Walking Along A Road

I was walking along a road one day and I came across a knight. He had shining black armour, a long sword and a dark shield that was so smooth I could see the sun behind me reflected in it like a mirror. I bowed my head to the knight and he stopped his horse to acknowledge me.

"Sir Knight," I asked,"You have a magnificent stallion and an impressive set of armour, but where is your coat of arms?"
"I have no coat of arms," he answered.
"Then whom do you serve?"
"I serve no one."
"Then what is your mission?"
"I have no mission."
"Then where are you headed?"
"Wherever my horse may take me."

And with that, the black knight continued down his path and I continued down mine.

Propagating Change

I made a comment a while ago about the fact the cell group that I used to lead never grew. We had a few new people join us over the two and a half years that I ran it but most of these new people would eventually leave for various reasons. Beyond that, I was aiming to have each member of my group form their own group, expanding the discipleship process as they did so. This kind of multiplication did not happen either.

It seems to be very hard to propagate change. It's hard enough to get people to buy into something new, but the hardest part is to create something new that can sustain itself and continue to grow even after we're gone.

For example, my dad introduced the "Curse to Blessing" or "Family Foundations" ministry here in London. It's a ministry that, through teaching and then prayer in small groups, helped people deal with generational problems in their family or curses that were in their lives. It proved to have an incredible impact, for new Christians and mature Christians alike.

To make this seminar work, my dad had to get training about what to do and then he had to help numerous other people get the same training. A single seminar might require something like 10 trained "counselors," plus other people for prayer support. The way it worked out, my dad did not have to remain involved for the ministry to continue. Other people could take the main leadership task over for a given weekend (or entirely) and the counselors could train still more counselors. Eventually this seminar was being used all over London, though I often talk to people that have no idea that it came out of that initial ministry at LGT with my dad. That's great to hear because it means that the ministry sustained itself and grew without my father helping it along every step of the way.

I think that the keys in this case were:

• Other people were gradually and throughly trained to fill all of the leadership roles.
• These other leaders shared my dad's vision and valued the ministry just as highly.

I led a youth worship team at FCCC (my old church) for two years or so. My last six months as the leader were my favourite because I had effectively worked myself out of a job. I could sit down through an entire practice session without saying anything at all and I could remain in the congregation on a Sunday while they ministered. The youth worship team could not have continued forever (if only because everyone got older) but the various members were able to easily join the adult worship team or continue to lead by themselves on Sunday without my intervention.

And yet, I have the cautionary example of my old cell group since it did not turn out the same way. It's the same deal with the first cell group that I was involved with, the one that my dad led and that no longer exists. I could also offer various examples from the business world in which desired changes did not take root and grow. So propagating change is possible and the two points that I made above may be key but I'm still fairly hit-or-miss with the whole thing. Hopefully I'm getting better at this as I go along.

Church Like Business

Rough Draft:
It's amazing to see how alike churches and businesses can be. So many of the principles that work well for companies will work equally well for churches.

Unfortunately, many solid professional ideas get ignored by churches because of seemingly conflicting spiritual ideas. Conversely, many solid spiritual ideas get ignored within businesses because of their basis in Christianity.

Florida Fun

So what's this I hear? Apparently there was a gorgeous amount of snow that dropped down the day I left for Florida. Ah, 'tis indeed a pleasure to be here in 20 degree weather.

I spent the afternoon with my brother and dad playing golf. We were all fairly even for most of the game until I fell behind with one awful sequence on a later hole. My brother was score keeping for us and apparently I won with a surprise comeback. I say apparently because I was just reviewing the scorecard and my brother lost the 9 that I scored on one of those holes. D'oh! I wanted to brag about my win, but instead I'll have to make do with a picture taken with an alligator on our golf course.

The above picture was taken from this page on my parent's web site. I've heard that the camera adds ten pounds but that picture is ridiculous! Stupid wind.

My mom was poking some fun at me earlier today in the comments of this recent post. My mom wanted some evidence to back up her comments, so here you go...

See JAG Saw, Saw JAG See.


JAG's Comics

Ice Floes & Florida

I have a little hot news and a little cool news. I'm leaving on Saturday evening (Feb. 19) to drive down to Florida with my dad and my brother to visit my grandparents. We will be returning late Thursday evening (Feb. 24). My brother and I might hit Universal Studios again, but the highlights for me will be playing cards with my grandparents and hitting the flea markets looking for cheap comics. Florida in February. Now that's what I call a warm spell!

