Why do we need mentoring? The New York Post film critic Michael Medved points out that by age 6, the average American child will have spent more time watching TV, videotapes, and motion pictures than a child will have spent talking with his father in his entire lifetime. Hollywood is shaping the next generation of young people. If you have seen any of the movies, you will realize that the next generation will be a moral Frankenstein. One minister asked a little boy about his mentors and said: "Hey, son, when you grow up, whom do you want to be like?" The boy said: "Mister, I ain't found nobody I want to be like."

Our heroes have seemingly disappeared in our society and in the home. One of the reasons we need mentoring more than ever is the mobility of our society, which has left our younger generations emotionally disconnected and rootless. Did you know that many grandparents may live anywhere from 500 to 1000 miles away from their grandkids? We are raising a generation of children without grandparents and frequently parents for that matter. We talk like children are our greatest national treasure, but we act like they are a national liability.

Art Linkletter said that children say the darndest things. That reminds me of the time a little boy complained of a stomach ache. The father said, "Son, the reason your stomach aches is that your stomach is empty, and you need to put something in it." Not long after that, the pastor came to visit and complained of a headache. The little boy tried to be of comfort and said, "The reason you have a headache is that your head is empty, and you need to put something in it." We laugh, but as a society we claim to be open-minded when in fact we are empty-headed because we take our children and our senior adults for granted. We need grandparents, parents, pastors, teachers, coaches, mentors who help us become what Christ intends for us to be as servant-leaders in the church and the community. When we devalue our children and their grandparents, we diminish our future and our past. Mentoring is the relational process of handing the torch of wisdom from one generation to the next so that our future may be as rich as our heritage.

To paraphrase the biblical admonition (Proverbs 29:18), I believe that without mentors, a people will perish. Mentors function as midwives who help us to catch a vision that only God can birth. Bill Delahoyde, Assistant United States Attorney, said, "Mentors are those who have gone before us on the mountain of life, but who pause and extend a hand to help us along the way, or who extend a safety line of love and affirmation that may keep us from falling off the mountain."2

In the valleys and twists and turns of life, we need mentors who can help us climb up our own personal mountains. We all have challenging mountains to climb outside the church and inside the church. Studies reveal that only 6 percent of pastors say they have the gift of leadership, and churches are sustained by 15-20 percent of their membership. Is it any wonder that two-thirds of all Protestant churches are plateaued or dying? Chuck Colson said to evangelical churches, "If this were a business, you'd be contemplating Chapter 11 [bankruptcy]."3 It's the 20/80 rule. Only 20 percent of the members in any given church are doing 80 percent of the work. That means that only 20 percent of the church makes it to home base.