Pat Morley tells the following story. When elephants overcrowded South Africa's Kruger National Park, the government authorized killing adult elephants and relocating their children to other parks. As the orphaned male elephants became teenagers, they were clueless about what "normal" behavior looked like. When their testosterone levels spiked the orphaned males turned aggressive. In one park they savagely killed 36 rhinos. A park ranger watched as one elephant knocked over a rhino, trampled it, then drove a tusk through its chest. The situation was out of control. Then rangers brought six adult bull elephants into one of the parks. They mentored the younger bulls to see what normal behavior looked like. No more rhinos were killed after the bigger bulls arrived.
Many Christian young men today are growing up as spiritual orphans. They may have non-Christian dads or Christian fathers who don’t know how to mentor them. They need to connect with some older Christian men. Here are some ideas about helping more mature Christian men connect with younger ones.
1. Don’t think only in terms of structured mentoring relationships. Where you have some older men committed to building into a few younger men in “discipling” relationships, encourage them. But such men are rare, and effective mentoring programs inside the church are even more rare.
2. The key discipleship principle is that the body is built up through “speaking the truth to one another in love” (Eph. 4:15). The three ingredients required are 1) speaking, which requires meeting together, 2) the truth, which in context means discussing the application of God’s Word to our lives, 3) a bond of love, i.e. a deepening commitment to one another as brothers. Our men’s ministries must cast a vision for men being connected below the waterline by modeling this goal ourselves and by getting the men who have such connections telling their stories to other men.
3. Encourage younger men and older men who live or work near each other to get together for breakfast or lunch. In the 21st century, men who want to build a regular discipline into their lives (like working out) would prefer do it as a part of their work day (and stay a work a few minutes longer) rather than go home for dinner and then back out to a men’s Bible study. Challenge them to share prayer requests for some of their spiritual battles and get back together again in a week or two.
4. Here is a thought. If you aim for a mentoring program with structured disciplers and disciplees, you will scare many away. Few men see themselves as qualified to be a spiritual mentor; we are too aware of our sin. But if we get men connecting and helping each other fight our spiritual battles, mentoring by the older believer will take place naturally. And that older brother will be greatly built up by the younger believer as well! Iron sharpens iron.