Speaking of warm spells, we've certainly had an odd one this past week. The Thames river runs parallel along the back of my property and it was frozen over last week. The weather was quite warm for several days earlier this week and on Wednesday God gave us an small display of some of nature's awesome power.

Shortly after I left for work on Wednesday morning my parents heard a series of explosions. They went to investigate the noise and the ice on the river was splitting. A series of large ice floes were breaking apart and it sounded like explosions for about fifteen minutes. I heard one such explosion on Thursday morning and it's surprising to hear how loud it can be. The ice was perhaps a foot thick and it was being broken clean through, as you can see in this next picture.



My parents explored our backyard afterwards and took numerous pictures. With the ice splitting and melting, the river overflowed the banks of our horse pastures. The water rose just high enough that it started to carry the newly-broken ice floes over our lawn. They were like mini glaciers being dragged across the ground, gouging trenches in the land and digging up enormous piles of dirt. You can see one large mound that was excavated by the ice in only fifteen minutes in the left side of this next picture.



The ice was broken so quickly and the water receded so abruptly that it stranded a catfish on land. Catfish are a notoriously robust breed of fish that can live for a fair amount of time outside of the water, and my dad came across the one shown in this next picture after the ice had stopped crashing. He went and released it back into the river after taking this picture and swam away. Nothing like a chilling river to get you back into the swim of things.



The child in the foreground is Hyun, one of the two children from South Korea that are staying with us while they go to an english school here. The child in the background is our other South Korean student, John. You can see several other pictures starting on this page on my parents' web site.

More Love

1 Corinthians 13 has several famous passages and verses in it. The first paragraph explains that doing anything without love is worthless, like "a clanging cymbal". The second paragraph is the definition or description of love: "Love is patient, love is kind..." And the final verse is: "And now these three remain: faith hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

What intrigues me is the third paragraph in this chapter. It contains this verse:

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned
like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

Y'know how we read passages for the millionth time and then God shows us something for the first time? That's what I have going on here, though it may not be a revelation to anyone else. I usually look at and hear about this verse only in the context of maturing as a Christian, but this chapter is all about the love. Maturing as a person and as a Christian actually means becoming more loving. That's no big surprise, of course, but I never realized how this chapter is clearly trying to make that point.

If we are not motivated by love then we still act like children, we still talk like children and we still think and reason like children. Our character and decisions are flawed if they're not based on love.

If we defend ourselves by saying that our actions don't hurt anyone, how is that loving someone? If we blithely tell people to 'get over it' when an issue comes up, where's the love in that? If we prefer to keep to ourselves rather than reaching out, who are we really loving? If we're quick with criticism but slow with praise, how are we speaking in love?

More than that, the Definition of Love in the second paragraph provides one handy way to evaluate our own maturity. If we're mature, then we should be loving. If we are loving, then we must be patient and kind. We must not be proud, rude, self-seeking, or easily angered and we can't hold a grudge. We must always trust, always hope and always perservere.

More love.

First & Only Love

Mike asked a question in the comments for this post: "Would you prefer to have married the first girl you ever dated?"

I thought it was a rhetorical question given the context of the discussion but he clarified that it wasn't. Purely by coincidence, I thought I would write something about the question today, on Valentine's Day.

This past Sunday morning, Pastor Rick (the senior pastor at my church) mentioned off-hand during his sermon that he is strongly of the opinion that people should not date at all until they're ready for marriage. He mentioned that Pastor Blair, the youth pastor, agrees with that guideline.

Not that the first date means a commitment to marriage, but he suggested that dating shouldn't happen unless marriage is a real option at some point. To extrapolate, dating is not a game and it has a distinct purpose, which is to find a marriage partner. I'm quite certain that he would not say that this means that you'll necessarily marry the first person that you date, but neither does it support the idea of dating somebody with the conscious intention of never marrying that person.

I like the idea behind this, though I haven't always lived by that precept myself. Even so, I want to look for a woman who might be a good wife for me and to whom I would be a good husband. I am not interested in a romantic relationship without that thought on the far-flung horizon. (Yes, I do understand that the 'M' word is dangerous thing to speak out loud to someone you're dating. Heh.)

The more important issue, I think, is can we be sure that we made a good decision if we marry the first person that we ever dated? My parents did just that and it's worked out very well for them. Some might say that they were just blessed, some might say that they were foolish and lucky but others might say that they were simply wise. Some might say it was a combination of each one.

