Who is Your Mentor? The Importance of Mentorship in Ministry
In this insightful conversation, Jay Hardwick shares how mentorship played a crucial role in shaping his ministry journey. From his first mentor—his local pastor who guided him through his calling and gave him his first opportunity to preach—to his current role as President of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, Jay reflects on the importance of investing in the next generation of church leaders.
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Mike Glenn: All right, Jay Hardwick. Tell me your mentor.
Jay Hardwick: My, my first mentor from a ministry standpoint, and, and there's been many through the years- Right ... as I'm sure you can- Mm-hmm ... say the same thing. But my first mentor from a ministry standpoint was, uh, my pastor at my home church where I really got serious about my relationship with the Lord near the end of my high school time.
Mm-hmm. And in that, the Lord called me to ministry, and as I wrestled through that, um, he just kind of took me under his wing, walked with me, uh, shared out of his own story- Mm-hmm ... how the Lord had called him to ministry, and then he actually gave me my first opportunity to preach. As a senior in high school, um, at our church on a Sunday morning, uh, he gave me an opportunity to preach.
Trusting you with the pulpit, huh? Yeah. Very cool. Gave me an opportunity to
Mike Glenn: preach. Now, now let's go back. Let's go back to this point. Yeah. 'Cause this is a point that, that we tried to make here at this conference. It was, it [00:01:00] was a local pastor. Yes. If we had gone to him and said, "You need to mentor Jay," he would have told us, "No, I can't do that.
I'm not qualified." But he poured his life into you- Absolutely ... because he saw something of value in your future.
Jay Hardwick: E- miraculously, he did, yes. Yeah. Um, and I mean, he taught me, uh, how he maintained his devotion life. Right. And showed me his- Ah ... devotion journal, his Bible reading plan, and how he navigated that in the context of preparing to preach every week.
Mm-hmm. Um, he showed me how he went through preparing a sermon, and when I got to preach that first time, gave me full access to his library to come and glean whatever resources I need, and he talked it through with me a little bit. But he also, he also, in that first sermon, he gave me space to, to kind of do it the way that I would maybe do it.
Yeah. To not just replicate and just do it the way he did it, but put- Ah ... my own personality and, uh, and do all of that. And then afterwards, I still have this note, and, uh, and I'll complete the [00:02:00] story here in just a second, too. But, uh, he gave me this little, uh, cartoon, kind of calendar tear-off, funny kind of a thing.
Right. And, uh, and it was a, it was a guy laid out on an operating table, you know, a drawing of it. Guy laid out on an operating table, and the, and the surgeon pulling out a piece of paper out from inside where they... And he said, "By golly, the youth pastor did have a sermon in him." And of course, it applied to an actual youth pastor.
That's right. But for me being a youth- Yeah, yeah ... and preaching that day, and, uh, and he just hand wrote, "Great job. So proud of you. Believe in you." And, and he signed it. And- And you
Mike Glenn: had it. That, that's an incredible gift.
Jay Hardwick: Absolutely. That is an incredible gift. And so, so he was at that time my father in the ministry, and then a couple years later he became my father-in-law.
Mike Glenn: Oh, okay. So he had an ulterior motive here. Well, not at that time. Not at that time. We were j-
Jay Hardwick: we were friends. We were friends. Ah. Oh, how- So we, uh, the same time that he and his family came to our church- Where- ... my family had just moved there at the same time. Yeah. We joined, and then his oldest daughter, we're the same age.
We were great friends all the way growing up through middle school and high school, and then started dating in college, got married. What a, what a, what a great gift to have someone [00:03:00] invest in you. So before he was my father-in-law- Yeah ... he was my father in the ministry. Father in the ministry. And- Great gift
and, and all of that is still a treasure and something obviously that marks me. And now in the seat that I'm in as a pastor- Mm-hmm ... my eyes are open. Yeah. As he did for me, who is it the Lord's put in our church that, that he wants to use me in that same way- Mm-hmm ... as that same type of encourager. Oh, that's great stuff.
Mike Glenn: Okay. You've been on a journey this last year as president- Yes, sir ... of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board. And, uh, one of the high priorities that you and I have talked about has been, uh, the development of a pipeline and development of mentorships in local churches, and how many pastors need this, and how many pa- churches need pastors.
Yes. And, and that kind of stuff. So what I'm interested in is tell me about that moment that it went from, "Boy, something I'm concerned about," to something that Jay feels called to do something about. Yeah.
Jay Hardwick: That's a great question and a great way to frame it. Um, you know, [00:04:00] research is just letters and numbers- Right
until something grabs your heart. Mm-hmm. And what grabbed my heart out of the data points we were pulling, and, and more than data points, the stories we were hearing, 'cause a lot of this research came out of live listening sessions- Right ... all over the state, gathering pastors and ministry leaders to hear their hearts.
So it was as much what we had in terms of, of data points as it was what we heard from the hearts of pastors. And so a couple of things jumped off the page to me. Uh, one was, was right now. So this past Sunday, this upcoming Sunday, over 400 of our Tennessee Baptist churches don't have a pastor. Mm. That startled me.
