Who is our neighbor?

Reflections on Mentor Training Sessions @ Newsong Church in Irvine, CA

Last month Newsong Church in Irvine, California trained 24 mentors to begin mentoring youth in their community in Orange County. We’re excited to share the story of this faith community with you as they take the next step in answering God’s call to care for the fatherless in their city.

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“Who’s our neighbor?” That’s a question our church has been challenged with over the last two decades of our existence. Is it the young professionals next door to us in Irvine, California? The Thai artists who make up our Bangkok community? Our WorldVision sponsor children in Nhkoma, Malawi? Yes, yes and yes we say. But God continues to show us more and more neighbors who we might have overlooked. Over the last two years, we’ve been seeing more and more neighbors in Santa Ana, CA, a city or two down from us in Orange County.

Newsong Church is located in the city of Irvine in Orange County, California.

Now, Santa Ana isn’t quite your typical O.C. town (fans of the TV show be warned). Mostly Latino, with a large number of first generation immigrants and the highest property occupancy density of any American city, driving to Santa Ana from Irvine feels like entering another world. But what does any of this have to do with The Mentoring Project?

Three years ago I started volunteering at an after school program in the heart of Santa Ana. KidWork’s mission is to “restore at-risk neighborhoods. . .one life at a time,” and my role was to tutor high school students in math and science after school. As time went on, and I got to know more and more of the students, and I began to see more and more of the ways that my kiddos need adult role models in their lives. Whether that’s navigating the college application process when no one in your family has gone before, dealing with gangs at school, or having dreams for their life beyond the neighborhood, my students were crying out for mentors.

Potential mentors from Newsong discuss what it takes to be an effective mentor.

However, when I started as a mentor, I found that it was harder than it looked! Even though I had a strong church community none of them were seeing the things I was seeing in my mentees’ lives. And I wasn’t sure who to go to for help or encouragement. Eventually my mentees graduated and went on to college, but I was left burned out and discouraged by the process, or at least my approach to it.

That’s when God intervened, NewSong, my home church, was looking at starting a mentoring community using The Mentoring Project’s materials, and KidWorks would be the matching agency! We’d been looking at how to get involved for a while, and mentoring, with its flexible schedule, was much easier to engage with than after-school tutoring. As I looked through the program materials, my only regret was that I wished I had seen them earlier, the tools of love, model and coach provide a great framework, and helped me prepare my heart and mind for the mentoring experience.

Training participants view the TMP Training Video. (Available in the TMP Toolkit)

On July 10 and 17 we had kick-off training events with 24 people!

6 signed up to be mentors with Kidworks and 12 are already mentors at another organization. The one comment we received over and over again was “I wish there was more time for group discussion,” which bodes well for our monthly follow-up meetings at “The Village” which is a space for those with a heart for the orphan and vulnerable children to come together.

I’m so excited to be part of a mentoring community where we can grow together as we experience God’s heart for the fatherless and encourage each other on our journeys.

Ben
Newsong Church
irvine.newsong.net

Want to start a mentoring community in your city? Visit our Join Us page.