Me too.

That’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. For the last three years, a friend of mine named Mike in California has helped play that role. I actively seek out breakfast and lunch meetings with leaders I admire in Nashville. I try to learn as much as I teach when I get to speak at conferences. But thus far, I haven’t had a tremendous amount of luck working with a local mentor.

I had two mentor situations in Atlanta that didn’t work out, but even then could see the potential need for that in my life. A friend of mine is in the mentor group that Michael Hyatt runs and he’s loved it! I’ve thought and prayed a lot about this particular subject, especially in the last 6 months.

But for me, finding a mentor has been a little bit awkward.

How do you possibly find a good mentor? How do you ask someone to be your mentor? Do you grab breakfast and then kind of casually say, “Hey, would you please pass the coffee, and speak into the five quadrants of my life-spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectually and financial?” Would that work? Of course not.

And I honestly believe in the importance of mentorships and how you can see them modeled in the Bible, but how do you structure one?

What do you talk about? What do you work on? How do you know it’s working? Is it like Paul and Timothy and I need to find someone who will walk insanely long distances with me and actually write me letters? So many questions.

Finding myself in that exact spot was a big part of the reason I was excited to partner with LifeWay on their new book, Mentor: How Along-the-Way Discipleship Will Change Your Life.

It’s a book by Chuck Lawless that offers a six week study exploring mentoring as a God given relationship where one growing believer encourages and equips another to reach his or her potential as a disciple of Christ. That last sentence is exactly what I was trying to say in the first six paragraphs of this post. And it’s not just a book. There’s a leader’s kit you can get with seven video segments,
a playlist, a downloadable leader guide, and more. (Click here to learn more about what’s available!)

From figuring out first century mentors to strategies for structuring a mentor relationship, there is a ton of great content from Chuck Lawless on the topic of mentoring.

And I even have 5 FREE copies to give away.

Want to win one? Here’s how!

1. Leave a comment on this post with an answer to the question, “Have you ever had a mentor or mentored someone?”

2. Twitter a link to this post with this link: http://bit.ly/oIe32T . If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can use Facebook. You can write your own or use this example. “Win a free copy of Chuck Lawless’ new book “Mentor” on @jonacuff’s blog http://bit.ly/oIe32T”

3. On Saturday August, 20 we will pick 5 winners. We’ll announce them the following week and you can email your address if you’re one of the winners.

That’s it.

So, have you ever had a mentor or mentored someone?

Recently in Dallas I was able to defeat my GPS. I wasn’t trying to. That was never my intent, but despite my best attempts at navigating a city that is full of 1 million U-turns, my GPS cried “Uncle.”

The lady on the machine didn’t actually say that, she’s far too polite to admit defeat, but I won. Or rather I got lost.

I shouldn’t have. Hertz has a navigation unit in rental cars called “NeverLost.” It started out that way in the morning, but by mid afternoon, the name should have been “SometimesLost.” By late afternoon, “OftenLost.” By that night? “AlwaysLost.”

I whupped that GPS, until finally I thought to myself, “The only thing this navigation system is good for is a GPS sermon illustration.”

Have you ever heard one of those? In 2009, pastors were contractually obligated to use a GPS sermon illustration. If they didn’t, they lost their mustache rights. What are those? The rights to grow a pastor mustache. Growing up, my dad (who is a pastor) always had a mustache. I just assumed you were aware of mustache rights.

Seems pretty self explanatory. I’m surprised you had to ask, given how clear that idea is. But what might not be so obvious is the GPS sermon illustration. Allow me to introduce you to:

The 3 Most Common GPS Sermon Illustrations

Keep Reading —›

Be honest. At the start of the year, was there anyone who said out loud, “You know what’s going to have a huge 2011? Hell.”

Probably not. But at this point, there’s no denying it. I can no longer ignore the cultural shift in conversation that’s been underfoot for months. (That’s my usual approach. Allow every other blog on the planet to talk about a subject. Wait until it’s gone cold and people are tired about hearing about it, then blog about it like it’s brand new. I’ll be talking about Spotify in about a year.)

But this topic isn’t cooling off. (Zinger!)

Hell has had a hot year! (Zinger 2!)

Rapper Nelly tried to warn us all those years ago about the rising temperature and the appropriate response we should all take. (Zinger 3!)

Hell is the real Inconvenient Truth! (Zinger 4 plus a nod to a second controversial subject, that’s a controversy sandwich!)

Alright, there. I’m done. I’m zingered out.

But the topic isn’t. In fact, both hell and heaven were top of mind for a lot of people this year.

Keep Reading —›

“Me, you and your iPhone doesn’t ‘equal spending time together.’” My wife has said this to me a few times. Maybe your spouse has said something similar.

I tend to keep what I write on Stuff Christians Like and JonAcuff.com in separate buckets because the writing has different goals. But occasionally I’ll call out something from my other blog I think you might dig. Recently I wrote a post called “3 perfectly easy ways to wreck your marriage with social media.”

These are things I’ve struggled with in my own marriage and seen friends wrestle with on the way to divorce.

Click here to read the post.

The other day I was on the verge of sending out a tweet when I hit pause. Not literally pause. I don’t have the iPhone 5 beta version that they gave out to a select group of bloggers/breakdancers/Newsies aficionados that is equipped with the new pause button every one is hyped about. I hit pause in my head.

What did the tweet I was concerned about say?

Keep Reading —›

I’m not sure where this phrase started. Although I have three friends who all individually swear they were the ones who created the hybrid word “chillaxing,” no one has claimed this phrase to the best of my knowledge.

Yet there it is, popping up like Canada Geese on golf courses. (Is there a more pretentious bird on the planet, by the way?) You can’t go on Facebook without seeing it. You can’t go on Twitter without it dancing across the screen. Friend after friend is using it. It’s practically social media punctuation at this point.

Just saying.

If you’ve never experienced it before, where do you live so that I can move there and experience this “Just saying-less utopia” you’ve discovered? I bet it’s in Colorado, seems like a lot of good stuff is in Colorado these days. But here’s how it works if you’ve never seen it wielded at the hand of a Christian:

Keep Reading —›