Mm-hmm. I've shared that numerous times around the state over the last year, various speaking engagements. Mm-hmm. And every time I do, whether it's a church or, or an associational gathering of pastors, there's a gasp. Mm. There's an audible gasp in the room. Um, and so just to hear and know that right now, if we had effective pipelines, we could [00:05:00] place 400 pastors- Yeah
in churches in Tennessee. So that was one thing. Second thing was hearing how many of our pastors in Tennessee are not full-time. So bi-vocational- Mm-hmm ... part-time, volunteer. More than half of our Tennessee Baptist pastors fall into that category. So some of the avenues are a little bit non-traditional, maybe looking a little different than what yours was- Right, right.
Yeah ... or what mine has been. In terms of just an assumption of full-time ministry. Well, that's not an assumption around the state. And so that requires even more in terms of intentional investment from churches that God has entrusted leadership and resource and opportunity to- Mm-hmm ... to be looking for maybe not just even in our own church, but where out from our church in these communities might there be a church that doesn't have a pastor, or might there be a part-time pastor or a bi-vocational- Right
pastor who thinks, "What do I have to offer?" Right. Well, for most of our churches, you have a lot to offer. Sure. In fact, [00:06:00] you might have a better example. No kidding. You might have a better- No kidding ... source of wisdom than I have- Yeah ... because you're living what so many pastors are going to have to live- Mm-hmm
if they're gonna take the pulpits in those 400 churches. Mm-hmm. So that was the other thing, was seeing how many of our pastors, how many of our churches are in that part-time, bi-vocational role. Um, and then seeing what God is doing on our college campuses right now. Uh, in the session when I shared- Mm-hmm
I talked specifically about East Tennessee State University. Right. And this is hap- this is just one example, but this is happening all across our Baptist collegiate ministries, uh, on, on our, our, quote, "secular" campuses. Sure. So it's not just this is what God's doing at our Tennessee Baptist campuses, as wonderful as they are at Union and Carson-Newman.
God's moving there and raising up ministry leaders. But at East Tennessee State, uh, they just launched their new ministry year, had their first weekly worship gathering. Over 350 students were there, standing room only. There's kids standing everywhere. They weren't giving away donuts or free dinners- ... or anything.
It was just worship- [00:07:00] Yeah ... Bible study, and community with believers, 300 plus. But out of those, their campus ministry leader, Jonathan Chapman, longtime good friend of mine, been there for 10 years, he's got 45 students right now that have already said yes to the call of God to vocational ministry. 45 that are ready to go.
And again, that's replicated- That's as
Mike Glenn: many as some of our schools have as religion majors. Exactly. Yeah.
Jay Hardwick: And that's at East Tennessee State- Right ... through the ministry of Baptist- Wonderful ... Collegiate Ministries on their camp- But that's happening at all of our campuses. We're seeing it in our church through the students that are coming into our ministry at our local church from Vandy, Belmont, and even other, um, schools here around Nashville.
And so just seeing what God is doing in the next generation. So here we are in Tennessee. We've got 400 pulpits that are vacant. Um, we've got pastors, and I, and I didn't say this talking about pastors. We heard about the part-time bi-vocation, but we also heard their number one concern is, "Who is going to follow me?"
Right. It's the number one concern of [00:08:00] pastors in Tennessee, is w- "Who's gonna take the mantle of leadership?" I'm running, I'm running the race. Yeah. I've
Mike Glenn: got the baton, and I don't know who to hand it
Jay Hardwick: to. Right. And with the average age creeping up every couple of years, 58, 59- Mm ... 60, average age of pastors, they're thinking, "Who's coming behind me?"
Mm-hmm. But yet look what God is doing. On our college campuses with the next generation that are answering the call of God. And so that's where we just knew all of this is coming together for such a time as this. There's tremendous need. Pastors are asking the question and they're asking for help. And the next generation is there saying, we're ready to go.
We're ready to go. Yes is on the table. We're ready to go. Who will mentor us? Who will pour into us? Who will equip us? Who will help us? And so it just seems like the Lord is perfectly positioning our Tennessee churches. And, you know, this is Baptist specific because that's our family. That's our tribe. But God certainly stirred in our tribe.
And it's going to be [00:09:00] the number one priority of our vision and strategy for the next five to 10 years is building this pipeline. But a part of that building pipeline, and you know this, is you got to have health to reproduce health. Right. And so it's also building into our current pastors, building into those bivocational part-time guys, building into those full-time guys, dealing with the leadership challenges, the mental health challenges that they're dealing with, the sometimes feeling like they don't have much to offer that next generation.
Yeah, the isolation. Yeah. Build into them, connect them, resource them, but then also cast this vision and say, hey, we got a, there's a generation coming. Let's connect some dots here and let's build a network of healthy churches, build a network of healthy pastors that are reproducing healthy pastors, healthy ministers, healthy missionaries to take the gospel across Tennessee.
And then like what we say, we want to see every Tennessean have a chance to hear the gospel and we want to send to every nation from Tennessee. So that's kind of how all the dots connected for me over these last. You sound excited. I [00:10:00] am. Fired up, man. Me too. Let's go. Me
too.
