Apprentice

Welcome to my MAP Journal! My name is John and I am a student at the Irish Bible Institute. As part of my studies I will be completing a module called the Mentoring and Apprenticeship Programme (MAP for short). This is where the IBI and my home church of Cahir Presbyterian Church come together in my training. I have asked my friend and member of my church, Peter to be my mentor. I hope to learn from Peter, have regular discussions with him about my progress and be accountable to him.

I’ll be setting goals for my MAP work. Goals to develop my practical leadership skills, my ministry and involvement at Cahir Presbyterian Church, my relationships with other people and I will also be working towards my own personal and spiritual development. Peter, as my mentor, will guide and help me with this as I rely on his experience, wisdom and support.

In the morning I will be meeting with Peter for the first of our (hopefully) fortnightly meetings. While in Cahir I hope to take some pictures of the town for one of the goals I hope to work on as part of the map – improving and integrating the church website more with the church body.

I’m keeping this journal as part of my spiritual and personal development for the MAP. I hope to track and develop my devotional and prayer life and to document my progress in other areas. I find keeping a journal to be a good way of tracking development and sorting out my thoughts and feelings on a subject.

I don’t know if I’ll actually post prayers up here. My prayers are extremely private and personal to me and I’m a very private person anyway. I will most likely provide updates on my progress in attempting to develop my prayer life. I’m not 100 percent happy with the way I pray at the moment. It seems I’m either rambling, losing my train of thought and drifting off or just going through a mental shopping list of what I’d like to get through as part of a nightly routine. I have found in the past that writing out my prayers beforehand to be very helpful so I could perhaps give that a try again. What I’d really like to have is some regular prayer time during the day, perhaps in a special quiet place. At the moment I usually pray at night and in the morning but at night I am often so tired that I lose focus and drift off and in the morning I often find myself squeezing in prayer as I rush to get ready for work.

These are just some of the things I hope to work on with the help of Peter, and God of course. I haven’t even decided on all of my goals yet but I will keep you updated.