This is the Truth Network.
So, who are you mentoring right now? And who mentored you maybe you're listening to my voice Maybe you're following the Lord, you're in a whole career track. You've raised a whole family several generations because somebody said, Hey, I'm going to take a little interest in that little guy 30, 40, 50 years ago, and here you are because someone mentored you. Peter, You, my friend, have been a part of a wonderful mentoring ministry for years, and you. We're a great friend of my dad, Big Stu.
Can you just say hello to our listeners and talk about this great organization, this Christian Association of Mentoring that you've been a part of all these years?
Well, thank you for having me on. And yes, your dad was a big mentor for me. But just to start off, it's been 50 years now since God came into my life. When I made my commitment to Christ, I was in college. I was a totally broken person, just involved in all sorts of things that no one should be involved with.
Someone Didn't really witness to me other than lived a life of Christ in front of me to the point where I asked her, What does she have that I don't have? She gave me a Bible and said, Start reading. And that's how I came to Christ was just sitting in a room in college and reading the scripture. But that's what mentoring is about a lot. It's about really investing in someone's life.
and really living out the gospel to the point where they're asking you questions. About it, and that's how a lot of people come to the Lord through that.
So, the Christian Association of Youth Mentoring trains churches, nonprofits on how to build mentoring programs. And three big things we want is we want it to be safe for everyone involved. We want it to be effective. Effective in what God has called you to do. We want to make sure that it's focused on the vision God's given you and making sure that that happens through the mentoring program.
And the third thing is that it's sustainable because a lot of things start and fall apart. They look great, they sound great, great vision, but they fall apart. In fact, I was down in Atlanta 10 years ago. And in part of our work, we go into communities and we just listen to people. We with the person who has a vision for that community, we'll meet mayors, police chiefs.
And in this case, in a town, we met with the superintendent of schools at one of the meetings. And the first thing he said when we walked into that, into the room.
Now that I was with this very genteel Southern woman. As you can tell, I am a Northerner with with my with my accent.
So I'm with this woman and she is the most wonderful woman. And he looks at us and he goes, We don't need any more damn backpacks. And I was taken back, but he goes, everyone wants to give us backpacks. No one wants to invest in our kids. And so I said, this is What we do, we help invest in the kids.
And so What we did at that point. Was we went and just explained to him what could happen. And then he looks at us and he goes. You know, a lot of churches come in here. and say this is what they want to do and they have great visions.
But They never Keep it going. Yeah. He said, You can't do that. And I promised at that point that we would not do it. And 10 years later, that ministry is still going on in those schools.
And this is huge because we kind of do this. We think that mentoring, we think that making an impact on youth is this drive-by winter coat drop, you know, turkeys at Thanksgiving. Get backpacks to start the school year. And those are laudable, those are important, but it's real. Key, these kids need someone.
These kids, these are kids without dads. These are kids that my dad used to get so fired up about these. These pandemic level fatherless statistics. And he's like, just go take a kid that doesn't have a dad to ice cream. Spend 25 minutes with him a week.
He would pay deadbeat dads to go spend time with their sons. Dad would actually pay him. He said, here's my credit card. Go buy a meal for your kid and just talk to them. And Peter Vandacor, you're doing this, you've been doing this for decades.
And but it's so important. Will you speak to everyone listening?
Some folks, we got some folks, some gray hairs that are like, hey, what do I do with my life? What am I, you know, am I really designed to just. Pick out seashells and sit around and hit the little white ball. How could they get involved in this process? Because this could be transformative.
You know, someone here, someone mentored Peter, someone coached you. Listen out there, a whole lot of people like David Parsons mentored me when I was coming up. Talk to folks about how they can get involved right now. Maybe even give your website too if churches want to get started. Yeah, it's really good you're pointing this out.
Let me start. When I became a Christian in college, a guy named Kirk Johnson in a campus ministry mentored me for two and a half years and really gave me the foundation on how to walk with the Lord that it really carried me through. In that process, I learned how to mentor others. And it's really what it comes down to: when we look at mentoring, there's really two kinds of mentorings we look at. One is discipleship.
You know, it's if you're going to mentor someone, you're going to disciple someone, you need to mentor them. It's that's part of the process. That's what Jesus did. But also, there's an outreach into kids like your dad was so passionate about and going into and meeting them where they're at. and bringing Jesus to them through our lives.
and then letting God open up the opportunity to bring the gospel in. That is essential and that's what every kid needs. But I'm one of those gray-haired. I'm 71 years old, okay? I'm still mentoring.
Here is the fact. In churches around the country, most of the mentors are gray-haired. Wow. They're empty nesters. That's probably 80% of the mentors that the churches are getting because.
We don't retire. We just re-tread and reinvest.
