In this spoken reflection, Tim Pratt Jr. discusses a quote from John C. Maxwell: “Who mentors you matters more than what you say.” He argues that the value of a mentor lies not merely in the information they convey but in whether they embody the principles they teach. Using religious examples, he contrasts Jesus—who lived the teachings he delivered—with Judas, who could recite the Sermon on the Mount yet lacked alignment with its message. Pratt warns against superficial regurgitation of ideas without personal transformation, emphasizing the danger of sounding thoughtful without internalizing the lessons. He urges listeners to evaluate mentors by observing the consistency between their lives and their teachings, recognizing the mentor’s influence on personal formation, and to similarly hold themselves accountable when they act as mentors.
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Yo, so I was reading this book by John C. Maxwell, and this quote jumped out to me when he said, "Who mentors you matters more than what you say," uh, because anybody can teach something, learn something, regurgitate it, or whatever. But I believe he was challenging us to pay close attention and ask the question, does this person actually embody what they're trying to teach me? And it also is in line with Jesus, like, because he just didn't teach a way of life, he actually embodied it. He was that. And so to even take it a step further, just think about Judas if he would have taught the Sermon on the Mount, uh, word for word accurately because he heard it firsthand. But a lot of us will look at that and be like, hey man, you're not even— you're not even one with what you're teaching. So what gave it so much substance is that it came from Jesus. And it's so— it's still very important as we learn and we pursue and we have all this access to just like just make ourselves sound just so deep, so thoughtful, so reflective, or whatever, uh, let's also take some time to make sure that it's really working on us, man, uh, because there's a danger when we're just caught up in this regurgitation and not actually striving to become the very thing that we're trying to profess or challenge other people to live in. So I guess I would just end it when I say, when looking for a mentor Um, just make sure that we have an understanding that we are giving this person some level of influence over our life and who we're becoming. Like, they're playing in some type of part in the formation. So I would just challenge us to pay a little bit more attention to the life behind the lesson that they're trying to teach. And the same is true for us. Make sure that we're paying attention close to our life, um, just as much as we're striving to give someone else a lesson.
