Training Session 1: Overview

Introduction

Movement Mentoring is a movement of God’s love taking place through Christ-centered mentoring in companies, churches, and neighborhoods all over America. Whether you work at Movement Mortgage (where this began) or not, we would love for you to join us in this movement of change so that you, your friends, and co-workers can receive the soul-stirring love of God.

What is Movement Mentoring?

Movement Mentoring is a 40-week mentoring process that exists to help you receive God’s love. It’s totally free, and all of the training sessions are online for you at https://movementmentoring.live.  You don’t have to commit to 40 weeks up front or ask others to make a lengthy commitment.  The training sessions are broken down into series that build upon one another.  While it is recommended for your group to work through them sequentially, you may also have good and necessary reasons to proceed in a different order (or even to add different material), which is fine.  We would simply encourage you to commit to one series at a time.  If mentoring adds value to your life, then keep coming back for the entire process as you work through the different series.

Why Does Movement Mentoring Exist?

Movement Mentoring exists to help you receive God’s love.  Period.  It’s not complicated. Picture what could happen in your family if you lived every single day like God loved you. Picture your team at work.  Now, come join us and make that picture a reality through Movement Mentoring.

Why are you interested in Movement Mentoring?

Have each person in the group share why they are considering Movement Mentoring.

Who is involved with Movement Mentoring?

People.  Real, ordinary, people. Some of these people have been following Jesus for many years; some are not yet followers of Jesus;  others are just beginning to follow Jesus.  For all of these groups of people, life can get lonely and isolated. What if each of us had a group of people to walk with us through the hills and valleys of life? Movement Mentoring is designed to help you form a community of people who are in your corner.  The mentoring groups typically consist of 6 or less people of the same gender.  These groups happen either in person or electronically through Zoom, Facetime, or any other electronic medium.

Why should you get involved with Movement Mentoring?

1. For You, not From You: Mentoring is something we want FOR you, not FROM you.  You were built to receive God’s love and have meaningful friendships; mentoring will help you experience these two deep human needs.
2. Answering How: For those of you who are followers of Jesus, you most likely have heard at some point that you are under orders to “Go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:20).  No if’s, and’s, or but’s. No caveats.  That’s the play.  Run it.  Jesus was clear.  The confusion, however, comes in the how.  How do we make disciples?  Most Christians want to do this, but few know how.  Movement Mentoring is designed to help you answer the how question.  It will give you a Biblical, reproducible process to make disciples with your co-workers, with a group of moms in the neighborhood, or with a group of people from church.
3. Jesus Did it: Jesus called all of us to go and make disciples because disciple-making was His plan to put the world to rights. Disciple-making was His best (and only) strategy.  That is why He made it His last words and that is why He spent so much time with a few men.  Think about the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus—He poured His life into twelve men, and out of those twelve He was even more intentional with three (Peter, James, and John). Movement Mentoring is about following both the command and the strategy of Jesus that changed the world: go and make disciples by being intentional with a few people. In other words, we want, as Stephen Covey says, to put first things first.

What are the possible outcomes at the end of the process?

• Deeper Faith, hope, and love: Without question, if you commit to the mentoring process, you will have a deeper faith, hope, and love at the end of the process.  For most of you, that faith, hope, and love will be rooted and established in Christ; for a minority, these may not be anchored in Christ, but your faith, hope, and love will undoubtedly be stretched, which is a beautiful thing.

• Mentor: Many of you will be so impacted by the process that you will have a desire to do for others what was done for you.  As the process progresses, you will be equipped to become a mentor for others and take the process and multiply it in the lives of others.  That’s the goal!
• Gather:  Some of you may not feel quite ready to mentor others at the end of the process, but you will be ready to gather a group of friends and walk through the process with another leader.  Praise God!

What if I don’t know enough about the Bible?

Don’t worry about it. Anyone and everyone is welcome, regardless of your Bible knowledge or belief in God. Also, if you are considering leading a group, know that facilitation, not teaching, is the key.  Mentors are not Bible teachers–they are facilitators of a discussion, which is why we give you discussion questions after each training session.

Why do you call it mentoring and not disciple-making?

