"Our Boys in the Field"
What Dallas Willard's Example Teaches us about Pastoral Mentorship - A Bonus Post
A few months ago, I had the privilege of interviewing James Bryan Smith for my dissertation. Jim has been one of the faithful carriers of Dallas Willard’s vision for ministry, and I wanted to understand how he had lived out what Dallas taught.
At one point in our conversation, Jim told me something I had never heard before.
He said that after Dallas’s funeral, Jane Willard invited him to the house. She wanted to show him something. Next to Dallas’s computer, where he wrote at home, was a page on the wall. It said: “Our boys who are out there.”
Below it was a list. Richard Foster. John Ortberg. Jim himself. Keith Matthews. Steve Porter. Jan Johnson. Others.
Dallas kept that list by his desk. He sat there and thought about them. He and Jane prayed for them. He was proud of them. He kept up with them
Jim said, “Your point about legacy is Dallas, I think, very much felt that, like Paul to Timothy, there was. He valued that pouring into certain people that he felt God had brought to him. That was a part of his work, to invest.”
I have thought about that piece of paper nearly every day since, and it has altered how I spend my time each week.
What We’ve Lost
I remember sitting in chapel at Southwestern and hearing many seasoned pastors preach. More than once, a man would pause mid-sermon to honor the pastor who had invested in him. “I was one of his preacher boys,” he would say. You could hear the weight of it, the gratitude and the legacy.
Those men left behind a trail of younger pastors who could trace their calling back to someone who believed in them.
I fear that somewhere along the way pastoral mentoring has became a product.
Last week I saw another “celebrity pastor” announce a new “cohort.” Application required. Payment required. Limited spots. I cannot judge that man’s heart. But I worry about what we are building. I worry that monetization is killing mentorship for ministry.
I understand why we got here. Ministry is hard. Time is limited. People deserve to be compensated for their labor. I am not trying to be judgmental, I just want to remind us all of our responsibility not to just call out the called but to help equip them for the work of the ministry.
I guess I am lamenting what I fear we have lost.
The preacher who spots an eighteen-year-old behind the sound booth and wonders if God is doing something in that kid. The professor who takes a struggling student to breakfast because he cannot help himself. The old pastor in the association who calls the young one just to say, “I’ve been praying for you.”
Have we traded boys in the field for clients on a roster?
And the young men who need it most, the ones in tiny churches and rural pastorates and first calls that feel like failures, cannot afford what mentoring has become. So they go without. Far too often they white-knuckle their way through, burnout, and sadly they quit.
The Men Who Showed Up for Me
I may would be something other than a pastor today without men who invested in me yet asked for nothing in return.
Ron Thomas took me to lunch when I was an eighteen-year-old youth pastor ready to walk away. I cannot remember much of what he said. I remember that he showed up and told me to stay. That was enough.
Tommy Kiker thought he was my professor. Technically, he was. But for seven years he took me to breakfast and showed me how to follow Christ and serve people. He gave me full access to his life and his pursuit of Jesus. It shaped me in more ways than He knows, and more ways probably than I understand.
Madison Grace has kept up with me long after I left Seminary Hill. I am no longer his student or his responsibility. But he still calls. He still checks in. That is a pastor’s heart, and I know I am far from the only one he does this with.
Wade Coker is a fellow pastor and former missionary in our association. He has forgotten more about ministry than I will ever know, and he still offers his wisdom freely to me as I learn to lead in a place like this.
And my dad, Gary Griffith. He died when I was seventeen, before I ever formally surrendered to ministry. He never pushed me toward it. He never told me I should be a minister. But he brought me into his work anyway. I sat in on staff meetings. I rode along on visits. He let me see what faithful ministry looked like before I had any idea I would spend my life doing it. He may not have known what he was planting. But he planted it all the same.
These men never charged me a dime. They never built a platform off of our relationship. They just saw a young man and thought he might be worth investing in.
A Call to the Older Generation
If you are a seasoned pastor, let me ask you something.
Where are your “preacher boys”?
Who are your boys out there?
Whose name would be on the paper by your desk?
Who are you proud of? Who are you praying for?
Who would say, twenty years from now, that you showed up for them when no one else did?
Buy a young preacher lunch. Send an encouraging text after his first funeral. Let him sit in your office and ask dumb questions. Watch his sermons and offer constructive feedback. Tell him the truth about ministry when everyone else is trying to sell him on a method.
The next generation of pastors needs faithful fathers in the ministry.
What I Hope to Become
I am still relatively young. I am still in the early years of pastoral ministry, still figuring out how to do this work in my little corner of Louisiana.
But I am already asking myself: Who am I investing in?
Someone did it for me. And someone did it for them. And that is how the kingdom works.
Dallas kept a list by his desk. He called them “our boys who are out there.”
I want to be the kind of pastor who keeps a list like that, not to share but to savor the way God is using people I have encountered to grow His Kingdom.
And I always want to be the kind of pastor who ends up on someone else’s list.
To the men who invested in me and asked for nothing: thank you. I hope to be the pastor you showed me how to be, and I hope to constantly show others.