Remembering a Mentor

I have been privileged to know a lot of Methodist preachers in my days.  When I was growing up in parsonages, they would come as visiting revival preachers.  In the years after ordination some of those preachers would come and do the same in the place where I was serving.  One of those was Bill Dupree.  I mentioned him today because I heard late in the afternoon that he had died.  As a young aspiring preacher, Bill hired me to work for him one summer as a youth worker.  It was the beginning of a mentor relationship that I treasured all the years of my ministry.     

All of us have people in our past who filled the role that Bill Dupree filled for me.  By listening to him, I learned much and by watching, I learned even more.  When we look behind us, we see folks like him.  Some may have been preachers, some may have been a neighbor down the road, or a teacher who would not give up on us.  All of the ones we remember as our mentors were folks who saw in us what we were unable to see in ourselves and were patient and persistent enough to call it out for us to see.     

And, what is also true is the fact that there are some people in our past who look to us in the same way we look toward the important influences in our past.  It is not that we set out to do fill that role in their lives, but that God in His grace worked through us in such a way as to impact the spiritual life of one young and seeking after His ways.  The one thing we never know when we start out with Jesus is how our life will touch the life of another who is on the road behind us.  And while we may think such could not possibly be true for us, it is.  Even as Bill touched my life, I have touched others, and so have we all touched those whom God has put out there on the road with us.