I'm more inclined to think that a marriage is not simply a one-time decision. You can't just tally up the pros and cons, compare to past experience or go on our feelings. Marriage is not a single logical decision, it's our character and commitment and everything that we are. Marriage is a decision that starts when we first consider dating somebody and it continues every day for the rest of our lives.

Sure, we can be foolish about marriage and end up with multiple divorces, like Ross from Friends. I think a more easily accessible danger is to be foolish with dating relationships. I would have preferred to have been wise and seriously dated once rather than foolish with nothing to show for it but my memories.

So to answer Mike's question: Yes, I would have preferred to have married the first girl I ever dated. I would also have preferred to have considered who I dated more wisely.

Are We There Yet?

Rough Draft: What are the signs of spiritual maturity?

Sure, we need to grow for the rest of our lives. How do the "three crucial people" factor in as we grow older? Do we need a mentor when we're in our thirties with a family of our own?

Lessons of Discipleship (Part II)

Lesson #2: People grow up.
It seems obvious but this one was the lesson that took me the longest to learn. As I mentioned here, we need three key people to help us mature as Christians. We need a spiritual parent, a spiritual friend and a spiritual child. As a mentor or spiritual parent, I know I was effective in this purpose in at least one of my relationships.

My problem was that I continued to view this relationship on a parent-child level well after it had moved into the friend-friend level. I continued to 'teach' and assume the mentoring role even though the person I was mentoring had already matured and established their own identity as a Christian.

It was great to see tangible examples of new maturity in my friend's life over the years, but my old mind set led to an arrogance on my part. It led me to assume a need that no longer existed and to behave in a way that was no longer needed. I know it was no picnic to be on the receiving end of my actions, as well intentioned as they may have been.

I did not learn discipleship or mentoring principles from a book, though I did read a couple of them. I did not know that the relationship can evolve and change like this and so I learned this lesson the hard way, from real life, as we humans are prone to do.

Fortunately in my case, my friend was wise enough to work with me to show me how things had changed. It did take several months. It did take several pointed discussions. We did have to go through some hurt feelings on both sides and wrestle with our own attitudes. In the end, though, I learned from it and we maintained our close relationship. We eventually acknowledged that our relationship had changed - or more accurately, I acknowledged it after the fact.

I've always found it funny that many people will complain about their leaders, detailing and gossiping about their faults without actually speaking to them and trying to help them learn. If we're mature and wise enough to clearly see how wrong another person is, then we should be mature and wise enough to help that person understand what we know. And if we're not capable of doing so, chances are that we still need to grow a little more.

I appreciate that my friend didn't write me off despite my persistant immaturity and I'm forever grateful that he has taught me as much as I taught him.

Reference: Part I

Lessons of Discipleship (Part I)

As I mentioned at the end of this post, there were a few key lessons that I have learned since I started seriously looking to disciple others at the age of twenty one. Discipleship entails a lot more, of course, but there are a few things that stick out in my mind.

Lesson #1: Few People Want a Mentor
This was my first lesson. When I created my cell group, some people jumped at the chance and others did not accept. I didn't assume that I would mentor everyone but I wanted to provide opportunities for others to have a mentor or to be a mentor. Discipleship can seem tricky because someone is the mentor in the relationship and someone else is under that. It does involve some authority and submission issues.

I think that a lot of people here in London, and in North America in general, find that tough to swallow. Who is this person to say that they are more mature than me? Who are they to say that they have something to teach me? It's viewed as an issue of pride or control rather than a means for personal growth.

Interestingly enough, I'm told that the biggest church in the world is in Seoul, South Korea. The reason that the church can be so big is that it's based on cell groups. One person leads a small group and the members in turn start their own groups, while remaining under the leadership of their original group. It allows for exponential growth while maintaining close relationships and supervision.

Apparently the cultural differences between North America and South Korea are fairly significant in this respect. In South Korea, it's habit to think that the group is smarter and/or more important than any one individual. In North America, it seems that autonomy and personal freedom are more important than the group consensus. I have certainly seen this "group think" in action with the Korea kids that we have had staying with us.

So to take that cultural divide and apply it to my former cell group, that might help explain why people here don't take to discipleship and mentoring naturally.

