Mentors, resources available to Alabama Baptist pastors through state network

Discipleship” doesn’t come shipped from Nashville in a box. It doesn’t meet at a certain hour in a certain room for a certain period of time, said Ricky Creech, director of missions for Birmingham Baptist Association.
   
Discipleship, Creech said, “is something churches of the 21st century need to redefine and re-educate their people about from a biblical standpoint.”
   
And in the sea of packaged “discipleship” literature and 12-step programs, where do churches start?
   
Edwin Jenkins, director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions’ (SBOM) office of leadership and church growth, said effective church discipleship begins with effectively discipling pastors and church leaders.
   
The idea of linking leaders and placing them in an accountability context has taken off across Alabama through a statewide mentor network.
   
“The network is … a process by which we’re trying to get one-on-one sharpening of one leader to another,” Jenkins said. “We’ve received mentoring on an accidental basis in the past, but this is to intentionalize that. Our relationships could have borne much greater dividends had we always mentored intentionally.”
   
More than 1,000 leaders have trained through the program, building the foundation of what could become an infinite number of “mentor constellations,” Jenkins said.
   
In these constellations, each church leader would have a “Paul” to learn from, a “Barnabas” to lean on and a “Timothy” to lead forward. “Far too many ministers who are falling today to morality or relational problems do so because they do not have someone to assist them in a positive context of looking honestly at themselves,” Jenkins said.
   
And using relationships to help ministers will help them minister to their congregations in the same way, said Creech, a network mentor trainer.
   
“Upcoming generations are more interested in being a part of small learning clusters than being a part of ‘Discipleship Training,’” he said. “This approach is relationship-oriented and pilgrim-journey driven.”
   
People today are “relationship starved,” Creech said. “Just look at the Internet. Those who go there to chat go in search of relationships and a place where they can tell the truth without being judged.”
   
Many today have lost the art of doing relationships, but when church members see pastors making a point to correct that in their own lives, the church members will put a greater weight on their own relationship-building, Creech said.
   
“We’re keeping it very flexible — it’s structured, not stifling; a process, not a program,” Jenkins said. “It’s simply pastors and staff reaching out to pastors and staff, asking the tough questions and helping us become lifelong learners.”
   
Jenkins said he hopes to have 4,000 people involved during a 10-year period.
  
“The feedback I hear from the pastors involved is that they wish they’d known about it 10, 15 or 20 years ago,” Creech said. “Small cell groups where you’re with a group of people you have an affinity with offer a holistic approach to mentoring.”
   
And the idea that a person’s mentor must be older is a misconception, he said. “A 60-year-old can have a 30-year-old as a mentor. He’s not expecting to gain wisdom from life’s experience, he just wants to know how a 30-year-old thinks about family, church, career — it can put him on the cutting edge with new salt and ideas,” Creech said.
   
For more information, call the SBOM’s office of leadership and church growth at 1-800-264-1225.