Do I Need a Mentor to Follow Jesus?

In this episode, we talk about the difference between making converts and making disciples, and why Jesus’ command to “make disciples” involves more than just a one-time decision. We explore what biblical discipleship looks like, why every believer needs people who can teach, challenge, and encourage them, and how we can become the kind of people who help others follow Jesus well.

Transcript

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So we have questions. But there are questions that you haven't asked. Because either they're going to be comfortable or applicable. Questions that most people don't ask. They just don't want to go there. Because we believe that we'll get the questions. We believe it's questions. Let's look at them together. Let's leave it. Let's go there. What's going on, Landed Podcasting, and welcome to our little Rinky Dink Podcast Studio. I actually brought someone in here the other day who watches it on YouTube. And so for those that are listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, this is also on a platform where you can see my face. You may be like, nah, I don't really need to see your face at this moment. So I just prefer to hear your voice. Your voice is annoying enough. I don't need to see that face of yours. But he walked into this space and he goes, I don't think he meant it like this, but he's like, This is it. I was like, Yeah, this is it, bro. It's literally a closet. There's not a window in here. It doesn't even count as a room. Uh, but it's it was supposed to be a security room in the church. It ended up not working out. And so we painted a wall. And I mean, I'm not kidding you. I can almost touch Russ. Like, if Russ stuck his hand out, we would be close to touching each other right now. But it's our Rinky Dink studio, and we love it, though. We love being a part of this. Russ and I get to have some good catch-up time beforehand as we're getting notes together and we're setting up all the technology and the lights and the camera and the audio and all that stuff. But man, we're just so thankful that you guys tune in every single week to answer some questions that you guys have. I love being able to do this, even though I'm not able to see you. I feel connected to a lot of you guys through text messages or you guys sending in fan mail, uh, which that sounds weird, but that's just what it's called. If you click on the link at the bottom of Spotify or Apple Podcast, you can send us things and we see them. We legitimately see them. And we actually added a question based off of a question that one of you guys asked. And that's a question that we're gonna be talking about today. Is something that somebody sent in. It wasn't on our original script that we were going to be talking about, but because you guys sent in a question, we actually added it to the summer. And the question that we're gonna be answering that one of you just asked, is Do I need a mentor to follow Jesus? And I think there's a lot that goes into that question, and I think that's it's important to ask that question. It's important to ask any question that we have about faith because really when we're asking about mentorship, we're asking about a trigger word in the church that we ask all of the time. And I think it's one of those words that we say, but we don't really know what it means, we don't really know what it looks like, and it's discipleship. I think we all know we hear that word, we hear it from stage. You need to disciple and you need to make disciples. That's the model, and that's what it needs to look like. But what does that even mean? You know, it's those words that we use in the church that we're like, this is what it is. Well, how does it look? We don't really know. And what the church does a really good job of, and it's not going to be something that's gonna make the church look great, and it's gonna be kind of condemning to people like me that are leading inside of the church, is we like to make regulations and rules and systems into something that God never really designed to be regulated and have a bunch of systems and rules to be a part of it. You know, when you look in churches a lot of times, there's discipleship programs, there's curriculum that you go through, there's a rigidity, there's homework that you need to do. And now, hear me say this is that a bad thing? No, I I think that's the church's attempt to be faithful in making disciples. But when you actually look at scripture, I'm actually gonna say something that might be a little shocking to people, and you may turn off the podcast because you're like, this guy's heretical, he's just talking about a bunch of nonsense. But discipleship is actually not a word that's used in scripture ever. It's actually a word that we don't even understand fully what it means in English, let alone there's not a word for discipleship, the process of making disciples. Now, the Bible does, there's two different words for disciples. The Bible does tell us to make disciples, but when you see that word make disciples, especially in Matthew chapter 28, where it says to go into the world, make disciples, you know, that's it's in Mark and it's in Matthew, that when we make disciples, the word legitimately means to make converts, preach the gospel to people, and then when they trust in Jesus, they become a disciple. All a disciple is, is a disciple is somebody who follows Jesus. You know, it's another word for Christian. For whatever reason, it's a less popular word for the word Christian, and actually we're starting to see a little bit of a change in society. I I don't like the word Christian. I don't like saying that I am a Christian because there's a religious kind of connotation to that. There's this uh very census kind of data, like I go to church and I read my Bible. When anyone ever asks me if I'm a Christian, nine times out of ten, if not ten times out of ten, I'm gonna answer back with yes, I follow Jesus. I