Hey, church ladies! Last week, we thought through the attributes that make a biblical mentor and what a biblical mentor/mentee relationship looks like. This week, I got to sit down with the lady that inspired that episode by living out those attributes. Allow me to introduce you to my mentor and friend, Bonnie Fry Manke. She is a wife, mother, speaker, leader, and the Executive Director of Toledo Gospel Rescue Mission. Her heart is for the Lord and for people. She's passionate about the gospel, and she works each day to see hearts transformed and lives touched by the gospel of Jesus. I know you'll be encouraged by her testimony!

One of the sweetest things the Lord ever did for me was bring me a biblical mentor right when I needed one. Drawing from Titus 2's instruction once again, that the older women ought to teach what is good and train the younger women, in this episode, we're thinking through the marks of a biblical mentor/mentee. I hope this episode encourages and challenges you to:

1.) Seek to grow in wisdom alongside your very own mentor.

OR

2.) Seek to share the wisdom the Lord has grown in you with your very own mentee.

Church ladies, we need each other! Keep going!

In this episode, I share my church testimony over the last year and talk about the marks of a biblical church lady from Titus 2. I was on staff at a church for one year, and I absolutely loved it until some hens started peckin'! The examples and clamorous, contentious reactions to an unfortunate, sneaky situation, both in-person and on social media, showed many of us what a church lady ought not to look like. I've been in church my whole life, and I've known so many God-fearing church ladies who lived to serve the Lord in humility and grace. I'd never seen anything like this in my time churchin' in Mississippi. I'd watched my mama endure a little bit of ugly here and there from church ladies (sadly, she's endured some doozies with a special kind of grace, and she's kept a tender heart by the grace of God), but I've never seen anything like this. After seeking godly counsel from a couple of wise local pastors, and after much prayer and many tears, I resigned from the ministry position I had prayed for throughout seminary the year and a half before. I was shattered and broken the entire summer, until my mentor, a salty-in-the-scriptural-sense church lady, picked me up, dusted me off, and made me her right-hand gal so I could heal in a safe place. Through her wisdom, her patience, and sometimes her sassiness when I've needed to hear a hard, well-put truth, the Lord has refreshed me in her example of what a church lady ought to look like. Sometimes, we church ladies can add to the TEST in each other's testimony when we miss the mark, but may we henceforth aim to testify of Christ in all we think, hear (no listenin' to gossip, y'all!), see, say (no gossippin', y'all!), and do. And all the church ladies said, "Amen!"

Disclaimer: This has been my experience as far as I was allowed to understand the situation, and even though I discuss moments where church ladies and believers behaved badly, read: unbiblically, it does not mean that I don't love them with the love of Christ. We can name the wrong without negating their worth as image-bearers. We can choose boundaries over bitterness. God knows, and in that truth is so much comfort.

*Also, the quote about telling our feelings to shut up and salute Jesus was from Rachel Jankovic (Author of Loving the Little Years), not Elizabeth Urbanowicz (Founder of Foundation Worldview). Sorry about that, I'm new to this editing thing and couldn't figure out how to re-record that part.

**Also, if I quote someone, I am not endorsing everything they've ever said, written, or done. Except, of course, in the case of the incomparable Charles Haddon Spurgeon.