The Mentor as a Teacher is someone like Paul, who passed on his knowledge and his understanding to somebody like Timothy. In 2 Timothy 2:1-2 Paul instructs Timothy to “find reliable people who you can trust, to teach others.” This is the power of knowledge. This is the power of truth. This is the power of teaching. Become a teacher of teachers.

There's a saying that says that “leaders read”. Well, yes, leaders are always hungry for knowledge, hungry to learn and never give up learning. But I say leaders teach. Leaders write. Leaders of leaders actually capture what they've learned, write it down so they can teach others

In this talk we ask - Who are your teachers? Who are the people that have mentored you and taught you? And not just in school, but in life, who are the people that have passed on their knowledge, their know-how and their practical understanding? Who are the people that have enabled you to do things you might never have dreamed or never have imagined?

But we also flip the question around, and ask, Who are the people that you are teaching?Who are the people that you're passing on your knowledge to? What is it that God has given you an understanding of and a richness of that you can pass on to others?

#ModelsOfMentoring #Mentor #SundayTalks #MattBird #Teacher

When you think about a sponsor think about someone who gives you access to People, access to Places, and access to Provision. Think about them as people who sponsor you financially, and enable you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise have been able to do - perhaps the things that Jesus has called you to do. This is the Mentor As A Sponsor - the mentor as a benefactor.

In the book of Romans, Chapter 16:1&2, Paul writes,
”I commend to you, our sister Phoebe… I ask you to receive her in the Lord, in a way worthy of his people, and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me…”

Who are the sponsors in your life? Who are the people that have mentored you, and sponsored you? Who have given you access to people, have given you access to places, who have sponsored you financially and enabled you to do things you wouldn't have otherwise been able to do? Also ask yourself - Who can you be a sponsor to? Who can you help?

When we hear “mentoring” we tend to think about somebody who's more experienced and more knowledgeable working with someone who is less experienced and less knowledgeable. When we look at Mentoring as a Sharpening Stone you will see that it is a peer to peer relationship, where people who have a similar level of knowledge and a similar level of experience have a friendship.

When a chef’s knife is worked hard, he gets out the sharpening stone and sharpen it up to make it effective and fit for purpose. Some mentoring relationships are like sharpening stones, where in a relationship with somebody, you’re learning from each other in a peer to peer kind of way.

A well known saying from Proverbs 27:17 is “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This is a great image of two pieces of iron, instead of blunting each other, they sharpen each other. This is a picture of a relationship where one person sharpens another person, and makes them more effective, more fine-tuned and more more impactful, and influential.

In 1 Samuel 18:1-4 we see that David and Jonathan had an amazing relationship just like this… There were moments when they saved each other's lives and other moments when they just sat and talked around the fire. They were were peers, and each sharpened each other. It was a great, great combination, and a great friendship.

Who are those people in your life? Who are the people for you, who are like sharpening stones? So it doesn't matter how blunt or ineffective you may feel - when you spend time with them, you come away feeling sharper and more effective. We all can have people like that in our lives - not just people who do that for us, but people that we do that for - who are you, a sharpening stone for?

Really good mentors are people who hold up a mirror to us and say, look here, this is what you look like. This is how other people experience you. And this is really good. And this actually has a detrimental impact upon you and your influence and impact on others.

In the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42, we read that Jesus held up a mirror to Martha. Martha had invited Jesus to their home and her sister Mary happened to be there. And Mary just sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to him, whilst Martha was busy, busy being busy. And Jesus said to Martha that Mary has chosen the right thing - she has chosen to sit with me.

The Mentor as a Mirror, holds up proof to us, holds up honest feedback to us. It could be your spouse or your siblings or even your children. It's the people that you spend most time with and are closest to, who can actually give you the most poignant and powerful feedback.

In this talk we ask - Wh holds the mirror up to you? Who do you give permission to give you candid feedback? But also, who are the people that you hold up the mirror for? Who are the people that you love enough, and believe in enough to actually be honest with about the impact they have on other people? This is the Mentor, as a Mirror.

The Mentor as a Springboard is the idea of helping others excel and achieve even more highly than we have done.

In 2 Kings 2:1-9 we read that Elisha asked Elijah for a double blessing, so that he could do more than Elijah had done. And in John 14:12 we read that Jesus promised His disciples that they would do even greater things than he had done.