In addition to that, my dad likes to point out that people often continue to follow whatever principles they first learned. If someone became a Christian through street evangelism, they're more likely to do street evangelism themselves. If someone was brought to Christ through Alpha, they're more likely to use Alpha to reach others. If they grew up in a cell group, they're more likely to continue with cell groups later on. Alternatively, if they have never experienced evangelism, Alpha or cell groups then it can be tough to encourage a whole new approach.

Beyond those two explanations, I am sure that there are dozens more. Some are good reasons, some are just rationalizations and some are downright bad reasons. In the end, though, it's up to each person to either accept or decline the chance to have or to be a mentor. I came to learn that all I can do is offer the opportunity and then we move on from there.

Big Brothers Interview

As I mentioned here, I had an interview with Big Brothers this past Monday. It took more than an hour and a half to complete. They had a co-op student there, presumably from an ECE program since my interviewer was an ECE graduate.

The questions dealt with a lot of background things. Where did I grow up? What was/is my family like? Which of my parents were the disciplinarians? What traits do I share with my parents? What would I change about my parents? What is the most traumatic thing that I've ever gone through? What are my symptoms when I'm frustrated or angry? They also asked me to describe my relationship with each of my family members. And finally, there were various simple questions regarding things like my hobbies and career.

I first mentioned Big Brothers back in September in this post and one of the questions that I raised in the comments section was about how my faith in God mixed with a secular organization like this. I said that I hoped and presumed that it wasn't a big deal one way or the other and I was proven correct during my interview today. I actually posed that question directly but my interviewer basically let me answer it myself based on what I had already learned about Big Brothers.

The main principle is that we "Bigs" should use our best judgement. They don't create policies about every little thing and presumably the single mothers will not do that either, although the mothers have final say on what they want their child taught. In terms of my Christian morals, most of those are directly translatable to secular life regardless of the Bible. Being forgiving, not losing your temper, not lying, being kind...these are good things whether or not you're a Christian. So in that respect, I can teach and model exactly who I am. Further, the interviewer specified that I shouldn't feel like I'm compromising my own standards by being in a relationship with a "Little."

Outside of that, they mentioned that do ask the mothers if they have a religious preference concerning a potential Big. My interviewer said that the issue of religion has never really come up in all of her experience. That was curious. I wonder if that means that Christian mothers are more likely to seek mentoring or whatever from a church community rather than Big Brothers. That's merely anecdotal data, of course, but it's interesting.

So what happens now? They're going to create a summary about me based on my interview. They will call my four character references sometime in the next week or three, depending on how busy they are. After that I'll be called again to have a brief interview with the director to welcome me to Big Brothers, and then I'll start the process of choosing a potential Little.

Superbowl and Grey Cup

I watched and celebrated the Superbowl game last night at GTA. I was rooting for the New England Patriots and by golly, the team I was rooting team for won this year. The game was a lot closer than I anticipated and I didn't find it boring at all. I mostly just wanted to see a great team set records and I love the fact that they've now won three of the four last titles. In comparison, I was rooting against the LA Lakers in the NBA when they did the same sort of thing but I like the Patriots attitude more than I did the Lakers.

As for the rest of the evening, we had pizza, chicken wings, chips and pop supplied for five bucks and I was quite full afterwards. Tara, Joel Terry, Terry Arsenault and even Juliette were there, so it was nice to enjoy the game with so many friends sitting around me.

The highlight of the night was the guest speaker, Jude St. John. He's an offensive lineman that won the CFL Grey Cup this past season. He's a local boy that has been coming to GTA for their Superbowl party for years now but this is the first year in which he was a reigning CFL champion. He had some good stories during the half-time show and a good message, relating football to playing on God's team.

As I mentioned here back in November, I wrote about the time that I went to my first live Raptors game. What do you know, the Toronto Argonauts had just won the CFL championship a couple of days earlier and most of the team came out during a pause in the game and paraded the Grey Cup for everyone to see. It was the highlight of the night.

So at GTA last night they had a variety of contests and my name was chosen in a draw for an NFL trivia game against three other people, complete with buzzers. There were only ten questions in all and the one guy got the first four in a row right. I eventually gave a good effort and correctly answered two questions. (Multiple Choise Question: Which musical act is not playing in the Superbowl this year? Answer: U2.)

