And welcome back. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. I want to thank you for joining me today. My voice has been a bit raspy lately. I’ve been coming off of a pretty significant cold and flu like symptoms and it’s so attacked my voice a little bit.
And so I’m not quite myself right now. But we’ll get through this and hopefully we’ll both learn together. So today we are in chapter five of my book, a Christian Theology of Business Ownership. And in this chapter today, we’re going to be talking about mentoring and giving advice. The whole chapter is really generally about advisors and wisdom, but today we’re going to talk specifically about being a mentor and giving advice, mentoring those who are coming after us and giving advice.
But before we get started on that, I just want to invite you to head over to Bible andbusiness.com where I have articles and podcasts, some tools and some surveys you can participate in. Remember that I write for Christian business owners. I minister for those who own businesses and are Christians and also Christians who lead in business, whether it’s their own business or maybe somebody else’s business. And after this series is complete, you’ll be able to download the slides and PDF format for the entire series at Bible. Andbusiness.com so I invite you to head over there.
Please make sure that you also sign up. And if you would take a moment and just subscribe to this YouTube channel, I would certainly appreciate it. So today we’re going to be looking at mentoring and giving advice. So let’s go ahead and get started. The key idea that I want to start with here is that mentoring is mostly unspoken advice.
Now, most of us think of mentoring as maybe sitting over a bunch of coffees or breakfasts or whatever, and the older sitting back and kind of understanding where the younger guy or gal is at. And you talk about, their problems and you look at what they’re facing, and then you sit there, the older guy or gal does, and they oh, I remember when I had that situation. And they relay their own experiences and somehow the younger person is encouraged and instructed through the older person’s experiences. While that does happen on occasion, that’s usually not the way it happens. Usually mentoring is more intentional.
Mentoring is more about taking somebody where they’re at and saying, how can I help you be a better you? And the advice that is given is really not very credible unless the advice is lived out in the mentor’s life. And that’s what I mean by mentoring is mostly unspoken advice. I can sit here and give advice to people all day long, but if I’m not living it out, it’s just empty words. It’s just hollow words.
So mentoring is really mostly unspoken advice usually happens within a long term relationship. And most mentoring, most wisdom and advice that is really passed on in a long term relationship, more is caught than taught. And if you’re going to get into this mentoring game, just understand that it will involve sacrifice on your part. You’ll have to be vulnerable about your weaknesses and the struggles that you’ve had. And you’ll need to also understand that your investment in the mentoring person, in other words, the mentee, may not bring about the return that you’re really after.
It may not produce the results that you are hoping it would produce. And if they hear your advice and connect with you but they don’t really follow through, they’re not really changing, you actually can become quite frustrated and it can really become a very sour experience. So you need to understand that if you’re going to get into this mentoring thing, if you’re going to become an advice giver, that can actually be a pretty frustrating situation to be in. It can be a pretty frustrating role and you might want to enter that with some caution or at least eyes wide open, right? So first of all, in Flippians 317, paul is writing this really to the Flippians, but also later on to Timothy.
He says some things, but join together. He’s writing to the flippians. Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters. And just as you have us as a model, keep your eye on those who live as we do. So look, Paul knew that his life would serve as a good example to those coming after him.
I have coming behind him here on the slide. But his life would be a good role model for those coming after him. Good mentors. I want you to catch this. Good mentors live lives worthy of emulation.
And they’re not arrogant about it, but they are aware of it. They are aware that their life is going to be emulated and as a result, they live lives worthy of that emulation. But I have to stop here and say these lives are not choreographed. Mentoring lives are not choreographed. Mentors are who they are.
And the reason that you follow them is because of the authenticity and the integrity in their walk and in their words. Right? So we said earlier that mentoring is really unspoken advice. And again, I come back to this notion that if you give advice and you’re not following it, then it’s really empty words. But really good mentors, they live their lives because that’s who they are.
And their lives become worthy of emulation. So they don’t have to be arrogant about it, but they do need to be aware of it. We’re also instructed in this verse, by the way, to find lives that are worth emulating. Look back here just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. In other words, go out and find other people who live like us and look at their lives too.
So we’re instructed to find lives worthy of emulation. And then let’s keep our eyes on those who live properly and let’s learn from them. Right now, here in Philippians four Nine, paul writes again to the Philippians. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, you know what? Put it into practice.
Do it.
This isn’t really a do what I say, not what I do. This is a do what I do, not just what I say. Do what I do, and also do what I say. And what he’s really saying here is, if you’ve seen anything in me, you heard it. You’ve watched it in me.
Go do that, because my life is worthy of emulation. Again, he is not arrogant about that emulation, Paul, but he knows that his life is worthy of emulation. And so he is so confident in the quality of his life that he can make this type of generalized instruction. And I want you to understand, and I need to understand this too, even more. I’m not trying to speak at you, but when we see somebody whose life matches their words, we see a powerful life.