The Mentor’s commitment to being a Springboard for other people is to enable others to succeed. We see an example of this in all those coaches who coach athletes in the Olympics and also the coaches in other competitive sports. And it doesn't just work in sport, it works in business, in family life, in church life and in community life. It’s all about excellence, it's all about our lives being as a worship to God. To aim at anything less than excellence is really not an act of worship glorifying God. Every day we should be committed to excellence. We should see our prayer life, our Bible reading and our reflections as a springboard into a day of excellence!

In this third talk in our series we look at Luke 10:1-17 where we see that Jesus sends out, not just his 12 disciples but he gathers 72 people and sends them out ahead of him into the places where he will be going, to kind of prepare the way and break the ground for the coming Kingdom of God.

But what is powerful is that he doesn't them out on their own. He sends them in pairs, He sends them out in twos.

He knows that doing anything in isolation, doing anything alone is going to be so much more difficult. Whatever we do in life, doing it with somebody else, doing it together, doing it in partnership will always be more impactful. It will always be more enduring and will always create a greater legacy. Because in that pair, in those twos, there is mutual encouragement, mutual support, mutual challenge, and mutual accountability. Jesus sent His disciples and the 72 in pairs, because he knew the power of that mutual accountability.

Question: Who do you report progress to? Who reports their progress to you?

#ModelsOfMentoring #Mentor #SundayTalks #MattBird #Accountability

We all benefit from people in our lives who guide us. In the book of Ruth we see that Naomi became a mentor guide to Ruth. (Ruth 1:16-17) Everyone benefits from having people who guide us and help us navigate both opportunities and times of crisis.

The question we ask today is, who is it that guides you and has guided you? Who are the people who help you navigate the twists and turns of life - because we all need people like that.

But just as important as that question is, the other the question we must consider is who are you a guide to? Who are you helping? Who you listening to? Who’s asking you for advice and perspectives?

At the heart of biblical mentoring is this role of guiding others in the way that they should go. Not telling them what to do, but actually, making wise, suggestions and giving wise advice and perspectives.

Who are the people that do that for us?
And who are the people that we provide that guidance to?

In our latest Issachar Sunday Talks series, we’re going to be looking at what we call #ModelsOfMentoring, one-to-one relationships through which people are developed and grown to have a greater impact.

In this first talk we focus on #Mentoring as a #RoleModel. Role models are people that have gone before us, that have accomplished what we want to accomplish have done what we want to do, and we can look to them for help and support and comfort and guidance.

This Model of Mentoring as a Role Model, means we dedicate to spend time with people that we want to learn from, and we dedicate to spend time with those people that we want to impart something to - to help them learn, develop and grow so that they can be enabled to become everything that they can possibly become.

Q: Who do you look up to? Who looks up to you?

This is the finale of our series called Visions and Dreams, in which we looked at people in the Bible who had a vision or a dream, and what it meant to them. We then discussed what it might mean for us today, because we believe that God speaks through the language of dreams and visions. What better finale, than to focus on the final book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, the finale of the Bible. It is a book recording the visions and dreams of one of Jesus Disciples, John, when he was in exile on the island of Patmos.

John records that one Lord's Day he got caught up in the spirit and he had a number of visions and dreams which he details in the Book of Revelations, He had a vision of the future where there's no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, and no more pain. Can you imagine a world without those things? That world is heaven.

When you think back through Jesus' life, all that he said and the miracles he performed were about the kingdom of heaven on earth. The whole of Jesus' life’s work was about heaven coming in the here and now. Jesus not only lived that life but he taught us to live that life and when he first taught the disciples to pray, he said pray your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Question: Inspired by Jesus, what are you doing to bring heaven to earth?

Saul, AKA, Paul was a Roman citizen from Tarsus and a religious zealot who persecuted new religious movements. He later had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and was transformed from someone who persecuted churches to being someone who planted churches. He was formerly known as Saul until this encounter when Jesus renamed him Paul and he went on to be key leader of the early church.

One night on his missionary journeys he had a vision which caused him to change his travel plans away from moving east, and to head west to Macedonia. This was a significant moment in the development of the early church as ‘the Spirit led them’ away from the Asian region towards the West and Europe.

From this moment on Paul followed the Spirit of God not the Spirit of the Age.

Lesson: Do WITH God not FOR God - stop doing stuff for God do stuff with God!

Question: What is God doing and how are you joining in?