The other guy got his choice between a Leafs jersey (what th...?) and great Argos tickets for next year's season so he went with the tickets, of course. As runner-up, I got the jersey. I asked Jude to sign my jersey for me, but before I did so I reminded him about that Raptors game and I confirmed that he was there. So now I have a Leafs jersey with an Argo's signature and a comment about the Raptors game:

Hey Jamie, remember the Raptors game? Jude St. John (66)

Three Changes (Part III)

One of the three changes that I wanted to make was to create a budget for myself. This morning I finally sat down, compiled my numbers and figured out the plan. I don't think I've had an actual budget since I was delivering newspapers as a kid. I'm glad that I finally got that done, thanks to the fact that my dad has been pestering me about it for months now. Not that my finances were a horrible mess, but I certainly haven't saved as much as I should have and now I will.

One of the other things that I wanted to do was to apply to Big Brothers. I now have my police check done for them and apparently I'm not a convicted felon, which is nice. I have an appointment with Big Brothers at 1:00 pm this Monday, at which point they will interview me for up to two hours to see what kind of person I am. Sure, it's a little narcissistic to talk about myself for that amount of time but it's all for the sake of the children. (Wait, how much time have I spent writing this blog post...?)

The last thing on my list was to join a men's basketball program but I haven't had any success in finding one yet, though I have heard rumours that basketball leagues exist somewhere in town. I still need to get this one done.

Related: Part I & Part II

The Strong, Silent Type?

On New Year's Eve my dad mentioned that I'm a bit shy sometimes. I responded by saying that I preferred the term 'reserved' instead. I said that I sometimes remain silent as a conscious decision so that I don't overpower the conversation, as I am prone to do.

See, I've always viewed myself as fairly extroverted. I was always the leader of various groups in church; always a leader amongst my social group; usually comfortable leading worship at church; at ease in meeting new people and striking up conversations; often dancing and singing regardless of who was around. Yet somehow, some people see me as being the quiet type.

During my formative teenage years in Wawa, I was at the centre for many youth group and social activities. I gained a reputation for some hilarious antics at youth conventions (though that was still a tame reputation compared to some). I was constantly involved in organizing and running various events and whatnot. By the time I moved to London in 1998, I felt a little burnt out. I didn't want to start a new social group entirely from scratch and I didn't want a semi-real reputation hanging around. So when I came to London I intentionally held back and became more secluded. That was something which was helped along by the fact that I was nineteen years old and I couldn't join the youth group, so I ended up meeting a lot of adults, most of whom were five or more years older than I was at the time.

So that's the first part of the equation. As another part of it, I came to realize during my two years at Fanshawe College that I was prone to controlling conversations and to being the centre of the social group. I had a habit of annoying people just for sake of a laugh, to the point that some of my friends actually became seriously angry with me because I was so annoying. Right around then I realized that I was just being immature and thereafter I have tried to temper my outbursts and I have consciously tried to wait for my turn in conversations.

A third part of the equation is that I can be fairly introspective, which I attribute to the fact that we as Christians are trained to look into our own lives regularly. I once had someone close to me describe me as being 'very intense.' I took that as a compliment but I can see how that might not mesh well with people that are, shall we say, less intense. Even though much of my outlook on life involves seeing the humour in all kinds of situations, I can agree that I can seem overly serious at times.

For the fourth part of the equation, I throw in the fact that I've always nurtured utmost respect for the girls and women around me. I've always found it distateful to flirt with someone for the mere sake of flirting, but I've sort of ended up at the other extreme in which I have a hard time offering compliments at times. Back in Wawa, I was the guy that often escorted girls home from youth group at night just to be safe and I took the responsibility seriously. I suppose that 'training' has informed my mannerisms as well.

So if I take these factors and add them up, I find a surprising question: Am I the strong, silent type? This past week I was offered several situations during which I either chose to remain silent or I became tongue tied, and afterwards I realized that it would have been good to throw in the comments that I had. I consider myself pretty quick and sharp with my tongue (as anybody that has endured my barbs knows), and yet I see a pattern of silence there. I don't know, I surprise myself sometimes.

I suppose I'm curious to know how others see me, but mostly I was reflecting on this recently and I simply decided to write down my thoughts here. Now, "Shhhhh!"

Deep Thoughts

(Read the title of this post aloud with with a low voice and some echo...) Actually, it's nothing too big. I just wanted to record a few of my thoughts from group discussion last night at church.

Is there such a thing as absolute truth?
I say no but only in the sense that God created everything, knows everything and is all wise. So God is the standard of absolute truth, but that can still be considered relative truth - truth that is relative to God.