As you have probably noticed, Jesus used the word disciple and we’re using the term mentor. Why?   Because many in the business world have no idea what a disciple is (or want to be one), while almost all have some concept of what a mentor is (and want one!). So we’re going with the word mentor, though you could just as easily substitute the word disciple.

How to start Movement Mentoring?

Whether you are a business owner, an employee, a church member, or just a person interested in mentoring, you can join this movement of God’s love through mentoring.  Here are the steps:

1. Check out the resources available to you on our website at https://movementmentoring.live/
2. Contact Niki or David at niki.noel@movement.com or david.borrelli@movement.com
   • The process is free and available to you on our website, but we’d love to follow your progress, share with you best practices and things we’re learning, and serve you in any way we can.
   • If you’re beginning the process, please contact us so we can celebrate what God is doing with you and let you know what is happening in this incredible movement of God’s love.
3. Mentoring Prayer Journals
   • You can purchase the Mentoring Prayer Journals we produced to help you establish a systematic Bible Reading Plan that you will read together as a group.  This plan follows a simple way to pray that enables you to hear God’s voice speaking to you through the Scriptures.
   •  To order journals, email niki.noel@movement.com
4. Develop a system of care and training for your leaders (for those who don’t work at Movement Mortgage)

1. • Leaders need a vision, a plan, and a person caring for them.  We’ll provide the vision and the plan in such a way that brings both form and freedom to innovate, but you will need to be the person who comes alongside your leaders to care for them and develop them.
   • At a minimum, we suggest a monthly call for all the leaders.  During this monthly call, we have followed a format of celebration, confusion, and challenge.   We celebrate what God is doing in the group; we share things creating confusion; finally, we discuss and pray for challenges we are facing.  Initially, you may want to join us in one of our monthly calls and eventually start hosting your own as you scale the process.

5. Shirts and hats

1. •  One of many ways we are building a culture of mentoring is through t-shirts and hats. You can purchase these at the Movement Gear store: https://store.ecompanystore.com/movement/Shop/#/
   • Once you are on the site, type in “Movement Mentoring” to find the mentoring gear.

6. Create a Culture, Not a Curriculum

• • While the curriculum is important, what is far more important is the culture.  A mentoring culture says, “Mentoring is who we are and this is what we do.”  Mentoring isn’t a curriculum, not is it another program–it’s who we are and what we do.
  • To create a culture of mentoring, we would strongly encourage you to develop a top down approach where the most influential leaders are leading from the front as mentors.

7. Branding (for those who don’t work at Movement Mortgage)

• On the one hand, you can brand your mentoring process however you like.  If you want to insert your company or church name, go for it. This is not about a name or a brand—it’s about a movement of God’s love, so call it whatever you like.
•  On the other hand, we’ve found there is tremendous power in one unifying brand.  Here are some reasons why:
  • When you insert your company or church name, people in other companies or churches become hesitant (sadly) to utilize the mentoring process because they don’t think it is for them.
  • The name Movement symbolizes what we most want to see happen: a movement of Gods’ love sweeping through your company and church and into neighbors and neighborhoods all over.
  • Pragmatically, you will have all the collateral materials (journals, t-shirts, hats, etc.) ready to go and you won’t need to do any graphic design work to prepare these elements that help you build a culture of mentoring.

Key Markers for the Mentoring Process

•  Off-Site Dinner: In the first few weeks of the mentoring process, we encourage you to have an off-site dinner.  Some groups with pre-existing relationships expand on this and do an overnight gathering. Most, however, will begin with a dinner in a home (which is best) or in a restaurant.  The goal is to have each person share a 20-minute version of their story (not testimony).  Christians have testimonies—people have stories, and we want to welcome people into this process who are not yet Christians.  Encourage leaders to be as vulnerable as possible as they share their stories to create a community where we boast in weakness so that Christ’s power may be made perfect in and through our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
• Vision Trip:  The mentoring process is designed to help you put your faith into action.  As you receive God’s love, you will naturally be compelled to share it.  With that in mind, we would highly encourage you to go on a vision trip (or mission trip) to see and experience the love of God in a cross-cultural setting in the United States or abroad.  The goal is for each of you to activate love in a tangible way together as a mentoring group.  Going on a vision trip is not something you need to commit to in order to participate in Movement Mentoring, but if you are interested in acquiring about vision trips at Movement or how to set them up, then reach out to… michelle.mcneill@movementfoundation.org
• Ongoing Celebration: Ongoing celebration is vital for all of us (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).  Celebrate! Celebrate! Celebrate!  Learn to celebrate small wins each week.  Celebrate in the monthly check-ins with leaders.  And plan a celebratory evening to end the 40-week process.  If you work for Movement Mortgage, we’ll plan a celebration for you; if not, then find a way to celebrate everyone who participated in Movement Mentoring.  You will have so much to celebrate at the end of 40 weeks so get ready! 

