Investing Your Life in Others

The Quiet Work of Walking with People as They Grow

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”1 Corinthians 3:6 NIV

The People Who Invested in Me

Several years ago, while preparing to speak about developing others, I went back through the timeline of my life and began writing down the names of people who had influenced me.

Before long, I had more than thirty-five names, and I could easily have added more. They included family members, teachers, pastors, bosses, counselors, coaches, and friends. Some walked closely with me for many years. Others were present for only a season. A few influenced me through something they taught or wrote, even though I never knew them personally.

Beside each name, I wrote what that person had contributed to my life. One taught me how to think. Another believed in me before I believed in myself. Some opened doors or trusted me with responsibility. Others told me the truth when I needed to hear it or simply allowed me to watch the way they lived.

As I looked over the list, I felt an enormous sense of gratitude. So much of what I once thought of as my own development had come through the investment of other people. God’s hand was all through it.

Looking back in this way can help us notice relationships and turning points that were difficult to understand while we were living through them. I explore that practice more fully in Discovering Your Life Purpose.

My sisters Debbie and Patty led me to Christ when I was nineteen. They loved me, prayed for me, and helped me find my footing as a young Christian. They continue to encourage me and celebrate what God is doing in my life.

My precious bride, Denise, has made the deepest contribution of anyone. Her devotion to God, simplicity of faith, wisdom, and honest counsel have shaped me in more ways than I could describe. She has prayed for me, challenged me, stood beside me, and helped me understand experiences I could not make sense of by myself. Life makes more sense when I am with her.

Three men played another kind of role in my life. The best word I know for it is father.

The first was my biological father, Jerry Sr. From the time I was young, Dad brought me into his world. He taught me to build and repair almost anything. He also showed me how business worked and how to approach practical problems. His simple faith in God became part of the foundation of my own life.

My father-in-law, Bruno Alfieri, was one of the godliest men I have ever known. I watched him trust God for things that seemed impossible. Wherever he went, he shared his faith. By his early eighties, he had stopped counting the people he had personally led to Christ because the number had grown beyond seven hundred. Shortly before he died at ninety-three, barely conscious in a hospital bed, he led a nurse to Christ. Bruno showed me what a lifetime of simple faith and obedience could look like.

Then there was Paul Stanley. Paul and I walked together for almost twenty years, until his death in 2020. He coached me when I was still a relatively new CEO and mentored me as I sought to go deeper with Christ. We taught and traveled together. We shared meals, laughter, prayer, and some difficult seasons. In time, he became another father to me.

Paul also taught me to lead with what I came to call a developmental bias: an intentional desire to see people grow into who God made them to be.

None of these people did everything. Each gave me something different. Some taught me directly. Others influenced me by allowing me close enough to see their lives. Together, they helped form the person I became.

That realization changed the way I thought about investing in others. I no longer saw it mainly as a program or a leadership technique. I began to see it as sharing what God and life have entrusted to us while helping another person recognize what God has placed within them.

More Than Passing Along What We Know

Discipleship is sometimes reduced to teaching people what to believe or how to behave. Those things matter, but they do not seem large enough to describe what Jesus did with the people closest to Him.

Jesus taught His disciples, but He also shared life with them. They traveled and ate together. They faced opposition and carried responsibility beside Him. They watched Him pray, respond to interruptions, treat people with dignity, and remain faithful under pressure. He asked questions, corrected their misunderstandings, gave them opportunities, and helped them learn from what happened.

Much of what they received could never have come from a lesson alone.

I have come to see discipleship as walking closely enough with another person that something God has worked into our lives can become useful to them. It is not only about passing along what we have learned. It is also about helping people recognize what God has placed within them.

What gifts do we see? What gives this person life? What do they care about deeply? What experiences have shaped them? Where does God seem to be drawing their attention?

We discover many of those things through ordinary conversations and experiences. We ask questions. We give people opportunities to try something new. We trust them with responsibility and remain near while they learn. Sometimes we share what experience has taught us. At other times, the greater gift is helping someone recognize something that was already there.

The person we are helping does not need to become another version of us. Our part is to help that person become more fully who God made them to be and more faithful with what He has placed in their hands.

That understanding also takes some pressure off us. We can offer wisdom, ask good questions, and create opportunities, but we cannot manufacture another person’s growth. We plant and water. God brings the growth.

We also need to be careful. A sincere desire to help can quietly become a desire to direct another person’s life. Advice can become control. Concern can become intrusion. Even spiritual language can be used in ways that make someone feel unable to disagree or decide for themselves.

