Nurturing Disciplers Christian literature about mentoring written in 1993 by Paul D. Stanley and J. Robert Clinton. In Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life, Stanley and Clinton identify a mentoring continuum with three categories of mentors: passive, occasional, and intensive. The passive category includes contemporary and historical mentors; the occasional category sponsors, teachers, and counselors; and the intensive category coaches, spiritual guides, and disciplers. My research began when I read intriguing Stanley and Clinton define a discipler as someone who “teaches and enables a mentoree in the basics of following Jesus Christ.” In order to identify the disciplers in my life, I needed to consider and even research the stories of how disciplers have impacted my life. I identified three personal disciplers, after which I interviewed each of these three men. I have determined that the common stimulators of these three discipling relationships were attraction; time; shared circumstances and/or experiences; and my own [the mentoree’s] degree of responsiveness, accountability, and love. Parents have a tremendous opportunity to assist their children in seeking out discipling relationships in their lives. My advice to parents is to begin by considering these six stimulators to discipling relationships and discovering ways in which they can assist their children in fostering such relationships. The first stimulator in discipling relationships is the degree of attraction of a mentoree toward a potential discipler. Sometimes the mentoree identifies a desired characteristic in a potential discipler and seeks to emulate the discipler in one or more ways. During the course of a personal conversation with Rev. Ray Vander Laan, author and pastor, during a trip to the Holy Land, he affirmed that the attraction between disciplers and mentorees looked similar two thousand years ago: “In Jesus’ day, you tended to pick rabbis who had the same strengths as you. For example, if a rabbi were brilliant in his ability to interpret scripture, and you think, I am not like that because I am more of the gentle kind who can apply the text, he is not for you. Now you look for a rabbi who is a great parable story teller because you want not only to be like him in his walk with God, but you want to put those skills into practice the same way he does.” If your child has ever commented that he or she admired a desired characteristic in someone, consider ways to help your son or daughter cultivate a relationship either with that person or with someone else demonstrating similar characteristics. A Publication of Christian Schools International Attraction | Spring 2014 29