A teacher conveys information so the student can learn, whereas the mentor stands with the student until they “get it”.  By Gary Shotton #000440

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Teacher-Mentor

By Gary Shotton

This text is in Extreme Rough draft and will be edited in the near future.

Hello my name is Gary Shotton, and I’m here as a part of inspiring better business, and today I would like to talk about the difference between a teacher and mentor, or the difference about teaching and mentoring. And it’s important that we probably got grasp this and I hope to lead up to something that helps you in the regards of God, helping you in business. So I’ll start with this talking about a classroom setting. We’ve all been in classrooms we may be adults in a conference or a lecture, we may be in college, we may be in even high school, and in those times we have a teacher. He’s that person, man or woman, is tasked with conveying certain information and that information normally is in the form of lectures and reading. and then at the end of some time period we’re all expected to take some form of a test to see if we’ve mastered the lesson material that’s been presented by that course or that class that’s clearly to me a teaching environment and certainly we need that we need to have good teachers. And we also the low need to separate that from the reality that we need. Also, mentors, someone that would stick with us while we’re applying what we learned. Sometimes in the business and professional world, especially in the medical field, we call that an internship, the person who’s graduated from medical school and then for maybe what a couple years they’re interning there, they’re not full fledged physicians but they’re doing some progressively more complicated responsibilities in a proportion to what they have learned and have their skill sets and somebody is assigned to them to watch over and help mentor them into the medical field. This could be true for a carpenter and his son, US Carpenter, that’s very skilled might take their son or daughter of course could be and and instruct them one thing about how the tools of the trade work, but then once they grab a hold of the the tool the saw or the hammer or the or the drill, then they’re being observed to see how they proceed with that mentoring part of it, and there’s someone there to help them. Well, I’ve been watching now, the environment of training and developing nations, and it’s not uncommon that we have seminars and events where we gather a large number of people are a group of people and they come here a lecture, and they might have a handout and a book, and they might even fill in the blanks in that book, and I’ll let me tell you all this is good I’m not criticizing it. But at the end of graduation. The anticipation could be that I now know how to use that material. Let’s talk about a business, we have a business lecture or even these, these teachings that I’m teaching right now, it’s more of a teaching than a mentorship because I’m conveying this in a way that anybody reading or listening or hearing or watching these should be able to learn some valuable material valuable material about quality or valuable material about systems and processes or having a happy customer. Those are some of the lessons that we’re teaching, but I’m aware that that’s not enough. And so you could go through all of our teachings are a large number of them not just by me but by other speakers, and you could come away thinking, oh, now I’m ready to own my own business, but most likely unless you have prior experience you have need a mentor that will help you and guide you and lead you through the process. Well here comes the problem in developing nations that are no are they’re not very many, many experienced people in business, at least Christian experienced people, and people that have time that are willing to take their valuable time and teach and guide and lead somebody that’s starting a new business. So what do we do about this. Well, I think we have come across part of the answer here, because we watched what Jesus did, we see that when he was in his 33 year of age, he had been in ministry about three years. He starts preparing his 12 apostles to tell him that he is leaving away. He’s going away. I was just reading that in John, chapters 1415 and 16, and then again enrollments TTAN where he said I must go away, but I’ll send you the third part of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit to guide you and lead you and I want to add the word of mentor you, while Jesus is not in their presence still teaching. He’s taught, but until we have a mentorship, then he has not. We have not actually learned the lesson, and when he went away, he was talking to a group of people this was a group of 12 people, and he encouraged them to stick to stay together as a community, and to work together. And so the combination of, of having your peers, the people that you are working with and a group of 10 or 12 people, we call them a peer mentoring group, and the Helper, the Holy Spirit, you have a pretty good combination there, you have the way to have a mentor with you at all times, and that’s a part of us now to learn how to hear and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, that is very important in fact I went to Bible school. That was one of the courses, how to be led by the Spirit of God, and that’s a whole subject matter that we’d like to kind of touch on, because the Spirit of God is trying to teach and guide and lead you, but it’s not something that that’s comes automatic and is comes maybe sometimes with a little bit of trial and error, or making mistakes are trying to hear what God has for you to do in an area. Now there are certain things I could share I mean there’s a whole bunch of things but for me, when God has led me in someplace, it’s never been audible it’s never been really clear it’s never been something of a big picture, it’s always been what we call a nudge, like a little push in this direction, and a little, a direction that, that maybe is even contrary to what you would normally think is logical, for example, I’m up in another state 1000 miles away from where I went to Bible school, and I, my wife and I together felt pretty certain not definite, but pretty sure that God was leading us to give up our good paying job, which is not logical. I had a company vehicle, I had all expenses paid for my children’s medical, I had a nice paycheck, and I said I’ll put that on hold, and I’ll move 1000 miles to another city with no promise of a job. Well, in the natural that’s not very logical, but I knew that the Spirit of God was leading me because I had been focused, so I was focused on God, I wanted to get to know God. God is our friend. He wants us to be friends with him and what do I mean by friends, if you have a friend, you know that that you’re acquainted with them, you’re acquainted with their preferences you’re acquainted with what maybe makes them sad acquainted with what makes them happy, you know, if you’ve offended them in a discussion and you go back and say I’m sorry because you want to maintain that friendship. Well that’s what you have with God. And so, The Holy Spirit is the part of the Godhead that’s with you. Let’s don’t put the Holy Spirit down on a second class, it says that Jesus had had the father inside of him, and he was representing God the Father, but Jesus himself has left, and he left and we and said, this Holy Spirit would come comfort us, guide us and lead us and with our understanding that we’re not an island out here. We don’t want you to take me out here on your own, because you’re like, at real risk of having the evil one or the cares of this world, our discouragement, to take over, and you would abandon your calling a banding what God’s called you to do, if you just try to go it alone. So that’s why both Jesus had 12 apostles and we’re saying, Hey, join a group, a peer mentoring group with 1215, no exact number, and you should be in the same quest, you should be seeking God’s direction for improving your business skills not your technical skills at through research and development and always thinking change, but your tech business skills of record keeping and and quality and happy customers and repeat customers, something that’s universally true with the way business is done.  And when you do that when you make those steps you’re making a conscious effort to learn how God leads in that, I am confident that what he did in my case, he started bringing me divine appointments, a little connections, new ideas, things that would, would let me start with what I had and I would grow step by step my first business was a business that was totally out of the norm for me I was a trained engineer, and then I came to Bible school, and I started moving furniture, loading furniture like the dressers in the back behind me, and I put the back of the the books behind me, like that in a boxes and we loaded on the truck, and we moved to a new location that was illogical in many cases, but it was what God had for me to do. I’m so happy because that’s where I learned business, I learned business, in some cases by reading books and taking courses and and passed a passing test, but I really learned business when I’m doing it. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, I was able to grow step by step, and that’s what we’re asking you to do.