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As I reflect on my own ministry I realize that mentoring pairs are always forming, both formally and informally. For more than a year I never knew that the sexton was a musician and a poet. William Garcia cleaned the church on Saturdays, a quiet and competent high school kid. He was as reliable in his church going as in his cleaning. A year into our polite relationship we finally had a real conversation. Our church was thinking of starting worship in the Spanish language. I began trying out the idea in a series of one-to- one sessions with some of our Hispanic members. One day I finally listened to William Garcia. We sat for over an hour in the church basement and I listened as he told me about his passion for the violin, his love of poetry, the jumble of his family life, his effort to hammer out an education and musical excellence from the local school system. Looming over our conversation, as it does for most city kids, was the street. I asked: "Will you meet with me each week for a month and teach me about what your life is like as a Colombian immigrant and student in NY public schools? And, oh yes, and will you play the violin in church sometime?" He smiled. The next Sunday he played "Beautiful Savior" and made a lot of people cry. It was not mawkish, nor sentimental, but played with clean, lyrical grace and the confidence of faith. William and the other Hispanic members became my mentors in mission.. The process of mentoring led to new initiatives in neighborhood ministry. When we began our Spanish language worship, it was William who accompanied us on the hymns and who wrote the prayers for that liturgy in language of poetic splendor and trust in God. He played, prayed, and led because one day I stopped ignoring him and listened. It is a critical ministry of the church to listen, to challenge, to invite. The church's servant ministry must extend the altar, the font and the Word into the world where William Garcia and others wait with their music inside them. I think of Ray, a real estate broker whose child attended our parish nursery school. When he began occasionally attending our church we made a mentoring agreement. He gave advice on affordable housing. I listened and helped him address some of his deep spiritual hunger and to find and act on a noble vision. Out of our six mentoring lunches in a Cuban restaurant in New Jersey the church gained a housing activist and school board chair, and Ray gained a sense of purpose and renewal of faith. Fifteen mentoring sessions with Eric provided him instruction leading to confirmation, and gave me insight into sharing the Gospel with one who is deaf, finding ways to communicate biblical truths and words in a way that would connect to his non-hearing world. Mentoring relationships strengthened my pastoral ministry and helped me grow in the ability to be both recipient and giver of grace-filled wisdom. Ten weekly lunches in a Queens diner with a community organizer taught me much about the nature of faith in the public arena. He helped me understand power, self-respect, and the importance of planned meetings with mayors and governors. I experienced the exhilaration of exploring the public dimensions of baptism, Eucharist and the Biblical drama. Monthly meetings with an African American pastor became an exchange of wisdom and a lesson in effective community organization and the way faith flowers in the Black community. Crisis intervention with a young man from Brazil grew into a series of four mentoring sessions in which his life stabilized and I was given entry into network of Brazilian families who eventually joined our church. In each of these examples it is the relationship itself, a gift of God, which shines forth like a radiant gem. Each have been gifts of God, signs of Christ's presence. You might provide your own list. Think about it. Most of the important decisions we
make are done in one-to-one contexts: getting married, changing jobs, making a large
donation of time or money, moving, joining a church, having a baby, choosing a school. If
I had used the church's common method for getting volunteers or filling church council
positions as my method for getting married (newsletters, bulletin announcements) I would
still be single! Yet we lose so many opportunities to develop relationships because we do
not have a plan to build them.
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