So how do we do this? How do we practically apprentice the generation underneath us?
How do I do it?
Each one of us bears responsibility for apprenticing the generation underneath us. None of us gets a pass. The first thing we need to know is what it looks like to apprentice someone.
For most of history the way people learned something is they apprenticed themselves to someone highly skilled in what they wanted to learn to do. They usually lived with this person. They observed their way of life, the way they organized their time, and the way they interacted with people. There was no detail that was too small to learn. This is why so many stories contain the archetype of a wise old man who imparts his knowledge to a younger student.
So in a culture like ours, that does not value apprenticing as a teaching model any more, how do we do this? How do we bring back the art of apprenticing?
Just a note, during this section I am going to use the terms apprenticing and mentoring. These are the same phrase to me, so do not get thrown off when I use them interchangeably.
1. Recruit:
You find someone younger than you that seems interested in learning what you know and you invite them to begin to do life along side you.
You can’t begin to invest in the younger generation if there’s no one younger than you that you are pouring yourself into. If you are a parent this is easy. Your first and primary responsibility is to help your kids know and love God and to teach them how to serve Him. No one else can do this like you can, so take your job seriously.
If you don’t have kids, there is this wonderful fact of life; kids are everywhere! They just seem to spring up everywhere, like weeds. In your church there are children’s ministries, youth ministries, college students, young adults; each of these groups need people who are willing to mentor them. In your community there are sports leagues, schools, universities, community theaters, new employees fresh out of college. If you can’t find someone younger than you to invest in it is because you don’t want to.
When I first became a Christian at the end of my senior year of high school I wanted to let junior high kids know that they didn’t have to make the same mistakes I had made. I set up an appointment with the pastor of the church that my family attended faithfully every Easter and Christmas. I went in and asked if I could be a camp counselor for the junior high kids. I was technically supposed to have finished my first year of college, but he could see that I was sincere so he pulled some strings and I got to go.
This was the first time I got to tell the younger generation about what Jesus had done in my life, and unlike my peers, many of them listened and responded! It was at this camp that God began to speak to me about my calling to pastor. Reaching out to the younger generation literally changed my life. You’ve got to find someone to mentor.
So open your eyes, look around, and find a few younger people you can invest in. Your kids (if you have them), of course, and a few others. You will need to be the initiator. You will need to be invitational, but I promise you, finding young people to mentor is not hard.
2. They Watch
Once you find someone to mentor, you bring them along with you and they watch what you do. Let’s take Josh Gott, our associate pastor at the Vineyard Chattanooga, as an example. Josh and I have been ministering together as a team since he was twenty and over the last decade he has literally been with me in every type of meeting and ministry situation. A couple of things have happened during that time. First, Josh has picked up the things that are most important to me for our church. He totally owns the vision. He owns it so well that he can call me on it when I begin to veer off track. The second is that he has learned my best practices and is aware of my worst. All this has come about through being with me. We talk, argue, study the bible together, and share input. Josh knows me well. Whoever you mentor needs time up front to simply watch what it is you do. But what does this look like on a practical level?
Let’s say the person you are mentoring is learning how to use a sound board. Then they need to stand by you as you’re doing sound. As you adjust the different knobs or are setting the whole system up, you explain to them what you are doing and why you are doing it. You give them some time to observe. Then after each time ask them what they learned. Make them explain it back to you. If there were things you wanted them to see that they didn’t talk about, then say, “remember when I did…I wanted you to learn…” Let them give feedback as well. When they watch you in an intentional way you are able to impart to them the basics of what you do.
Say you are a children’s ministry small group leader. Again, have the person you are mentoring sit in the group with you. In this case I’d have them sit across from you so they can watch the way you manage the group dynamics. They can watch how you manage rambunctious kids, how you draw out the children to talk, how you prepare before the kids get there, and how you pray with kids and teach kids to pray.
