Pastor + Author
By ordering my new book, The Discipleship Opportunity: Leading a Great-Commission Church in a Post-Everything World, John A. was able to submit this question.
If you would like to submit your question on discipleship, evangelism, or preaching that I’ll answer via video, check out my order offer here.
Lois Zachary does not only set out the basic principles and best practices of mentoring in The Mentor’s Guide, she actually goes a step further and helps readers discover their own personal mentoring style and preferences.
Through many exercises, she guides the reader through introspection and action. Thus, she not only conceptually ties mentoring to adult education, but she actually writes in a manner according to the principles of adult education.
Consequently, she challenges the prevailing myths of mentoring, and proposes a model of mentoring where both mentor and mentee are fully engaged and learning from one another. Her proposed model is one that is based on critical reflection and application, rather than knowledge transfer and acquisition (Location 300).
[Read more…] about Book Review: The Mentor’s Guide – Zachary
…a boy who puts shaving cream on his face…
…a girl who puts on lipstick and tries on her mom’s heels…
…a teenager who demands complete freedom, while still living at home and being dependent on his/her parents…
I am sure all of us can imagine some point in our life where any one of these scenarios (or like ones) were true. In fact, in the West, we all have this obsession with wanting to grow up and mature. don’t we? This obsession has actually led us to believe that “maturity = independence.”
However, is this notion that “maturity=independence” a hindrance to our maturing as human beings? If “maturity=independence” then, in order to reach maturity, doesn’t logic dictate that we should strive to become as independent as we can? Does independence really lead to maturity though? Real, deep, true, lasting, and holistic maturity? Or does independence actually lead us elsewhere?
Is our obsession with independence a reason why there seems to be a lack of deep maturity in adults today?
What if true maturity does not equal independence?
“We do not discover who we are, we do not reach true humanness, in a solitary state; we discover it through mutual dependency, in weakness, in learning through belonging.”
Jean Vanier – Becoming Human