Altar Call – Opelika-Auburn News
Walter Albritton
September 6, 2009
Mentors encourage us to develop and use our unique
gifts
A mentor is a trusted tutor, coach, guide, counselor or teacher. The key word is “trusted.” Effective mentoring occurs when the student admires the mentor and embraces the counselor’s wise instruction.
All of us learn from our teachers. Most of us have been blessed by the mentoring of a few special people who were our role models. They gave us the precious gift of self-confidence. They inspired us to choose their approach to life as our own. They encouraged us not to mimic them but to develop and use our own unique gifts.
From infancy I was exposed to the teaching of my parents. From them I learned the basic lessons of life. They taught me to value family, farm life, good food, reading, honesty, worship, and hard work. My parents exposed me to good teachers in the public school and in church.
When I was 13 I met a preacher known as “Brother Si” Mathison. He made faith attractive to me. He was the first preacher who “connected” with me. His interest in me was a new experience. Within a short time I persuaded my entire family to join his church in Wetumpka. I was 13 at the time.
I embraced Brother Si as a mentor because I admired him and his approach to life. But there was more. I began to trust him because he was approachable; he knew my name and I could talk to him. He seemed to really care about what was going on in my life. In time he became the most important influence in my life. He was the role model who sparked a desire in me to become a pastor. I never lost the desire to be like him.
During his last years Brother Si spent some
time living at Wesley Gardens Retirement Home in
When Brother
Si died I was out of the state and unable to attend his funeral. My
disappointment was tempered by the realization that Brother Si would not be
there either. He was already in the company of the Father. His sons, like
brothers to me, would merely celebrate his life and bury the body of the man
who had been my spiritual father. For 50 years Brother Si had been to me what
Brother Si taught me, as the Apostle Paul taught Timothy, to trust the counsel of the Bible. That was important since our culture, much like Timothy’s culture of the first century, is prone to question the authority of the Bible. A preacher who doubts that God inspired the scriptures is like a lost ball in high weeds. Brother Si motivated me to believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. From that conviction I have never wavered.
E. Stanley
Jones was another mentor to me. Though I was acquainted with him we were not
close friends. But through his writing, preaching, and a few personal
conversations, the famous missionary became a valued mentor. He taught me to
trust “the living Christ” as the chief
The concept of mentoring can be expanded to include persons we know only through their writings. Elton Trueblood, the Quaker philosopher, was another beloved mentor of mine. He persuaded me to think of deceased persons like Martin Luther, John Wesley, Thomas a Kempis, Oswald Chambers, or others as mentors and friends. This idea opened for me a marvelous new window of mentoring. It freed me to speak of John Wesley, for example, as my friend.
This being
true I can embrace
Thankful we should be for our mentors and role models. And wise we are to resolve so to live that someone, following in our footsteps, may find us to be a worthy mentor and role model for living. + + +