have a relationship with Jesus. Another word for that is yes, I'm a disciple of Jesus. It literally means a little pupil of Jesus. Like I'm trying to become like Jesus. And the word Christian in Antioch, when it's used in the book of Acts, it literally means a bunch of little Christs. Like, I don't even know if it was necessarily supposed to be a good thing. I think they were kind of mocking them, like there's just a bunch of copycats of Jesus, which little did they know that the Christians that they called that in Antioch, that probably was one of the greatest things you could have told them. Like, oh, a bunch of little copycats, and like, thank you so much. That's the nicest thing you could have said to me. But when you talk about disciples, anyone who starts following Jesus, anyone who gives their life to Jesus and goes from death to life becomes a disciple. But when you look in Matthew chapter 28, the word is not in disciple when it talks about training other people, but it actually tells us in Matthew chapter 28 that we are to teach them to learn and obey all that Jesus has commanded us. That word for teach legitimately means to train. So when you share Jesus with other people, yes, you're supposed to preach the gospel. Like that's for sure. We've talked about this in the podcast. It is our goal, it is our mission to preach the gospel to every person we come into contact with. I believe if there's a non-believer in your life, or if there's a non-believer in Russ and I's life, if there is anyone that doesn't know Jesus, it is our mission for us to share Jesus with them. But our goal is not just to make converts. Our goal is not just to make a bunch of people go from death to life and then be like, peace out, we're out. Like, no, the goal is then to teach those people and to train those people to be somebody who looks more like Jesus. But the question that we're going to be answering today is I think all of us know this. Up to this point, we're we're six minutes into a podcast right now. I don't think anybody's heard anything and they're like, wow, this is revolutionary. Never heard this before. Life changed. This is going on my Instagram right now. But what does it look like? That's the question that we have to answer. And unfortunately, what we turn it into is we turn it into this kind of system and hierarchy of people who are better than other people. Like there's different tiers of Christians. You know, it's like I need to find someone who's smarter than me, I need to find someone who's older than me, and we need to sit down for coffee once a week, and we need to read through a chapter every single week, and we need to go through a curriculum, and there's 10 things that we need to do, there's 10 tips and techniques and tricks that we need to do so we can make sure that we're discipling in the best way. But when you look in the New Testament, when you look at Jesus, which we're going to talk about today, when you look at Paul, that's not the system. Like there's not a rigidity to it. Like you need to make sure, like, for we make it that way, though, and and this is why that's damaging. This is why I'm spending so much time on it. Is that when we get a bunch of new believers, when we get a bunch of people who have now given their lives to Jesus and they don't know a lot of scripture, they don't know what happened to the dinosaurs, which is actually a question we're going to be answering here in the next few weeks, which, Russ, I don't know if you know what happened to the dinosaurs. I got to do some research on that one. But I don't know why that's like the thing that we run to. It's like, well, I don't know what happened to the dinosaurs, so I can't disciple anybody. And the reason why this hierarchy system of discipleship is so damaging is one, it's wrong. And then two, we then feel to ourselves that we're not good enough to go and disciple other people because we don't know enough, because we're not experienced enough, we haven't been a Christian long enough. But discipleship is bigger than a rigid curriculum and system, and discipleship is way more than just making a convert. Conversion is the beginning, but every single one of us, no matter where we are in the hierarchy, because there is none, we're all all is level at the foot of the cross. We are all children of God. We're all called to be a part of discipling each other. And what really I like to call discipleship as, and it's not something that's in scripture, but this is how I want to define it for the rest of this time. What I believe discipleship is, is it's the process of making people look more like Jesus. Like, man, like we're all called to be little Christ. And when we first get saved, y'all, I'm gonna tell you this right now, we're nowhere near where we need to be. And then when we die, we're also nowhere near where we need to be. But the goal is from the time that we got saved until the time that we die, we want every single moment, every single year to look more and more like Jesus. And the process of us walking in sanctification, purification together, I believe is the process of discipleship. And so we have to get out of our heads that there's not this rigidity, there's not this hierarchy system of people who are better than other people. But what I actually want to talk about for a second is when you think about discipleship with that definition of looking more like Jesus, I do not believe discipleship is just something that we do with someone that's older than us. It's like Russ is older than me. Russ has been following Jesus longer than I have. Now, for me, discipleship isn't let's say Russ is my guy discipling me. Russ is not then the only person discipling me. Like I think we can make it that way. Like there's one person discipling us and we're discipling one other person. But when you look at discipleship in scripture, like we actually see that every single one of us as children of God and as brothers and sisters in Christ, we're