Jesus: The Necessity of Selecting a Few

6 July 2024

When my daughter was in elementary school, she expressed distress over having so many peers in her life. Her concern was that she couldn’t possibly be friends with that many people. It would take too much work. She wanted to have only a few close friends who would receive the focus of her time.

Upon receiving this information from her, I began a discussion regarding Jesus’ concentric circles of relationships. He was first circled by His inner three (Peter, James, and John), then by His 12 disciples and the women who traveled with Him. Beyond that He established close relationships with people such as Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Reaching out even further, He gave teachings to large crowds and to individuals either one on one (the woman at the well) or with others looking on (the man who couldn’t give up his earthly riches).

My point: although our lives will touch the lives of many others, each of those relationships will look different. This is good for us and it is good for them.

My daughter innately understood at a young age what we often overlook as adults: we cannot be in close relationships with everyone in our lives. If we try to accomplish this, we will only serve to stress ourselves out seeking to make everything balance.

Without a doubt, Jesus is the greatest example of a mentor that we could ever have, but even He understood the necessity of selecting different levels of mentoring for different people in order to meet different needs for the furthering of His Kingdom. There were those on the outskirts who watched and listened carefully, there were those who were chosen to travel with Him, and there were those who were in His inner circle and to whom He devoted the most time.

Can you imagine being selected by Jesus to be one of those who received the honor of traveling with Him? Who was invited to sit at His feet and recline at His table and take in everything He had to say? Who was able to watch His every move and learn from His every interaction? Who was one of those who intimately discussed and pondered over His every teaching? What a place of privilege! What a place of joy! But what a place of sacrifice and of intense spiritual growth and of responsibility to pass that growth on to others.

That’s ultimately what Christian mentoring is about it, right? It’s about opening spaces to guide others into spiritual growth with their Father in community with others and in relationship with mentors who are still growing themselves. And, although mentoring is an immense responsibility, it is not an overwhelming task. Rather, it is a beautiful life-giving opportunity that God has given us and for which Jesus Himself has set the example.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20, NIV

Here Jesus is, right before His ascension, and He commissions His disciples, He commissions the small group that had been invited in to follow Him more closely than others, to take what they have learned from Him and to make more disciples. All disciples are to be learners, so it seems odd that Jesus would have to make a point of saying that these new disciples need to be taught, but when we consider the fact that the goal of a disciple was to be just like their teacher, and Jesus stresses the need to obey “everything” He has commanded, we must consider what that everything meant. Of course it meant the messages that Jesus gave through His words and the behavior that He demonstrated through His actions, but does that not also include the manner in which He selected a small group to follow Him more closely? Jesus did interact with many people and He did preach and teach to large crowds, but He only had a few that were intimately involved in His life.

Jesus had 33 years physically on earth and only 3 of those years were spent “in ministry.” He had to use His time wisely. He had to be selective. He had to choose to work most closely with those who were ready to learn and who were ready to grow and who would be ready to select others to follow them after Jesus had left this earth. He had to select those who were truly ready to sacrifice, to give up earthly things in order to receive better spiritual things. He had to place His legacy in the correct place.

Now, we are never going to be Jesus and we are never going to all teach exactly the same way, but that is not the point. Each of Jesus’ disciples were crafted and gifted differently by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit just as they were designed to be. So they learned at Jesus’ feet and then they took what they had learned and shared it with others while following the leading of Holy Spirit and allowing their personalities, giftings, and talents to shine through. And those disciples mentored different people who had different mentoring needs. Paul to the Gentiles; Peter to the Jews (Galatians 2:8). Barnabus even mentored John Mark when Paul could not, which resulted in Timothy joining in a mentoring relationship with Paul and Silas (Acts 15:36-16:5).

This is still accurate today: different people need different mentoring – all with the same goal of opening that space for spiritual growth. We are never all going to be equipped to mentor everyone. We must follow in the pattern of Jesus, carefully selecting the few to whom the Holy Spirit leads us so that not only can we be the best mentors possible, but so that we can pass the mantle of mentoring onto others just as Jesus passed it onto His disciples and His small group of followers which resulted in His disciples passing the mantle down the line to today.

Does this mean that we won’t interact with all others in Christ-like ways or teach lessons to individuals, other small groups, or larger crowds? Does this mean that those who are not in our mentoring circle won’t pine after being in that circle? Of course not! How many of those people with whom Jesus interacted and gave large group lessons to wanted to be “invited in” to that small band of followers? Wouldn’t you? But if Jesus was careful in who He selected, if Jesus did not take them all on, what makes us think that we can?

Jesus gave us a ripple effect example: He took a smaller group and equipped them to multiply their effect, to multiply the spreading of His message, to multiply mentoring others. Each of the people or groups that were mentored by Jesus’ disciples looked different. Each of our mentees and mentee groups will look different because while God has called us all to open space for others to grow in Him, He has gifted us in different manners to mentor in unique ways in order to meet the needs of His different people whom we are to embrace. And if we try to take them all on, not only will we burn out, we will very likely harm others by not opening space for them to be mentored by those whom God has gifted to mentor them. We must lovingly and carefully pour our attention into those whom Jesus gives us and take our places in that rippling pond in order to be obedient and allow God to work through us, through our uniqueness gifted to us by Him, for the greater good of His Kingdom.