You sweet moms know how we love to promote ministries that are focused on you moms, mentors and ministry… well, today, we have the privilege of having Elisa Pulliam with us as she shares about her mentoring ministry More to Be! Lisa is a dear friend of mine (Steph) and of The M.O.M. Initiative and her ministry is definitely a ministry that will be a blessing to you.
Grab a cup of coffee and sit back and relax as you read Lisa’s interview with The M.O.M. Initiative!
Can you tell us about More to Be?
Absolutely! More to Be is a ministry passionate about impacting teens, influencing moms, and inspiring mentors through providing resources steeped in relevant biblical truth as well as through offering mentoring training. We have free downloads, which we call curriculum-without-the-binding, practical and encouraging resources throughout our site and on our blog, and a growing community of women who are receiving mentoring training through our courses.
It is our desire to equip women to step into relationships with significant impact and also being able to speak to the heart of teens and twenty-somethings. We’re not encouraging our community to do more, but to become more — more bright and more beautiful as they become more like Christ and impact the world around them (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
How did More to Be begin?
More to Be is really an overflow of what God has been doing in my life over the last fifteen plus years of living with teens and raising my own family. I happen to live at a boarding and day school, so teens and mentoring have defined my life long before I had my own. Over the last five years, I’ve hosted a mentoring group in my home, known as ETC, which stands for Evening Tea & Chat, for teen girls. As part of this informal time together, where I answer their questions about life, boys, God, – and everything in between – I began preparing short, topical studies for them to take home and study further. Eventually, I had a binder jammed packed with lessons along with a heart swollen with desire to see women around the world (ahem, I never think small) begin their own ETC groups. So, with the encouragement of my family and friends, and after many months of prayer, I put my graphic design skills to work and created More to Be.
Honestly, More to Be started as an online filing cabinet to offer to those who sought me out for mentoring information and resources for working with teens. God has blown us away in showing how He’ll use a little step of faith and obedience to create something more amazing than you could ever dream. In less than two years More to Be is touch-pointing around the world, serving missionary and moms, encouraging teens and college girls, speaking to the heart of women who simply need to remember that as they follow Christ distinctly, they are qualified to mentor biblically.
Can you tell us how you go about training and equipping mentors?
We began our focus on equipping mentors, and moms, by offering our Topics & Truth Downloads, which are designed to hone in on biblical principles and personal applications using simple illustrations. They work as great topical, devotional like study or for a group discussion and are appropriate for teens through the senior most Titus 2 women.
While these downloads are a super popular feature amongst youth leaders, moms, and teens, we also saw a need for mentoring training. In 2012, I wrote Impact My Life: Biblical Mentoring Simplified and made it available on Amazon for Kindle and in paperback as a tool for women desiring grow as mentors. With the foundational principle that women should pursue a relationship with Christ first and allow that overflow to trickle on to those they feel called to mentor, Impact My Life also offers practical principles for establishing healthy relationships and leading with a mentoring mindset.
Using the book as the inspiration for offer further training, we designed a six week M2B Mentoring Training and Study Course, which drew the attention of more than 80 women this past January. It has been so successful that now we are offering a number of different course settings and options, with more to come in the next year. The next 6 week session is set to kick off on April 8, with registration opening February 8, and we are looking forward to equipping another group of women to step into a mentoring mindset.
Would you take a moment to encourage our moms in terms of mentoring?
Oh sweet mommas, let me share this. God has a plan to use you in your relationship with your children and beyond, but there are seasons for growth and times when it feels like there is none. The best thing you can do today is draw near to God and dig into the Word, so that you can mentor your children with His truth first and foremose. Soak in His principles and impart them naturally, conversationally, and purposefully. Your time to mentor others will grow from the overflow of mentoring your children.
And one more thing — you are not in this journey of motherhood alone. The M.O.M. Initiative is an incredible way for you to connect with other moms and find a mentor mom. Take that step of faith, as I write about in Impact My Life, look for those mentoring women are already all around you, both online and in real life. They may not have the title of mentor, but receive them and what they have to offer you with gratitude. Then turn and give that gift of mentoring to someone else, seeking the Lord for His timing and purpose.
Elisa is a life coach, mentor, and speaker passionate about equipping women to experience authentic life change for the sake impacting the next generation. She leads More to Be, a ministry committed to raising up mentors and providing resources for teens, twenty- somethings, and women and is the author of Impact My LIfe: Biblical Mentoring Simplified. She considers her first calling as wife to Stephen and momma to her children. Connect with Elisa at www.elisapulliam.com and twitter.com/elisapulliam.____________________________________________________________________________
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