Collecting mentoring stories

Can you help me?

I'm looking for stories about how young people are being/have been mentored by older adults. At a workshop at National Older Adult Conference in September, I'll be leading a discussion around how one generation lives their legacy by helping emerging generations shape their legacy. A particular interest is how these relationships shape faith.

Ideal stories describe how you've been mentored, or how you have been mentoring young people (kids, youth, young adults, even young families qualify as "young people"), and would include both the mentor and the mentee reflecting on the relationship, describing how it works, how it came about, what the commitment is to each other, what each has learned from the relationship, and what the relationship means to those involved. If both can't contribute to the reflection, the story told from either point of view is welcome.

I'd prefer to have 3-5 minute video clips that you could send to me digitally, or audio/podcast files of the same length. But I'd also take stories told in written form as long as they're 1-3 pages in length. These clips don't have to be professional quality, but they do need to be something that you're willing for me to show/share with workshop participants.

Your material needs to be in my inbox by August 31.

Email me if you have questions or are able to contribute.

No Fear

On August 2, 2009 I had the privilege of preaching at the Northern Plains District Church of the Brethren conference. The Sunday morning sermon was based on 1 John 4:16b-21 and was entitled "No Fear."

In the sermon I reflected on how fear has become a commodity in culture, and also in the church. For the Christians especially, fear is a false commodity. The real economies of Gospel living are based on love, a radical, other-wordly love as expressed by God through Jesus.

Because a number of persons who heard this sermon asked for a copy, I am posting the link here.

Click here for a copy of No Fear - Northern Plains District Conference

Servanthood

Heard a very good sermon today by John Breidenstine. John and I grew up in the same congregation in Lancaster. John's a foreign diplomat stationed in Sonora, Mexico. He and his wife Judith are also students at Bethany Theological Seminary through the Connections distance education program.

What made for such a great sermon? Integrity. It wasn't that John was so dynamic. He's really a pretty "understated" guy. It wasn't that he shared any radically new thoughts on servanthood. I didn't hear anything that I hadn't heard before, or probably even preached before myself. But John and Judith and their son Victor really exemplify the servant posture and the pursuit of God's will for their lives that John was speaking about today.

One example of that integrity is found in this YouTube post that they put together recently. It documents the work of one mission in Hermosillo that they are actively involved in. Read John 13. Watch this video. Think about living with integrity. Live a life of service.

Power of the Towel

Power's a tricky commodity. We all have it. We all use it. It's not necessarily equally distributed among people, and it can be used for good or ill. There are different types of power: some power is earned, some is inherited, some is imposed.

One form of power which Jesus taught is power in servanthood. This type of power is most clearly exemplified in the John 13 story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. In an outrageously counter cultural act, Jesus performed a power-filled act of service for his disciples, an act typically reserved for the powerless slave.

The faith tradition of which I am a part, the Church of the Brethren, recognizes the power of washing feet. It's symbolism indicates a world turned upside down, where power is shared and relinquished for the good of the other and the good of the community. As feet are washed in basins and dried with towels the balance of power is re-distributed, and the ultimate power in the universe, God in Jesus, is recognized as a serving, sustaining power.

Some years ago I wrote and recorded a song that captures a bit of this sentiment. A few of my friends and acquaintances have been reminding me of it lately, I suspect for its musical value, or perhaps some sentimental connection they have to it, or maybe because I need to be reminded of the posture of power that comes with a towel in hand. Whatever the impetus, here's the song. Feel free to use it in any way that's helpful to you and your faith community, except for selling it! (After all, it is copyrighted material).

Singing strength

According to Pete Seeger (emphasis mine):

People ask, is there one word that you have more faith in than any other word, and I'd say it's participation. I feel that this takes on so many meanings. The composer John Philip Sousa said, 'What will happen to the American voice now that the phonograph has been invented? Women used to sing lullabies to their children.'

It's been my life work, to get participation, whether it's a union song, or a peace song, civil rights, or a women's movement, or gay liberation. When you sing, you feel a kind of strength; you think, I'm not alone, there's a whole batch of us who feel this way. I'm just one person, but it's almost my religion now to persuade people that even if it's only you and three others, do something. You and one another, do something. If it's only you, and you do a good job as a songwriter, people will sing it.

-from The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson, page 106