Handouts
Click here to view: Mentor Responsibilities
Click here to view: Phase 1 Timeline
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
NICK: My name is Nick Holovaty, and that’s an Ukrainian last name. My dad was born in Ukraine, so I’m going to start with a Ukrainian joke. [Laughter.]
So there were two buddies, Danilko and Voiko, and they’re—they got a car, which was a big deal. And they’re driving through the countryside, and the car breaks down, so they’re stuck on the side of the road. They are waiting around looking for someone to give them a tow, and this farmer in a horse-drawn cart pulls up. He’s kinda rude. And so the farmer is now towing them into town, and Danilko and Voiko are in the car, and they are talking to each other real slowly, and Danilko goes, “You know, that farmer was kinda rude,” and Voiko says, “Yeah, but we’re getting back at him.” Danilko says, “What do you mean?” (Voiko:) “I got the brakes on.” [Crowd laughs.]
So this talk is about service—like the farmer, you know, serving. So the purpose of this talk is to provide you all with an overview of your responsibilities as a mentor. Our responsibilities—I’m a mentor too, in Phase I. So, the mentor responsibilities in Phase I, so you can know how this is all fitting together, and what—how what you’re doing fits into the whole picture. So, I’ll say it again. The purpose of the talk is to provide an overview of the mentor responsibilities so that you can know how what you’re doing fits into the whole picture.
So I want to make some observations about the spirit with which we want to approach our mentor responsibilities. And that is, we’re servants, as Charlie said in his talk this morning. We are servants of our brothers and sisters.
At the last supper, our Lord said,
“The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” [Lk 22:25–27]
And I can imagine him saying this as he’s washing the disciples’ feet. He doesn’t just tell them; he shows them. “I am among you as one who serves.” So let’s be servants; as mentors, let’s be servants like that. Not just telling, but also showing. Modeling with our own actions how to study the sources, how to participate in a small-group discussion, how to really listen to each other.
So, overview of our responsibilities:
At the heart of—at the center of Phase I are these conversations that are happening in men’s groups and women’s groups. And—I like to think of a conversation like it’s a bonfire, and everybody’s got their log and they bring their log to the bonfire and it makes it brighter and hotter. And if you take your log away, the fire goes down.
So we’re gonna—Jacob Theis is a PowerPoint wizard, and he made some awesome slides here. So, imagine—this is how things fit together. Okay. [Group is looking at PowerPoint on a large screen while Nick speaks. Nick explains the projected diagram in the next few paragraphs.] So at the heart there’s these concentric circles, and at the heart of it is the small group. Okay. And then one layer out is the group leader, and then there’s us, the mentors. So let’s talk about what is happening at the small-group level.
So there’s four things. And by the way, there’s a handout on your table; it’s face down, so please don’t pass it out yet. But everything you see on here is gonna be—you don’t need to write it down. It’s just—already on your table. But we are going to go through it so you understand what’s going on.
So, practically speaking, the small groups during Phase I are going to be living normal community life; that’s not stopping, right? We’re gonna keep—that’s going to keep going. Normal community life is gonna continue.
We all need to be praying for the consultation. We cannot overstate how important it is for us all to be praying for the consultation. And there’s a line which is—so the stuff below the line is—we’re talking—now we’re doing Phase I: we are studying the sources, we’re talking about the sources in the small groups. Make sense so far? Okay.
So one ring out, we have the group leaders. So what are the group leaders doing? Well, they need to lead the group in the four activities that they’re doing. That make sense? They also are going to need to help people, compassionately help with challenges that are going to come up. Challenges are going to come up; it’s gonna happen. What do we do where there’s a small group where this person is really excited about discussing and talking [about] the sources—“I want to study this; let’s do it, all the time”—and there’s someone else in the same group who says, “I don’t want to give up my women’s group time, like, at all”? So we’re coming from three far different places, and that group is going to need some help to be unified about this and work through this issue, right?
So for the mentors, what are we going to be doing? We need to train and support the group leaders, and that’s going to include the material and the spiritual. I think it was Mike Wacker [who] talked about it this morning, or maybe it was Charlie: who we need to be and what we need to do. What kind of people do we need to be? So, what is the Lord doing in the hearts of the group leaders? That is something we need to be attentive to; it’s not just what we’re doing, it’s also how we’re being. So that’s included in training and supporting the leaders.