About the Curriculum

• The curriculum is designed for believers and unbelievers to process the essentials of following Jesus so that they will experience God’s love and develop a community of friends who are with them on their journey of life.  The secret is not finding or producing the silver-bullet curriculum (which our curriculum most certainly is not). Information, although important, is not what ultimately transforms. Jesus transforms, and He does so in the context of a community built around intentional relationships committed to loving one another and receiving the life-giving love of God. That is not to say the curriculum is unimportant. Jesus says we are called to “make disciples, teaching them to observe” all of Christ’s commands (Matthew 28:20). Teaching, therefore, assumes content; so yes, the curriculum and the content matter, but only in so far as they help create a culture of Christ-centered mentoring.
• The curriculum is written by Stephen Phelan.  Stephen attended the University of Virginia for both undergraduate and law school, and then received his Masters of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.  After seminary, Stephen planted churches in San Diego until he achieved his lifelong dream of being the pastor of a mortgage company (hopefully you are laughing). Part of the reason God called him to be a pastor in the business community is because He is passionate about people experiencing the love of Christ and sharing it in the business community.  His desire is to see the Church really be the Church in the business community in such a way that an awakening movement of God’s Spirit is created.

What will the mentoring process look like? For the most part, it will consist of small groups of roughly 5-6 persons of the same gender meeting weekly.  The process in total lasts 40 weeks, but, remember, your commitment is only one week at a time.  We have also sub-divided the 40 weeks into smaller 6-8 week series, so your group may opt to do the series in a different order based on certain things your group is facing, which is fine.  There is, however, a progression to the process and we would recommend you walk through it in the order we have it laid out.

Format of Weekly Meetings

Each meeting will last one hour and consist of three parts:

(1) Looking Back,

(2) Looking Up, and

(3) Looking Ahead.

1) Looking Back (Accountability & Connecting Relationally) 20 Minutes The mentoring process isn’t designed for you to acquire a bunch of new information, but rather, to ignite a movement of Christ-centered mentors who are contagious with the love of God and walking in community.   Each week should begin with this in mind by looking back at how each member of the group did during the past week. The first goal is to provide accountability. Every lesson is designed to leave you with a takeaway for the one thing you are committing to doing for the week. The goal is simple: love DOES.  We want doers, not just hearers! The second goal is connecting relationally so that you can love one another and build meaningful friendships.

2) Looking Up (Bible Lesson) 20 Minutes Each week you will spend time reading the lesson and doing the discussion questions in advance of the meeting. Therefore, when the group meets, you will work through a few selected questions and discuss how the material applies in your life.  The goal isn’t to cover every question but rather to allow the Holy Spirit to direct your group to the part of the training session that is most relevant for your group.

3) Looking Forward (Practice, Goal-Setting, Vision-Casting, and Prayer) 20 Minutes

a) Practice

Some lessons will be more conducive than others to practice together as a group, but know that practicing what we’re learning is critical to the success of igniting a movement of Christ-like mentors who are mature and multiplying. No great team wins games without practice. The goal is simple: love DOES.  We want doers, not just hearers!

b) Goal-Setting

LOVE DOES!  It really does.  Love is a verb.  Love acts.  Jesus said that his disciples were “those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:21).  Therefore, at the end of each lesson each member of the mentoring group should formulate one or two central goals that the Holy Spirit is putting on their heart to help them love and value God and people.

c) Vision-Casting

Vision-casting is a way of life – continually helping brothers and sisters see the potential of who they are in Christ and what God wants to do in and through them. Since we live in a fallen world, it is easy for us to forget the spiritual reality and destiny God has prepared for us. To change that we must spur one another on to walk by faith, not sight. Most often, this happens through the training sessions, but leaders should feel free to insert vision-casting vignettes as they feel led.

d) Prayer

Foundational to a movement of God is prayer.  We’ll close each week praying for one another.

