by Lyle Griner
OUR JOB: As church leaders we are in a position where we get to facilitate intentional faith and life connections. As much as we would like faith conversations and sharing in faith practices to just happen they require our nudges. Maybe our job title should be FAITH CONNECTOR. It certainly can be one of our top goals.
We already know that parents and grandparents are the primary influencers of faith. We also know that partnering adults and Peer Ministry youth effectively model and mentor faith in both formal (programed) and informal (every day life) ways. Faith connecting is a form of MENTORING.
A POWERFUL MEMORY: It is such a significant aha memory! Picture this. A high school candle group sitting around the flame, a Peer Ministry young person leading the discussion. “What do you remember from confirmation?” he asks. Silence. A few claim they remember nothing. “Nothing!” Three years and they remember nothing! Finally one youth says, “You know what I do remember? I remember a lot of things my mentor and I talked about. One by one all the youth started sharing things they remembered from their lenten one-on-one mentor conversations.
MENTORING-LIKE: Some modeling and mentoring conversations are informal. People connect during the flow of every day life. Others are in the midst of programs. These range from a series of and planned one-on-one traditional mentoring meetings to one time facilitated conversations. We get to teach the skills and create the opportunities for faith mentoring experiences.
ANAM CARA:Think about these mentoring style conversations as Anam Cara! It’s a Celtic phrase meaning Friend of Your Soul! Let that soak in! What a cool term! Anam is for soul and cara is for friend. In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an Anam Cara. Read about it, go deeper with it in the book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdomby Irish poet, priest and philosopher, John O’Donohue.
Here are some teasers from O’Donohue to whet your appetite!
- “Friendship is the nature of God.”
- “Where you are understood, you are home.”
- “One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen.”
- “There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your other. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship.”
You also have to appreciate this gem of a quote from the philosopher, Aristotle who says that,
“Friendship is the art of holding up a mirror to each other’s souls. Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons.”
MENTORING, being a soul-connecting friend, mirroring each other’s souls, having intentional conversations, is all about daring to ask the deeper questions and to love the sifting and exploring thoughts that flow out. My mentor, Barbara Varenhorst, said about people’s fears of asking questions that that seem too prying, “The danger is not in asking overly personal questions, but that we go through life with no one ever asking the real questions that matter most to our lives.”
Our work may be less about strategizing programs and more about helping people discover the richness of faith connections. Blessing as you ponder more of your job as a faith connectors.