The power of instruction plus that instruction lived out authentically, realistically, with integrity. The power of that cannot be underestimated. And so if you’re thinking about becoming a mentor, you need to really think about your own life. Now, there’s going to be a hesitation there, right? And I’m going to come back to that in just a moment, that hesitation.
But Paul must have had a set of practices and patterns in his life which were intentional. They were credible, they were useful, they were desirable, they were valuable, they were usable, and they were reliable. These patterns and practices must have been intentional on his part. And I think that this list is really helpful to us to understand that as mentors, we develop patterns and practices in our lives that help us be who we are in a very real sense. We have to become self disciplined people in order to be good mentors.
And so the patterns and practices that we put into our lives, what Paul says here whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, those patterns and practices, those are things which are going to help us be good mentors, and they’re going to help those who are coming after us be better people, better business owners, better business leaders. I think Paul’s practices could have been downstepped to another’s life and really forms the way to live out one’s covenant relationship with God. Those patterns and practices, however, must not have been so complex or onerous that they couldn’t be taught to other people or replicated by others. That’s why I think Paul lived with a ton of intentionality in his own life, understanding that how he lived his unspoken life would be on display for all to see and would say volumes more than all of the scripture that he wrote. And all of the teaching that he did, his life would be compared to his words.
So he was intentional how he lived with his daily routines. Now I’m asking you to be a mentor. Maybe you’re thinking about becoming a mentor and you’re going, Boy, Bill, these bars are really high. These are high bars. I’m not sure I can meet these high bars.
I think I’m going to walk away and not be a mentor because I don’t always live my life consistently. I don’t always practice what I preach. Right, I get that. But I want you to know that there is this other side of that coin, or at least taking what I’ve just parroted to an extreme, and it becomes really false humility. False humility is one of those ways that those of us who are older can avoid having the younger folk examine our lives.
Look, when you’re a mentor and you’re saying, do A, B and C, the mentee is going to look at you, the one that you’re mentoring is going to look at you and say, yeah, but are you doing it? And they’re going to examine our lives. If we claim that we’re not perfect and we’re not, I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect. None of us on this earth are perfect. But if we claim that since we’re not perfect or that we’re really far from being a good example of what a Christian is, then our lives should not be considered as a model for others to follow.
I’m just going to suggest that may not be true. And so we sometimes let ourselves off the hook from having a life that can and should be followed. Because we say to everybody around us, now don’t look at me. I’m not a good example of a Christian, I’m not a good example of a business owner, I’m not a good example of a business leader. And that’s really some false humility there.
And I think in so doing, we rob future generations of business owners, the experiences and the life lessons that God has taught us and built into us. And then we get older and we kind of wonder why God isn’t using us, right? Well, it’s because we’ve demured. We’ve backed off, we’ve flinched in the face of taking responsibility and letting the younger folks really look at our lives. So I think this is one of the more acceptable ways for Christians who are older to kind of pack it in, to kind of coast, to kind of say, I’m just not really worthy of being followed.
And they disengage at the very time that God really needs those of us who are in our sixty s and seventy s and eighty s and ninety s to really deeply engage in meaningful ways. I honestly, I wrote here at the end of the slide, in some ways it’s a rather selfish way to finish our lives, and I still hold to that. I think if you’re an older person, you need to think about becoming a mentor, or at least making yourself available as a mentor. And that means making your life available and being vulnerable to let younger people take a look at your life and scrutinize it. So in review, mentoring is necessary to passing it on to the next generation.
I think we would all agree with that. Mentoring is risky, and it’s going to involve vulnerabilities. You’re going to have to kind of open yourself up, and you’re going to have to practice what you preach. You’re going to have to live the life that you say you’re living, both in business and in the marketplace and at home and at church and at just keep naming the places you go. Your life is going to have to really be successfully consistent.
And by the way, success in mentoring is heavily dependent on who you are, not just in what you say. Again, most mentoring is unspoken advice, and they catch more than we’ll ever teach them in the mentoring process.
Now, in our next episode, we’re going to talk about building a panel of trusted advisors and learning how to build that panel and take advice from those trusted advisors. So until we see each other again, I’m bill english, the publisher here at bible and business. Thank you for joining me today in this episode. And by the way, if you ever want to contact me and just say, hey, bill, I got this problem in my business, or I got this problem in my career, others have done this. By the way, a number of you have already contacted me and said, can I just run this situation by you?
I love those kind of calls. So feel free to call me or get a hold of me. Bill@biblelandbusiness.com, you can email me that way, and you can get a hold of me, and we’ll certainly talk. So until we see each other again, thanks for joining me today, and I hope to come back for our next episode on building a panel of trusted advisors. Until then, go out and make it a great day.
Take care.