Mentoring Commitments 

1. As long as I believe the group is adding value to my life, I commit to attending the group and coming prepared, apart from traveling or emergencies with families.
2. I am committing to keeping anything that is shared absolutely confidential.
3. I will pray for the others in my group.

Things to Do for Week 2

• Read and answer the Questions for Week 2 Life’s Big Questions (Is There a God).
• Read the Spiritual Diagnostic provided by Tim Keller that is provided below in this document.  Discuss it with your spouse OR close friend who knows you well.  Tell them where you think you are and see if they agree.  Then come ready to share your reflection with the group when you have your off-site gathering.
• Pray for the members of your group.
• Pick a date for the off-site dinner.

Spiritual Diagnostic Tool on Prayer by Tim Keller (For Week 2)

I often ask Christians to evaluate their situation with regard to prayer by using a metaphor. Imagine that your soul is a boat, a boat with both oars and a sail. In this case here are four questions:

Are you “sailing”? Sailing means you are living the Christian life with the wind at your back. God is real to your heart. You often feel his love. You see prayers being answered. When studying the Bible, you regularly see remarkable things and you sense him speaking to you. You sense people around you being influenced by the Spirit through you.

Are you “rowing”? Rowing means you are finding prayer and Bible reading to be more a duty than a delight. God often (though not always) seems distant, and the sense of his presence is fairly rare. You don’t see many of your prayers being answered. You may be struggling with doubts about God and yourself. Yet despite all this, you refuse self-pity or the self-righteous pride that assumes you know better than God how your life should go. You continue to read the Bible and pray regularly, you attend worship and reach out and serve people despite the inner spiritual dryness.

Are you “drifting”? Drifting means that you are experiencing all the conditions of rowing—spiritual dryness and difficulties in life. But in response, instead of rowing, you are letting yourself drift. You don’t feel like approaching and obeying God, so you don’t pray or read. You give in to the self-centeredness that naturally comes when you feel sorry for yourself, and you drift into self-indulgent behaviors to comfort yourself, whether it be escape eating and sleeping, sexual practices, or whatever else.

Are you “sinking”? Eventually your boat, your soul, will drift away from the shipping lanes, as it were—and truly lose any forward motion in the Christian life. The numbness of heart can become hardness because you give in to thoughts of self-pity and resentment. If some major difficulty or trouble were to come into your life, it would be possible to abandon your faith and identity as a Christian altogether.

In this metaphor we see that there are some things we are responsible for, such as using the means of grace—the Bible, prayer, and church participation—in a disciplined way. There are many other things we do not have much control over—such as how well the circumstances in our lives are going as well as our emotions. If you pray, worship, and obey despite negative circumstances and feelings, you won’t be drifting, and when the winds come up again, you will move ahead swiftly. On the other hand, if you do not apply the means of grace, you will at best be drifting, and if storms come into your life, you might be in danger of sinking.

In any case—pray no matter what. Praying is rowing, and sometimes it is like rowing in the dark—you won’t feel that you are making any progress at all. Yet you are, and when the winds rise again, and they surely will, you will sail again before them.

Prayer, Timothy Keller, p.259-260

Mentor Training Sessions

Week 1  Overview

Week 2 Life’s Big Questions (Is There a God?)

Week 3  Life’s Big Questions (Will Religion or Irreligion Help With Life’s Big Questions?)

Week 4  Life’s Big Questions (Can I Forgive & Be Forgiven?)

Week 5  Life’s Big Questions (If God is Real, How Do I Connect with Him?)

Week 6  Life’s Big Questions (Did Christ’s Resurrection Happen?)

Week 7  Life’s Big Questions (Is My Story Part of a Bigger Story?)