actually all in many different ways discipling each other. Like, I believe what discipleship is fulfilled in is discipleship is fulfilled in the one another's of scripture. That as we're encouraging one another and as we're exhorting one another, and as we're admonishing one another, and as we're bearing one another's burdens, and as we're stirring up one another to love and good works, what's actually happening is every single one of us are not just teaching, but we're also training. But we're not training from a pulpit. We're not training from a seat in a coffee shop because we're older and wiser. We're all doing it together. We're literally in the arena together and we're learning and training together to learn how to look more like Jesus. That's done in community with other people. This is why community is so important as we follow Jesus, because all of us are going through a discipleship program, whether we know it or not. And at the end of the day, there is always going to be something discipling us. There's always going to be something training us, there's always going to be something teaching us, which is why it's so important to always be surrounding ourselves with Jesus. Because there's two things that are at play. Like I think we think there's all these different forces at play. Like we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. What we wrestle against is we wrestle against good and evil in Ephesians 6.12. You can look at that verse. Like we wrestle against either it's going to be from God and it's going to be for his kingdom, or it's going to be from Satan and it's going to be from his kingdom. And so if we're not surrounding ourselves with Christ-like discipleship and people who are also trying to look more like him, then what we're actually doing is we're actually surrounding ourselves with Satan. We're surrounding ourselves with his kingdom, and what's actually happening is Satan and the world and our flesh end up becoming the things that are discipling us, and we end up looking less like Jesus and more like the world and more like the person that Satan wants us to be. And so, man, discipleship happens in everyday life. We're all teaching and we're all training each other every single day. Like that's why community is so important. And like we see this pattern in scripture. Like it's not just this hierarchy. Like, there is a hierarchy in Titus where Paul is telling Titus that older women need to be training younger women and that and that Titus needs to be training in 2 Timothy, or Timothy needs to be training pe uh other men to do what he's doing. But we also see that parents are discipling and training their kids. That's what they're called to do in the book of Ephesians. You see Paul mentored Timothy. We see Jesus walking daily with the twelve. We see in Hebrews in multiple different places in Hebrews 3 and in Hebrews 10 that we're called to encourage each other and meet together with each other daily. This is not happening in the podcast yet, but I feel like I'm about to go into a coughing fit. I'm gonna grab my water. Give me one second. But that's what discipleship's all about. Discipleship is all about doing everyday life, and it's woven throughout scripture, and the expectation is clear. Every believer should be helping somebody grow. Every believer should be growing because of somebody else. That also means that we're helping somebody and they're helping us. We're doing this together. So with the rest of our time this morning, discipleship is an everyday process. Man, we're discipling our kids, we're discipling our friends, we're discipling our church. But does that mean then that I need a mentor? So we have this idea of discipleship, we have this idea of mentorship. So if that's the case, do I need an older person to disciple me? And I want to answer carefully because again, rigidity is not scripture. That this is gonna be my opinion, this is gonna be what I see throughout scripture, this is the way I interpret scripture. Man, my is it a command that we have an one older person that's pouring into us? No, it's not. We don't see that explicitly written in scripture. But do I think it's wise and do I think it's beneficial for us to do that? Absolutely 100%. In my opinion, in Ben Pucas's opinion, I actually don't think it's possible for us, because of the culture we live in, to be the most devoted follower of Jesus, growing in the most effective way without that person. And this is why I say that. I mean, the culture that we live in, I'm not I I hate the fact that I can like dog on the church sometimes and I can dog on culture. Like, listen, like I love the culture we live in. Uh it's is it is it dark a little bit? Yeah. Do I love the church? I love the church. Is there some things in the church that need to be better? Yes, and there always will be because the church is run by imperfect people. The head of the church is Christ, and then Christ then gives it for people to steward, and we're just gonna screw it all up. Um but the culture that we live in, y'all, the culture is very busy. It's very different than the culture that Jesus lived in. And I think if we're not careful, if we are not intentionally surrounding ourselves with Jesus, intentionally surrounding ourselves with things like mentors, then I think it's very easy for us to lose sight of what's most important. I mean, just think about the culture that Jesus lived in. Like there was no smartphones, there was no TVs, there was a very familiar, very community-based culture that Jesus lived in. In fact, when you look at Jesus' culture, there's a discipleship culture with Jesus. I mean, Jesus just went up to a bunch of dudes that were probably pretty young, two of them fishing with their father, and he's like, What's up, follow me? And those guys weren't like, Who are you? What's happening? What are you doing? Probably what happened is they see the tassels that's at the bottom of his robe, which signify that he's a rabbi and he's