Faith Thoughts Upon Expecting a Birth

"Thought #65" Great Expectations: 101 Thoughts for the New Mom is a quote from poet William Wordsworth:

Not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home. 

As I read those words, I remembered a statement by St. Augustine of Hippo who said in Confessions,

God you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.

As we await the birth of the second child God will charge us to nurture and raise, these thoughts are truthful realities.  God is, indeed, our home, our rest, and the one in whom we are created to live.  The challenge then of parenting, and of leadership in the church, is to create an environment in which children and adults can recognize these truths themselves.

In this, I wonder again about the relationship of teaching and discipling.  In some sense, perhaps these two could also be called "instruction" and "mentoring."  Where do they overlap?  Where do they separate?  As I think back upon my own Sunday School experience, I think there was a great deal of teaching with very little mentoring or discipling.  Of course, mentoring did happen along the way, yet I don't know that it was in any intentional or methodical way.  That being said, it seems like what our youth, our children, and our adults need is both instruction and mentoring, both pursued in an intentional, methodical way.  And in this, I wonder one final question: how does a congregation shift from an instruction-centered emphasis to that of a balanced instruction-and-mentoring emphasis?