From Sean McDowell:
Many kids leave the church because they never built healthy relationships with their parents or other Christian adults. If we want to teach the biblical worldview effectively, we must first help kids get emotionally healthy.
This is why I deeply believe in mentoring. Jesus was a mentor. My hope is that mentoring will become as normal in the church in the future as small groups are today. Young people simply cannot survive temptations and intellectual challenges without caring, involved adults coming alongside to guide them.
When I was in seminary, small groups was the panacea. That method did indeed helped the growth of the church.
However, a method is just that, a method. It’s a means to an end, but now in churches, small groups are almost seen as an end. If you join a small group, you’re done. Spiritual growth will happen automatically if you are in a small group. This, of course, is not true. There is a right way and wrong way of running small groups.
Mentoring is also a method. You can say Jesus was a mentor. Or you can also say Jesus was a small group leader. Either way, the focus is on the goal of spiritual growth, not on a method.
For the record, I think both mentoring and small groups are necessary for spiritual growth, when done right.
December 10th, 2011 at 11:03 am
“Spiritual growth will happen automatically if you are in a small group. This, of course, is not true.”
Great point. In fact, the NT shows us that true spiritual growth occurs in a habitat that is much more than a small group. A small group can still operate like the world.