In the movie Pope John Paul II there is this scene with the young Karol Wojtyla (played by Carey Elwes) where he’s hanging out with a group of young adults/teenagers, canoeing, hiking, teaching and talking about faith. They’re all happy looking up to him with respect and I think, “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice.” Wouldn’t it be nice if mentoring and teaching students in their faith was as organic as that scene portrays. Unfortunately it rarely happens that way, because I feel when it comes to the heavy stuff, some students stop listening because they are overwhelmed and when it’s about making it fun, my credibility as a faith role model diminishes. Why does this happen? It’s due to a lack of comfort that I sometimes have with what we are teaching and how deep we are willing to go with our students.
Today I’m meeting with our Children’s and Membership Directors to discuss the path we want to lead people on when it comes to discipleship. What are our steps? What is important to teach and develop? Good questions right? It’s a difficult battle because you always want to find the perfect path and we can all say that’s God’s path; however, we aren’t perfect people, so creating the perfect path for everyone is impossible. But still you have to pick a path and to get people on it and to travel it, it’s about the relationships you surround them with and build with them. And to create that path you have to pick out the characteristics of a disciple that you want them to develop.
So if you could grow disciples, what characteristics would you want them to develop?