Absolute Truth = God's Truth

Did you consider other religions before becoming a Christian?
We had a group of twelve people there last night and only one person said that they had considered other options. I presume it's the same case for most of my Christian friends and social group.

As an off-shoot of questions that were posed this past week during the Do You Agree With Them session (as I wrote about here), this begs the question: Did we make an informed decision about our faith? A comparison was made to someone who walks into one store and declares that this store has the best prices of any store, without ever visiting another store.

I suggested that this was a false analogy. All decisions are not alike and all decisions are not a matter of comparisons or logical arguments.

A better analogy would be: How do you know your wife loves you? (Granted, not everyone can relate to this question.) Do you have to date or marry other women first in order to prove that your wife does indeed love you? I don't think so.

This analogy is even more apt, I think, because faith in Christ is not a product off of a shelf, packaged with a moral code and a holy book. It's a relationship with a real God, and the real question is: Does God love me, and how do I know He loves me?

Discipleship: My Story

As I mentioned in my last post, it's important for us to disciple others. You can use the terms discipler, mentor, coach or teacher if you would prefer. I like the term spiritual father because that's the term used in 1 John 2, as I wrote before.

I came to a real turning point in my life when I was 21 years old regarding this responsibility. I've told this story to people many times but apparently I haven't written about it specifically in my blog yet, which I find odd. So here is my story.

I've been a Christian most of my life and I developed various close friendships over the course of my teenage years in Wawa. I developed a couple of close friendships during my first few years in London as well. At the age of 21, I came to the realization that I was never really a good friend. I mean, I hung out a lot with my friends and we would chat about a lot of things, but where was the depth of relationship? If we were all Christians, why was God mentioned so little outside of church? Why didn't we challenge each other more in a spiritual lives?

Around that time, I was in a cell group that my dad had and I led the worship songs each week. Through that experience, I came to realize that I was the one settling for shallow friendships. I could look back on my life and I could look around at my current surroundings and see the clear need to discipleship and yet I did nothing.

I wasn't pointing fingers at anybody but me, but this wasn't a guilt trip. Over the course of several months God gave me a completely new perspective concerning discipleship. I used to see worship ministry as my only key ministry and then I realized that it was actually two-fold: worship ministry and discipleship. (If you studied Purpose Driven Life then the list gets a bit bigger. Heh.)

So while I had come to see the lack of depth in my own relationships and the need for discipleship with my own friends, I still had to figure out what to do about it. Right around that time, God clearly instructed me to leave LGT (much to my surprise) and I ended up joining Faith Congregational Christian Church. I decided to start a cell group of my own, under the tutelage of my dad, and in the beginning I had young guys from four different churches that started coming. They were all my friends already but now I decided to build something deeper with them.

I ran that group for about two and a half years. Sometimes it was a straight-up Bible study, sometimes it was a discussion while we were at Kelsey's, sometimes it was helping somebody move. We had people come and go, and one who actually left Christianity eventually. I was hardly a perfect leader but I felt like I had jumped into the deep end and it was great to finally swim.

My main regret is that the guys in my own group really didn't catch hold of my own vision for discipleship. I had intended for each guy to start discipling on their own and to develop their own groups but that didn't really happen at all. There were some other lessons that I had to learn during these years, but I'll leave those to future blog posts.

In the end, I still seek opportunities to disciple people whenever I get the chance. I'll write more about this aspect as well in another blog post.

Three Crucial People

I wanted to catch up on a post that I started drafting back on November 11, 2004. In 1 Corinthians 4:14-16, Paul refers to the need to have and to be spiritual parents. I was talking to my dad recently about how my pastor crystalized my thinking about this with this summary:

Every Christian needs three kinds of Godly relationships.

1. A spiritual parent, someone who mentors us.
2. A spiritual friend, someone who walks beside us.
3. A spiritual child, someone that we mentor.

In becoming a spiritual parent/teacher, we ourselves grow more than we ever could have grown as a spiritual child/student. In finding a spiritual parent/teacher/mentor, we admit that we do not know everything and we gain the benefits of having someone to challenge us further. In having a spiritual friend/brother/sister, we have someone to talk to and lean on.

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) tells us that we are responsible to disciple and teach others, to become spiritual parents. The verse I referenced above from Corinthians tells us about the importance of having our own spiritual mentors, indicating that it's not enough to have good teachers or guardians. And finally, Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 talks about the strength that we can gain from friends.

These are things that I've written about before but those three relationships still seem crucial to me.