a person of distinction. And this guy just told them, Hey, I want to disciple you, I want you to follow me, I want you to eat with me, I want you to travel with me, I want you to study with me. And there wasn't a discussion. Like you don't see in the New Testament them sitting down, like, well, show me your pedigree. Like they just, Jesus said, follow me, and they dropped their nets, they left everything, and they started following Jesus. And so actually, you see in the culture back in Jesus' day with Jesus and with Paul, like there's a there's a discipleship kind of culture. You see in the letters that Paul writes to the people. Like there's people with him. There's Mark that's with him, there's Barnabas that's with him, Timothy was with him for a while, Apollos was with him for a while, there's all of these different people that Paul was surrounding himself with, and they would leave places and they would travel with Paul and they would learn from Paul. And as they learned from Paul, and as they got to experience what it means to follow Jesus, what it means to be an apostle, what it means to plan a church, what it means to preach from Scripture, they eventually left Paul and they started doing their own thing and surrounding themselves with their own disciples. You even see that in 1 Corinthians when Paul's like, you know, there's some people that say, Well, I follow Paul or I follow Apollos or I follow Peter. And what's happening is there's all of these people who are hitching their wagon to the people that are discipling them. And what Paul Paul is trying to say is stop hitching your wagon to these imperfect people. You need to hitch your wagon to Jesus. But the point that I'm trying to make is the culture that we read the New Testament in is 100% a discipleship, surrounding yourself with older people pouring into you kind of culture so that you can learn, so that you can learn and that you can be taught, and so that you can be trained. And it's almost this model of in the beginning, you're just getting trained, and then as you continue to learn more and as you continue to get more effective, you're training with them, you're in the arena with them, and you're doing it with them. But all of us, man, when we get saved, we're not going to be naturally good at following Jesus because all we've done to that point is follow our own flesh. And with the power of the Spirit, man, we're surrounding ourselves with other people that we want to look more like. See, God never intended us to follow Jesus alone. Now, community is important, but I do believe mentorship and finding someone who disciples us is vitally important. I think that's why the dis Jesus had 12 disciples for three years. Because he knew that he was going to leave, and the most effective way to train someone is not putting them through seminary, is not putting them through a class, but it's hey, do life with me. And that's what I want to talk about for a second, too, when it comes to discipleship. Like people say, like, I don't know how to disciple. I'm like, dude, just surround yourself with people. What do you do to follow Jesus? I read scripture. So read scripture with them. Man, sit with them at a coffee shop, ask them about their life. Man, a lot of times when I disciple people, I don't have a system, I don't have a curriculum. A lot of times we'll sit in a coffee shop and they'll start talking to me about their life. They'll start start talking to me about you know things that they've done that uh that they're like, did I make the right choice here? Or here's something that I'm going through. Like, what do I need to do? What they're asking me in that moment is they're saying, hey, I want to look more like Jesus every single day. How do I do that? How do I honor Jesus in this relationship? How do I honor Jesus in school? How do I honor Jesus on the sports team? How do I honor Jesus in this work culture that I'm in? There's this person over here who really hurt me. How do I love them well but not give up my morals? And what's happening is I've lived a little bit longer of life, and really a lot of times what happens is it's not, let me tell you everything that I know. I'm just doing it with them and I'm processing with them. Because I'm also, when I'm discipling someone else, I'm processing my life with them too. And like, how how do you think I should go about this situation, especially in leadership that I'm in right now? Like, I'll give them scenarios of things that I'm going through. Like, how would you handle this situation? And what's happening is we're in the arena and we're doing it together. And so the how how do we find one then? I think that's a question that we always want to ask. Like, how do I find a mentor? How do I find someone to disciple me? You know, it it can seem complicated, it's not supposed to be complicated, but what does that look like? Uh and the first thing that I want to say is we live in a culture that's very me, me, me, me, me minded. Like, I had someone tell me the other day, you know, we're talking about this topic right here. And so I kind of gave him this spiel, and like, yes, I agree, and we need to find people that have gone through the minefields and that can help us avoid some of the mines in our lives. But he's like, No one has asked me yet. So that's why I don't have mentorship. And I just kind of smiled and looked at him, and I think he knew that this was coming, and I was like, man, how anti-gospel is that, bro? Like, nobody has pursued me in that. And I'm like, here's the deal when it comes to discipleship, we're asking someone to sacrifice some of their time so that they can pour into us, especially in the very beginning. This is what I want to say it is not the person that's discipling us's job to do that for us. It's our job to go out of our way and pursue people. And this is what I did. I'll just tell you what I did. A guy named Andrew Abraham is my mentor. Uh, we've been doing it since 2020. And in 2020, I've