If possible, it’s great—it would be great to bring the group leaders that you’re responsible for together as a group. That’s not practically going to be possible for every situation, right? But if it’s possible, that would be really good. Because then, when you’re training them, you’ll only have to say some things once, and they will all hear it. And they can learn from each other, and they can experience more support that way. So that would be really good if that could happen, but—it may not happen, but we recommend it.
And then the third thing, and the last thing, is fostering communication. So, there’s the small group with a leader and ideally, that leader is in a group of small-group leaders with you. And right now, you are in a group at your table with your table leader. And so there’s kinda this chain. And you don’t need to have all the answers to all the questions that come to you, and neither does the group leader. But we need to know where to go for the answers.
And as mentors, the answers—[with] the questions you could go to your table leader, and—just like your group leaders are going to go to you with questions. So there’s going to be communication that’s going to go both directions: there’s training and information that’s passing one direction, and there’s also what’s going on on the ground, what’s coming back up. Make sense? So, fostering communication. That’s the—how it fits together, structurally, so to speak. (And we’ve got the bonfire at the end there.) [Nick is referring to an illustration on the PowerPoint.]
The next thing I want to talk about is more of a timeline. So there’s how things fit together, who’s talking to who. And this is going to be more of a “what’s the order of events?” Does that make sense? This—there’s—this is also on your handout. It’s already on the table. So the first step is getting the lay of the land. And this is something that the group leaders are going to need to do. What’s the situation in their group? What’s the temperature? Are people listening to the kickoff talks; have people heard them? Are—what do they think? If they have, what struck them? Where are they at with respect to the kickoff talks? With the consultation? It’s going to be all over the place. Right? People—and we need to know what the situation is on the ground.
What about using the app? What about the website? What about printouts? Do—are you able to get to this? Do you need help with that? What about attendance at the group? Are there some people who just aren’t coming? Just finding out what the situation is. And so the group leaders need to—actually, the group leaders probably have a sense for that, ’cause they’re meeting with these folks every week—maybe. Maybe some people aren’t coming. But then as mentors, we need to find out what’s going on in the groups that you’re leading, ’cause we may or may not know. So there’s an initial step of just finding out, listening. “What’s the situation; what do you need?” We want every group leader to have an opportunity to give us input on what problems they foresee. Like, we need to hear from them. So. That’s the first, kind of inf- —you know, it’s all going to be happening kind of—these distinctions, right? They look good on paper, but in reality, it’s gonna be mixed together.
But the next step is to train, to train the group leaders. And we are going to train them in how to use the technology, how to listen to the sources, and training in how to study the sources, how to get the most out of those sources. How to lead group discussions. So the group leaders are gonna need to lead these discussions, and. . . . Oh, I’m sorry: leading decisions and discussions. Because the groups are not going to be able to listen and discuss every source; there’s a lot of sources, so they’re gonna have to choose.
And doing that—I just had four young men join the missionary company, which is awesome, and we were having a discussion about which sources we want to listen to and discuss together. And I said, “Well, how do we want to make the decision?” and there were some fun ideas, like “arm wrestle for it.” [Crowd laughs.] So maybe the group wants to do it that way. Right? So the leader needs to lead the group in the decision process for how they’re going to do it. We did not end up arm wrestling for it, but we did make a good decision.
Okay. So those first two are kind of preparatory, and then, we’re—we had reached cruising altitude, and now we’re discussing the sources. The groups are discussing the sources. And so they’re choosing the sources (just talked about that), studying, discussing, writing down topics for discussion in Phase II. So in the journal, for every single source, there’s a third question, which is, you know, “Did anything come to your mind that you want to discuss in Phase II?” Just write it down, so we can come back to that in Phase II.
And here’s some rough dates, real rough. First two steps: we’re hoping for, like, the next couple weeks. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of variation, but that’s kind of the hope. And then we’ve got the four time periods. There’s going to be four of them; they’re gonna be coming out basically monthly: September, October, November, December. And so that’s how that’s gonna go.
All right. When we see all this, it may be a little daunting. There’s a lot to do! But let’s remember that this is Jesus’s consultation; it’s not ours. After Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, he said, “If I, then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” [John 13:14–15].
And that’s his plan: model it, do it, repeat. So he’s in charge of the whole thing. We are servants of our brothers and sisters. If we just do our part, he will bless it. And, as Charlie said, wonderful things will happen.
Praise God!
[Applause.]
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