Biblical Role Models and Mentors.

Lent is a great time to follow a person in the Bible and learn from them.

Do you have a role model or mentor?

If you don’t, now is a great time to start looking for one.

I’ve been blessed with many throughout my life. Some who chose me and others I sought out. Mentoring became serious for me in college thanks to a professor fondly known as “Coach.” The only thing was that Coach didn’t coach sports; he coached people in life. Every summer, he would go on extensive hikes and often took students to go along with him. I think those were the ones who first gave him his nickname. I never had the opportunity to hike with Coach, but my friend and I did borrow his gear so we could summit Mt. Marcy, NY the summer of my 21st year. After college I stayed and worked for the University, and Coach and I met for coffee every week - my own “Fridays with Drury.” We talked about marriage (incredibly helpful as a newlywed!), finances, becoming a pastor, and discerning God’s voice. Coach even helped me with my application to Duke Divinity School, a door that forever changed the trajectory of my life. He played a huge part in my life and I will forever be thankful for the investment he made in me.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had another mentor who was shaping who I was, who I was becoming, and the type of life I wanted to live. That person was Moses.

In the Bible, Moses is credited with writing the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Torah. Most famously, however, he is known for leading God’s people out of the Pharaoh’s captivity, through the wilderness, and to The Promised Land. Thanks, Charlton Heston!

Throughout his life, Moses learned important lessons about patience, the need to delegate, and how there are always people in life we can lean upon to get us through tough times. Moses, like me, struggled with feelings of inadequacy and doubt. In one of the more famous stories, God calls to Moses from a burning bush. Moses starts off great: Here I am! But upon hearing God say that he had been chosen to lead God’s people out of slavery, Moses quickly corrected the Lord: Who am I that should go? I have never been eloquent with words. I am slow of speech and tongue.¹ Moses basically tells God, Listen, Buddy, You’ve got the wrong person!

I’ll never forget the speech I had to give in front of my classmates in high school. I was so nervous and my hands sweat so much that the ink on my notecards smeared and I couldn’t read what I had written. I tied for the lowest grade in the class! It was an absolute trainwreck!

I knew at the time that God was calling me into pastoral ministry, and I also knew that God had chosen the wrong person.

But just as God called Moses and helped him become the leader he turned out to be, so too has God helped and continues to help me become the person God wants me to be.

I am so thankful Moses has been my biblical mentor these past 26 years!

I’ve recently realized, however, that it is time for me to find a new mentor. And now, with Lent just ahead, is a great time to start looking for one. This week is a great week to pick a person in the Bible to follow and learn from throughout the Lenten season.

For me, that person is going to be Joshua - the one who led the Israelites into The Promised Land.

The thing about Moses’s journey that I have always struggled with was that he never got to go into The Promised Land. He got to see it before he died, but he never got to cross the Jordan River and enter in to it. Moses led people through forty excruciating years in the wilderness, but it was not his calling to help write the next chapter with God’s people.

That part of Moses’s life has frustratingly resonated with me as well. In twelve years as a pastor, and for a whole host of good and valid reasons, I have pastored three different congregations. And, it was announced yesterday, that our Bishop has appointed me to lead a new congregation starting this summer.

In my United Methodist denomination, ordained elders are itinerant, meaning we are appointed, or sent, to serve at the discretion of the bishop. This practice goes back to our beginnings when John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, traveled “from town to town in England setting up Methodist societies.” This practice also ties-in with Jesus’ own life (Luke 9:58) and the missionaries of Acts. Today’s pastors are similarly sent to serve churches with the goal/hope of pairing pastors’ gifts and needs with a church’s gifts and needs.

Like any system, it has its pros and cons. I am at a point in my life, however, that I am hoping to get the chance to lead ‘on the other side of the river.’ To be sure, there were ups and downs in The Promised Land for Joshua and the Israelites, and there will be for me as well. But there is something to be said of the opportunity to lay down roots.

How about you? Do you have a Biblical Mentor from whom you are learning? If not, now is a great time to pick one to follow through the season of Lent!

Here are a few you may consider: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, Deborah, Esther, Samson, Solomon, Hezekiah, James, John, Peter, Paul, Mary, Martha, Lydia. So many! Pick one and give it a try this Lent!

1. Exodus 3-4.