become a Bible teacher. William Blackstone, assigned to the same mission, took special personal interest in me. He went on to serve as a Hollywood Pres senior associate for many years.
As a young pastor bent under a crushing burden of `Almighty Oughts’ and `Everlasting Shoulds,’ Bill Antabolin, pastor of the Santa Maria Presbyterian Church, taught me about Grace. He also opened the previously closed door for acceptance into SFTS’s ground-breaking doctoral program designed for working pastors. It was that degree which launched me into a 40 year ministry in Christian Higher Education, and still counting.
And then came my seemingly chance encounter with Jim Miller . . .
Thanks, C.S. I’ve always enjoyed our times together. You’ve been a good mentor to me.