Okay? And so. What needs to happen is for those who are my age and You say, well, maybe I'm not physically able to mentor a kid. You are able to mentor them even if you can't walk. I've had mentors who really just sat down.
and played chess and checkers with kids. And that was the most impactful thing in that kid's life. And what it was is that that kid. We need A grandparent in their lives that they didn't have, someone who was older and cared, someone who could invest in them, someone. Who paid attention to him and wasn't paid to pay attention to him.
You know, and so that's the kind of impact that a a mentor of any age can have.
So, but I've had great mentors who were 21 years old doing wonderful work with kids and staying with them for years. The ideal mentor to me happens to be my wife. She's now 15 years in mentoring this young girl.
Okay.
Now, it started when she was 13.
Okay, so now she's an old, she is, she's getting close to 30 now, I guess. But Uh my wife really walked her through life. And And they're still, they're meeting again next week. They're getting together. She's coming, actually, going to stay with us for the weekend.
But let me throw this out. That girl has never received Christ. Mm. You think about that and and and and some people would say Is did my wife waste 15 years of investment? And there's no, there's no way about that because that girl has seen Jesus.
And a lot of different things have been exposed. And we really believe she is going to come to Christ.
Now, she came from a culture that had no connection to Christianity. And there's something slowly working in her life to bring her to the point. Where she can really seek Christ and invest her life in that way. Wow. Well, Peter Vandecorr, such a good testimony.
And thank God for mentors, right? And thank God that Jesus. This is the way of the master. I mean, it's incarnational. I mean, he doesn't give us an option.
If you're a believer, you're to be pouring your life obviously into your kids. That's your number one ministry: your wife, your kids, your grandkids. Huge opportunity there. But for some of you that are, you know, upset, well, they're 3,000 miles away, and I'm on Zoom calls.
Well, we'll keep doing that, keep pouring to them. But hey, that little kid running around in the lobby that you're annoyed by. Take that kid out to play some ball. Take that kid, just go to their games. Hey, I heard one of my friends has a church across the street from one of the roughest high schools in South Carolina.
And he said they had the most odd request from one of the coaches. of the baseball team. The coach said, He said, How can we pour into your school? What do you all need? You need food, you need programs.
He says, We just want some of your people to attend. our kids' baseball games. They have kids playing baseball, and parents, single parents, they're struggling, and no one shows up to watch them play. They say, just show up and play baseball with them. And it's just absolutely amazing.
And, you know, but Peter, finish this: this is the way of Christ. I want you to give a closing word and then give, talk about that nice letter you sent about Big Stew. This was his passion. I mean, like, if he was me and he was hosting, this is all he would talk about on Truth Talk. But give us your passion.
Peter Vandercorr, he's the head of this wonderful mentoring Christian Association of Mentoring. Talk about this real quick. One th point before that. Just that thing you said about visiting a kid, going to his baseball football game. I've seen kids come to Christ just through that.
Mentors just showing up at the game because there was no one coming to those kids' games.
Okay.
Now, I want to go back to your dad, as you mentioned, though, because your dad had this vision. For decades. and was looking for how he could really impact the youth. I would say this, there's your dad. He didn't need to do this.
He could have lived a life just of total self-indulgence. But he lived it in investing who he was. And not just his life, his resources in every way, his whole family. Into what God wanted him to do, you know, and It's I was reading this morning, it's my life versus Isaiah 58. And one in that it talks about, Isaiah says, You know, to spend yourself.
Uh behalf of the needy. And so we all have some sort of spending plan. And God says, spend yourself. You have to really invest who you are into others in order to bring the kingdom of God into this world. I love it.
You want to find meaning in your life? Pour the meaning of Jesus Christ into other people's lives. Reach out to a young person. That single mom struggling with those five kids. Go grab a couple of those kids and love on them, encourage them, and go through the training.
You know, they vet people. This is all safe. This is all organized.
Well, give the website for folks to learn more about this ministry. If you want to learn about it, it's c-ay-y-m.org. That's it, C-A-Y-M, Christian Association of Youth Mentoring. And we can help you, no matter where you're at, start a mentoring ministry. That will really impact your community and really transform your life and the life of your church.
Amen. Youth pastors, you're not babysitters. Get the seniors to meet with the juniors. Get the juniors to meet with the sophomores in your youth group. Get the sophomores to meet with the eighth graders, the ninth graders.
And let's get this mentoring discipleship train going because there's 3 billion people on this planet that need to hear about Jesus. And how do we do it? We build into each other. We get our roots deep into each other and we watch it spread and multiply. Peter Vandekor, Christian Association of Youth Mentoring.
God bless you, brother. Thanks for hanging out with me a little bit on Truth Talking. Thanks for being a mentor to me and all of us, man. Thank you, Stu, for having me on. It's a pleasure being with you.
Sure. Uh