been in Cersei for a little over two and a half years. I was really struggling. I was really trying to figure out how to navigate a breakup. I was really trying to navigate how to love somebody really well that hurt me. I was really trying to navigate how to be a leader. And I realized I had a bunch of friends that were also in the same mindset and same season of life that I was in. And they were like, we don't know either. We're like the blind leading the blind, bro. We had no idea what we were doing. And I just felt the Lord tell me, man, Ben, you need to find someone who's been there, done that, someone that you that needs to pour into you. And the question that I asked myself is who do I know that I want to be like? You know, as Paul says in in first Corinthians, first Corinthians 11 1, he says, Follow me as I follow Christ. Imitate me, be imitators of me. Like be like me because I'm trying to be like Christ. And I thought about Andrew and I looked at the way his family was, I looked at the way he led his business, and I said, When I'm 50, when I'm 45, I think he was 45 and 50. At the time, I want to be like Andrew Abraham. I want to have a marriage like that. I want to have kids like that. I want to have leadership like this. I want to follow Jesus just like him. And so I called the man out of the blue and I said, Hey, this is gonna seem really random, but I was wondering if you would be able to mentor me. And he could have said no. People say no all the time. Like people ask me to mentor them all the time. And here's the deal I don't have the space to add any more people in my life. And he's like, How about let's let's let's do this, Ben. And this is another way he discipled me in this moment. He didn't say yes and he didn't say no. He said, Why don't we take a few days and why don't we pray about it? And we'll set an alarm, same time every single day. We'll stop what we're doing and we'll just start praying. And we did that for a week. And so that that was some discipleship. I'm like, that's really cool how he made prayer, a really big part of his decision making. And then he called me a week later and he said, Hey, I prayed about it. What are your thoughts on it? I said, Man, I still feel like you I really want you to disciple me. And he said, I feel that way too. And so we haven't met every single week, uh, especially over the last few years of being in this position and him becoming an elder and him, you know, his business growing. But man, we make it a priority for us to be able to meet with each other. And he encourages me and I share my life with him. And he shares what he's learning in scripture. He shares his struggles, he shares where he you know succeeded and checked, did that right. He also shares where he didn't succeed. And then he's able to give me sound advice biblically and through experience of how I need to follow Jesus. And so I have a personal mentor, I have pastoral mentors, I have a bunch of people that are discipling me on how to be a better pastor and how to be a better friend. I have a relationship mentor, you know, whenever that happens. You know, I have a lot of people that I'm surrounding myself with because I want to look more like Jesus. And so to to wrap this up, this is it, it can feel discombobulated and it can feel confusing. Are we called to disciple? Yes, absolutely, every single day. In fact, Russ and I, Russ the Bus, as I should say, sorry, Russ, for not saying your last name, your full name. Uh, Russ the Bus and I, we discipled each other before this podcast. We were talking about family, we were talking about jobs, we were talking about things that we're going to talk about here. And what we were doing, not knowing it, is that we were teaching each other and we were training each other to look more like Jesus. And so every single one of us are called to make disciples. We're called to share the gospel and make converts, is literally what that means. But then we're also called to teach them to obey all that Jesus has taught them to do. Like, because it's not natural for people to do. And so we're all doing it together. We're doing it in community, we're doing it in relationship, we're doing it with our families. But I also believe that there needs to be a specific person in our life that's mentoring us. And so, do I need to have a mentor to follow Jesus? I would say 100% absolutely, especially in the culture that we live in, that kind of isolates us and makes us super busy. Man, I think we need to be intentional with the people that we're surrounding ourselves with. And we need to be surrounding ourselves with people that we want to be like. Again, it's that that's that way in community, it's that way in mentorship because you show me your mentor and you show me the top five people in your life, and I'll show you what you'll look like in five months. And so, man, that's it. Do it, do I need one? Yes, I do believe you do. Is it a command? No. But do I think it's the wisest thing to do? Absolutely. And so, hey, and if you're listening to this podcast too, and you are a more mature believer, and you're not discipling someone, I really want to challenge you. And when I say mature believer, I don't mean age. I mean someone who's been a believer for a little while. Man, if you're not discipling someone, I really want to challenge you to look around and not wait for someone to come to you for you to go to them too. I think both of those parties need to be pursuing. So, do I need to have a mentor to follow Jesus? I would say 100% absolutely, because of a helpless look one like Jesus. And so that's the end of the podcast. Thank you guys for tuning in. I forgot to mention, and I apologize for it, I'm in the podcast studio as always with Rust the Bus. My name is Ben Pucas. If you guys have any questions, please reach out. We'd love to answer any and all of them that we can. And so thanks for tuning in. We will see you guys next week. And until then, Pucus and Rust the Bus. Out