Honor, Devotion, Courage, and Love
The Sacred Duty of Mentorship
An organized mentorship process represents the future of any organization. The mentors of the program are its genetic essence passed down to the next generation. Even in a colossus government organization like NASA, we also had a well-designed mentorship program. It taught mentorship and the basics of the process of passing down our heritage, while the memories and the history lived in still-beating hearts who drove into the office each day to share with the next generation of new NASA-reens.
The modern Templars are no different. In NASA or in the Templars, when you hear the doomsday words “aging out,” the next pair of words should be “Mentorship Program.” If not, then the “Decommissioning Plan” is the only other viable alternative. Why the radical difference in planning for the future of any organization? Because the wisdom and energy that made the organization great at its beginning are lost if all that wisdom and energy are not shared with those who assume the watch after they depart. Can you imagine a watch-stander not thoroughly briefing the incoming duty officer?
Mentorship teaches honor, devotion, courage, and love.
The mentor is the model of honoring the essence of the organization and why it exists. Is it worth expending the inestimably valuable hours, minutes, and days of our lives so that our passion and ideals for the Kingdom lives on?
Among other things, the mentor teaches devotion to duty. If it is worth the slices of our lives, why would we not give it our best and our all while there? Of all motivations, devotion speaks most directly to the power of the calling.
And even in the most lowly and uncelebrated calling, there is the aspect of individual courage which cannot be ignored. Every assembly of humans, just like any mechanical system, is naturally influenced by entropy – the tendency to devolve into chaos. The only thing that stands between the mechanical system’s permanent breakdown or the collapse of the human organization; which is likewise always tending toward collapse, is the wisdom to see chaos for its nature, and the courage to struggle mightily against it to keep the system running as designed. And, as any leader will attest, one can possess all the wisdom in the universe, but to do the right thing at the right time requires personal courage for which there is no acceptable substitute. For the typically unwitting agents of chaos will throw up a siege mound… Every. Single. Time.
How does all this get taught? By hours, days, weeks, and years of one-on-one personal mentorship. Mentorship is certainly not merely an exit briefing. It is a primary focus of career on-the-job training. Mentorship is sometimes by divine appointment, but its most effective application comes through a deliberate, thoughtful design.
In my case, it was by multiplied divine appointment! My mentor from the beginning of my Templar calling has been His Excellency, Brother Bob Miller. I can truthfully say that were it not for his divinely inspired mentorship, I would certainly not be in a Templar today. It was Bob who taught me what it truly means to actually live the life of a Templar Knight each day.
My mentor is in touch with me regularly. He calls me, emails me, and we share lunch frequently. He has become an essential part of my life. He has become one of our family members. And he openly shares the fact that he also loves me as a family member each time we meet.
I cannot help but admire in my deepest being his life’s experiences in the Middle East from his youngest years, and his very personal day-to-day devotion to the Christians in the Holy Land. I know that it was God Who placed the Millers and the Chamberlands together for a reason that has everything to do with His tiny remnant in the very place where Christ’s feet trod.
Bob Miller has given up a part of his life for me so that I can be an authentic Templar doing Jesus’ work in the very place where He will soon reign over all.
Instead of joining another group and merely doing good works, I have been privileged by God’s hand to understand why I have this calling and how to live it each day. Bob Miller has taken the time and given up a part of his life to teach me – to demonstrate – Templar honor, devotion, courage, and love.
To that end, at our Temple Church Business Meeting on Sunday, 21 April, I am going to initiate a Priory Mentorship Program and would like the Priory to vote on its inception. Let us share our genetic essence as Templars among one another, so that it will never be lost. It is our responsibility to leave others with indelible memories of honor, devotion, courage, and love, plus all that blessed time spent together, one-on-one, making it happen.
It is, after all, our sacred duty to one another and to those who will soon join us in our righteous quest. But most especially it is our solemn responsibility to that tiny remnant that so depends on each of us as they cling day by day to a most perilous life in that holy place where Jesus walked – and will soon walk again.