Hi, this is Chris Hobbs.

I don’t know why you’re listening to this, but since you are, let’s talk about mentoring.

I’m at the age where I feel like, at least on the work side of the equation, most of my mentoring relationships, I’m the mentor.

I mean, that’s appropriate and where you’d hope to get by the time you’re—I mean, I’m getting old.

I’m almost 50.

Having done this a while, it’s good to be in those situations.

You want to be able to help bring up the next generation in your area and start to impart some of that knowledge, to be a force multiplier, right?

To be able to bring people along so that things that you may have done, now there are other people who can also do it, and just to bring those people along, whether they’re in your area or not, because young people need that encouragement.

Younger people need that encouragement and development and so on.

But it also means that at times, as you get to that point, you start to miss the relationships from the other side, the people who can still help bring you wisdom and insight that you didn’t have before.

This is in mind because very recently I had a work call with somebody on the other side of that equation, and it was just delightful, and it was so helpful and encouraging to sit down and to have half an hour with somebody who has been here longer than I have, who’s been at the organization longer than I have, who has insight into dynamics that I don’t have and could both help me see my way through some of those and could encourage me in the places where maybe I’m struggling a little bit too.

It was fascinating to me that the two of us, as senior, experienced, long-time people in the positions we’re in, both would admit to feeling kind of the imposter syndrome of, we’re here and why are we really in these roles, and are we really keeping up and doing what the company needs, what our projects need, that kind of thing.

So I’m going to assume that we aren’t both just miserable imposters, but that we’re both just legitimately working and trying to understand our way through that.

And so maybe there was some, some like help in both directions there, but it was really nice to be on the receiving end of a little bit of that in a way that I haven’t been in a while.

I want to bring that outside of the workplace life too.

One of the things I found so encouraging in the church I’ve been in the last two or three years is one or two senior people.

Now, I am one of the younger ones in our church.

The nature of this Episcopal church that I’ve joined is, sadly, we probably don’t bring the average age down so far, but it’s been great to have some more senior people within the congregation.

And I can think of a couple in particular who have, whether they know it or not, served a really important role already in my life the last couple years in just the encouragement and the feedback and the mentoring in ways that they may not even realize they’re doing, but that have encouraged me in ways that, honestly, I didn’t get a lot at previous churches, even when I was a lot younger and in theory the mentor pool would have been bigger.

So if you’re one of those people and you’re listening to this, thank you so much.

If you’re someone who has the potential to be that kind of person, and this is, I get to preach to myself now too, find those people to do that.

Like send that email, give that feedback that’s that encouraging word.

Be willing to just share the wisdom that you have with those other people.

This is how we build community, how we build friendships, relationships, how we show God’s love to each other and build each other up in very practical and very, very helpful ways.

We’ll talk later.