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My Favourite Coffee Shop

In my most recent sermon at Fleetwood, I made reference to my favourite coffee shop. I spoke about what happens when we love something – we tend to talk about it so much that everyone knows it. This is what praise is. We praise what we love.

I want to tell you why I like my favourite coffee shop so much. I do indeed like the place a lot – it’s cozy and warm, the baristas know my name, and they make the best chai tea lattes in town (IMHO). But I also love what happens at my favourite coffee shop.

It’s where mentoring takes place.

What is mentoring, you ask? I recently read a blog by Pastor Joshua Benton who describes it this way:

Mentoring is when you have one older person – older/more mature emotionally, older/more mature spiritually, older as in older – take the time to help out a younger person understand their place in the world. A mentor helps them walk through good times and walks through hard times. A mentor helps guide and instruct. Never telling what to do but only suggesting alternatives. A mentor is like a guide with a flashlight through a dark wooded forest, shining the light in the directions you would like to go.”

He goes on to say that he thinks mentoring happens best over a cup of coffee. I agree with him, although my preference is tea.

I have a mentor, and we meet at my favourite coffee shop. It’s a comfortable place for informal conversation about life. I always look forward to our conversations and leave feeling encouraged. But I haven’t always had a mentor, or at least not a coffee-shop kind of mentor. For much of my life, mentors sat with me in different places: on the piano bench at church, co-teaching a Sunday school, leading worship together, or even in the car as we drove somewhere together. These people were my music teachers, school teachers, church family members, and youth leaders. Each of them walked with me through life for a season—some short, some long. And each of them helped me increasingly know and love God. Whatever form mentoring takes, it’s about loving like Jesus loved, and organically showing what it means to follow Jesus.

My favourite coffee shop is also my favourite place to meet with youth and young adults with whom I have the privilege of journeying through life. Fleetwood CRC is a large church, and I’m not expected to do all the mentoring of younger people on my own. That’s where you could come in. Would you consider the opportunity to mentor someone younger than you? Perhaps there is already someone in your life you could approach to invite into a mentoring relationship. The easiest way to make this happen is to simply ask the question: “Do you want a mentor? Can I be your mentor?” Try it – it works! And if you aren’t sure who you could mentor, I would be happy to help connect you with a younger person in our church family.

And there’s a bonus: the first ten people who approach me about beginning a mentoring relationship, will receive a gift card for my favourite coffee shop – Cuatro Coffee – to get you started.

So go ahead. Pray about it. Be a mentor, and be mentored. Jesus took three years to mentor 12. Maybe you could commit to one year mentoring one. Joshua Benton concludes, “There is a generation out there that is in need of mentoring. In fact, there are many generations out there in need of mentoring and training in righteousness.”

Want to read more? You can find the whole article at http://network.crcna.org/pastors/mentoring-and-coffee