Week 8  (The Foundation) The Spirit Filled Life

Week 9  (The Foundation) Union With Christ

Week 10  (The Foundation) A Model for Prayer

Week 11  (The Foundation) Practicing Prayer

Week 12  (The Foundation) Knowing the Will of God (Upstream)

Week 13  (The Foundation) Knowing the Will of God (Downstream)

Week 14  (The Foundation) Church

Week 15  (BLESS Rhythms) Begin with the Bible

Week 16  (BLESS Rhythms) Love God & People

Week 17  (BLESS Rhythms) Love Yourself

Week 18  (BLESS Rhythms) Eat with a Purpose

Week 19  (BLESS Rhythms) Sabbath Rest

Week 20  (BLESS Rhythms) Sacrificial Giving (Greed)

Week 21  (BLESS Rhythms) Sacrificial Giving (Gaining, Not Robbing)

Week 22  (Sharing God’s Love) Obstacles

Week 23  (Sharing God’s Love) Getting Ready

Week 24  (Sharing God’s Love) Prayer, Power, and a Plan

Week 25 (Practical Necessities) Technology: Improvement Or Impediment?

Week 26 (Practical Necessities) Tech Commitments

Week 27  (Practical Necessities) Preparing to Handle Conflict

Week 28 (Practical Necessities) Handling Conflict

Week 29 (Practical Necessities) Forgiveness

Week 30 (Practical Necessities)  The Gift of Adversity Part 1

Week 31 (Practical Necessities)  The Gift of Adversity Part 2

Week 32 (Practical Necessities) Overcoming Anxiety

Week 33 (Becoming) Joyful

Week 34 (Becoming) Happy

Week 35 (Becoming) Thankful

Week 36 (Becoming) Humble

Week 37 (Becoming) 2nd Mile Servant Leaders

Week 38 (Becoming) Merciful & Just

Week 39 Integrating Faith and Work- The Hurdles

Week 40 Integrating Faith and Work- A New Model

Week 41 Developing a Life Plan- Concluding Training Session

What Other Businesses Are Saying About Movement Mentoring

Movement Mentoring provided our company with a very tangible way to love our people and see people come to know the love of Jesus.  How do we fulfill the great commission at work?  Movement Mentoring has given me that answer.

-Jared Olshefski – President Quality Builders Warranty

Movement Mentoring has completely changed the way I interact in the world.  It helped me make an impact; it helped me break down the culturally constructed divide between faith and work.  We are excited to take Movement Mentoring company-wide so that our employees at FHG, INC., can receive God’s love, develop  meaningful relationships at work, and live out God’s purposes for their lives.

-Ben Wright – President, FHG Oil & Gas Construction

The Dream: A Movement of God

• Billy Graham said he believed the next great move of God was going to happen through believers in the workplace.  Why not now? Why not through a group of people like us whose cups are running over with the love of God and spilling over into everyone around us?
• If you want to start the mentoring process yourself OR get your church or business involved, then contact niki.noel@movement.com
• If you want to check out the mentoring process, please visit our website at www.movementmentoring.live

GOING DEEPER

For all of us, time is a precious resource. You may not feel you have the bandwidth or margin to read much of anything beyond the lessons. And as we’ve stressed the heart of this vision is how we learn (life on life) not what we learn (the curriculum). That being said, for each training session we’ve provided a short, annotated, “going deeper” of Top Five resources if you want to take a deeper dive on any topic. These resources were compiled by my friend, Rankin Wilbourne, pastor, author, and a former corporate banker who understands the demands of marketplace faithfulness.

TRAINING SESSION 1 – Overview

Insourcing: Bringing Discipleship Back to the Local Church by Randy Pope is an excellent introduction to life on life discipleship. While Pope’s book is written to equip the local church, the principles are certainly translatable.

 

Vulnerability is essential to a transformational small group gathering. For a short introduction on the power of vulnerability, there’s no better place to start than Brene Brown’s TED talk: The Power of Vulnerability.

 

If there is one book on the importance of discipleship or mentoring that every Christian should read it is Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy.

 

If you want a much shorter quick read of Willard’s vision of discipleship, check out this essay.

 

Transforming Discipleship by Greg Ogden is just simply the best place to start for a Biblically grounded, practically minded blueprint for how discipleship/ mentoring should take place.