Tom Hill – From General Contractor To Builder Of Godly Men

Potter & Clay

During my years at Southwestern Assemblies of God University, I had a mentor by the name of Tom Hill.  Tom was the Dorm Pastor/Director of Davis Hall and one of my best friends.  He had been a general contractor in Louisiana for many years.  On one trip to Shreveport, Louisiana with him, he pointed out building after building that he had built.  God called him to Southwestern and he accepted the calling of God in his life to mentor young men for Christ.  Before I began my first day of bible school, he called a dorm meeting where he made it very clear to us that he wanted to get to know us, he wanted to help us become great leaders and great men of God, and that we could go to him for anything.  Right from the beginning this was an intentional mentoring relationship.  As the semester went on he always made it a point to meet with every young man in his dorm, and take time from his busy schedule and talk with us and visit with us.  We never felt that it was a mask or a persona that he put on around us.  He didn’t just talk to us, he listened to us (that is a rarity now-a-days).  He shared from his personal experiences and encouraged us in our schooling and in our relationship with God.  He talked about leadership skills and godly character, and he spoke to us about relationships with each other and relationships with the opposite sex.  He would lend us books from his personal library that he thought would be a benefit for us, as it had been for him.  He would pray with us, cry with us, and laugh with us. He didn’t live off campus or far away, his house was in the dorm, his family was our family, and our problems were his problems.  He said that he had always wanted a son and that now God had given him all of us.    Some of the best services that I have ever been a part of were right in the lobby of Davis Hall, when we had our dorm devotions.  As the years went by I got closer to him and his wonderful family.  Tom poured himself more intimately into the young men that would serve as R.A.’s.  I got to serve one year as a resident assistant.  Tom took me fishing more times than I can remember, I ate in his house more times than I can remember, and we prayed together in his office for each other and for the other men in the dorm more than I can remember.  Family was important to him, God was important to him, being a man of integrity was important to him, leadership and self-discipline were important to him, and sharing Christ with us and others was important for him, and he taught all that to me.  He always pointed me to God and never himself, it was never about what he did, but what God was doing and what God’s Word taught.  I learned those things from him; The way he treated his wife as a queen, the way he always made time for his daughters, the way he always worked hard, and the way that he loved God.

You can learn some things from a book, but an intentional mentoring relationship is needed if you are going to learn all that God has for you.  General Superintendent Dr. George O. Wood once stated “mentoring has to involve a personal relationship–otherwise Jesus would have just sent a book.”  There are certain things that can only be learned through a mentoring relationship.  Jesus knew this all too well as a carpenter’s son, watching Joseph at work and learning the trade.  A mentoring relationship will take time and commitment, and is dependent upon a covenant relationship between the mentor and protegé.  Several people in the Old Testament modeled mentoring relationships, Jesus modeled it for us, and the apostles modeled it for us.  We don’t mentor just because I have time for it or because it is a popular topic at conferences, we do it because Jesus did it, he commanded it, and because it is vital in training and discipling our churches and in reaching our world for Christ.  The apostle Paul and Titus had such a mentoring relationship, and Paul writes to Titus about the teaching that should take place between older men to younger men and between older women and younger women.  I want to encourage and challenge you today to pursue a Paul and train a Timothy.  Get involved in an intentional mentoring relationship.

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~ by hisstoryinmystory on July 27, 2010.