This part of the mentoring needs to take place long enough that the person is comfortable with the routine of small group time. They have seen you facilitate during some different situations and challenges so they have an awareness of how to deal with a variety of circumstances. After the kids have left, the two of you need to sit down together so that you can explain why you did what you did. Allow them to ask questions and give them your best answer. Sometimes instead of answering ask them how they would have dealt with it. You see this is how you mentor/ apprentice someone.
3. Together
This is the step where you become a team. I love this step because your work load in some senses becomes a little lighter. Each time you’re together give them a part of your job to do. Go for mastery here. Let them do this part of the job until they have it down pat. The first couple of times they are going to be coming to you and asking you a thousand different questions. You are going to be thinking to yourself. “This would be easier if I just did it myself,” and initially it might be. However, over time they will become proficient at the task you’ve given them to do. Once you feel like they’ve mastered that part of the job give them the next component to do, while still doing the initial job you’d given them. Remember to build in times to talk about how it’s going. Coach them; give them tips that will improve their skills. Eventually they will have become so proficient they can handle the entire thing. When you’ve worked yourself out of a job you’ve won!
4. You Watch
Once the person you’ve been mentoring has become proficient enough to do the job on their own, let them. During your debrief the week before you say, “I believe you can do this on your own.” Tell them next week they are going to be responsible for the whole thing. Let them know you are going to be there but only as a safety net and as a confidence booster. When next week comes around, back off. When people come to you to ask you questions refer them to your apprentice and let them handle the questions. Take notes so that you can give them feedback. Do not intervene unless they ask you to and then only if what they are overseeing is going to fail completely. If failing is not going to hurt anything or anyone, let them fail because we learn as much from our failures as we do our successes. Give them feedback and then let them do it again. Let them do it as you watch for as many times as it takes for them to be successful consistently. Once you’ve done this, you have successfully apprenticed someone and it’s time to find another person to mentor because now you have a peer. Remind your young apprentice that they are to apprentice someone as well.
5. Coach and Resource
Coaching is actually something that you are doing during this entire process. It is the art of giving critical feedback in a way that does not tear your apprentice down, but builds them up. Whenever we give critical feedback, we are honest but not hurtful. We don’t make them feel stupid, or use language that makes them feel inadequate. Instead we tell them these are the areas that need work. Here are some things you can do to improve, and here is what I saw you do right. Resourcing is simply helping them come in contact with the things that are going to make them more effective in doing their job. It might be a great book, an article, or a conference. It’s just getting things to them that are going to help them take it to the next level.
In conclusion let me say that it is everybody’s job to apprentice the next generation. If you are doing a job at the Vineyard Chattanooga, I should be able to walk up to you on any given Sunday and be introduced to your apprentice. I have a couple and they are there every week. There names are Josh Gott, Jon Meek, Zach Anderle, and Josh Anderle. A couple of them are able to do exactly what I do and more, another one of them is getting pretty darn close, and the youngest one is simply learning how to serve. They are there with me every week, and be of good cheer, if I was to drop dead they could take this thing and we wouldn’t miss a beat.
Who are you apprenticing? You haven’t done your job if you can’t answer that question. I’m not saying that as a condemnation, I’m saying that as an affirmation. You can do this. You have something to impart! Part of what it means to be part of the people who are the Vineyard Chattanooga is to apprentice the generation underneath you.
Let’s set a goal, by the end of the summer, I want each of you who are involved in leadership (from being a member of the set-up crew – to staff) to have someone you are apprenticing to do what it is you do. I want to be able to walk up to you on a Sunday Morning or in one of our growth groups, or on our outreach projects and say introduce me to who you are apprenticing and you can say, “This is so an so” and I can ask them, “What are you learning?” and they can give me a good answer.
Can you imagine what our church would be like if each of us took the value of apprenticing the next generation seriously? We would be a disciple-making farm! Can you imagine what your families would be like if each of you took seriously the idea of apprenticing your kids! Wow!
I think it would be like the Kingdom of Heaven come to earth!
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