Creating Revolutionaries

Rick Bundschuh is one of the most inspirational people I know. I love this blog about the needs of mentors for kids. When Rick was young, he was fortunate enough to have a mentor who helped mold him into an effective Christian Ministry Revolutionary. As a parent, I hope you are looking for mentors for your kids. Rick found his mentor in his church. Rick  is the pastor at Kauai Christian Fellowship. He is also leading Anchor House Bible College on Kauai. It’s an incredible one-year experience for high school graduates to spend a year with 40 other students. Each week a new mentor teaches and interacts with them. I’m spending a week with these students in the Fall, and I can’t wait. Visit Anchor House Bible College if you or someone you know might be interested.

Creating Revolutionaries

I have a box load of photos from years gone by that I am now scanning and placing somewhere on a digital cloud. I have to admit when a picture of my younger late-teen self pops up I have mixed emotions.

Part of me admires the firm, cut masculine figure who looks ready to conquer the world and part of me cringes because I now know that at the moment the camera clicked, the person in the photo was a dumb as a box of hair when it came to just about everything in life.

There was only one thing that kept me from running out and joining the “idiot circus” of the era – I had a mentor, an older, wiser, Godly, more experienced and trustworthy guide who was, unbeknownst to me, effectively molding me with both his words and actions, to be a revolutionary.

Becoming and then creating other revolutionaries, men and women who will, bit by bit, choice by choice, overthrow the reign of secular culture be it rife with evil or oozing idiocy and bring in the radical ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven, is our calling. Not in a political context but in human hearts, one by one, surrendering to the eternal King.

One of the greatest treasures a church has are those who, by long and faithful service for the Kingdom, have the wisdom, experience and insight to be able to mentor those on the cusp of adulthood.

And sadly, in the silos we create in our churches, their potential is seldom recognized or tapped into.

That is why when the youth director of our church decided to start his weekly meeting with a 10-minute tip about God and life from one of our older and even wizened  “Uncles” and “Aunties” it became one of the most talked about things in our church community with both young and old.

These men and women, with a 10 minute timer clicking, shared their accumulated and Godly wisdom on a variety of subjects; money, love, meaning, reputation, industry, holiness and more.

Suddenly there was a sea change. Young men sought out some of these “Uncles” to ask about personal finances or career questions. Young women felt more comfortable asking older, unrelated women some deeply personal questions.

Bit by bit revolutionaries were being made, young men deciding on a new course of action for their lives, young women gaining insight for choices yet to come.

I even got the chance to hold up the photo of the young buck I once was and explain the difference between what I thought was important when that photo was taken and what I now know to be important decades down the line.

And wide eyed, they listened.

I think when Jesus gave the church her marching orders to make disciples…men and women challenged to live profoundly different, it was exactly this kind of thing He had in mind.