Healthy investment helps people grow stronger in their relationship with God, understand themselves more clearly, and make responsible decisions without depending unnecessarily on us.

The same principle applies in the workplace. A Christian leader can care deeply about employees without turning every professional relationship into a spiritual one. We can teach, coach, mentor, and model while respecting our position and the other person’s freedom. If a more explicitly spiritual relationship is welcomed, we can enter it with humility and care.

Leader2Leader: Bringing Emerging Leaders into Our World

During my years at Colorado Springs Utilities, I started a program called Leader2Leader. Its purpose was to bring experienced and emerging leaders together in relationships that went well beyond a classroom.

Members of our senior leadership team walked with small groups of emerging leaders for a year. We brought them into our world and allowed them to see the responsibilities we carried, the problems we were trying to solve, and some of the decisions we had to make. We listened to their concerns, answered questions, and gave them practical experiences where they could learn by doing.

We shared what experience had taught us, but we were also trying to understand each person. We wanted to recognize their strengths, what motivated them, and the kinds of responsibility they might be ready to carry.

Some needed encouragement to step forward. Others needed an honest understanding of something that could hold them back. A few discovered that the role they had been pursuing did not fit them as well as they once thought. Our purpose was not simply to prepare people for advancement. We wanted to help them understand who they were and where they could make their best contribution.

A course outline alone could not do that. Senior leaders had to make room for real conversations, meaningful assignments, and honest feedback. The emerging leaders had to be willing to try, reflect on what happened, receive truth, and take responsibility for what they were learning.

Leader2Leader became part of a larger effort to develop leaders at Colorado Springs Utilities. That work received significant recognition, and I appreciated it. But what mattered most was watching people gain confidence, understand themselves more clearly, and become ready for responsibilities they could not have carried a year earlier.

The experience reinforced something I had been learning for a long time. People grow when someone brings them close enough to see real life, gives them a meaningful opportunity, and remains present while they learn from what happens.

Six Ways We Come Alongside People

Over the years, I have used several words to describe the ways we help another person grow. These are not rigid categories. A single relationship may include several of them. Still, the distinctions are useful because people do not always need the same thing from us.

Real relationships are rarely this tidy. A mentor may need to ask a coaching question. A coach may have an experience worth sharing. A teacher always models something, whether intentionally or not. A relationship that begins as mentoring may deepen over time.

The important question is not what title we use. It is what the person in front of us needs. Do they need an example to follow, a truth explained, a thoughtful question, perspective from a road already traveled, help noticing what God may be doing, or simply someone willing to stay?

Modeling: The Life Behind Our Words

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”1 Timothy 4:12 NIV

Our lives leave an impression, whether or not we intend them to.

I have come to believe that I influence people more through who I am and how I live than through what I say. People notice how I respond when plans fail, how I treat someone who cannot advance my interests, and whether I keep my commitments. They watch what happens when I am disappointed, corrected, or placed under pressure. Often, they are learning something from me when I have no idea a lesson is being taught.

Early in my career, I was leading an engineering department when a new leader decided to move in a different direction. I learned through one of my employees that my department had effectively been taken away from me and that my own future was uncertain.

The news hurt deeply. I was angry, embarrassed, and afraid. I also sensed that the way I responded could shape far more than the next few weeks of my career.

Denise prayed with me over the weekend. I would think I had forgiven, only to feel the anger return. She would pray again, and I would choose forgiveness again. Slowly, what I had decided in my mind began to settle into my heart.

When I returned to work, I told the leader I was willing to stay, accept another responsibility, or leave if that was what he believed was best. He told me he wanted me to leave. I remained for two more weeks and tried to serve him and the organization faithfully.

During those final days, I tried to serve him and the organization faithfully. On my last day, a coworker told me he had never seen the love of Christ demonstrated in a workplace the way he had watched it during those two weeks.

I had not known he was watching.

A life worth following is not a flawless life. People may learn more from watching us take responsibility for a mistake, forgive someone who has wounded us, or find our footing after failure than they learn from watching our successes. What matters is that our lives keep returning to truth, humility, and faithfulness.

Teaching: Helping Truth Become Useful

I am not a credentialed teacher. As a young engineer, I assumed effective teaching was mostly good public speaking. If the presenter was interesting and the information was strong, I thought learning would naturally follow.

Then I began noticing how little I remembered a week after attending even an excellent seminar. I might leave inspired, but very little of what I heard found its way into the way I lived or worked.

I had confused speaking with teaching.

That realization changed my approach. I began using stories, discussion, reflection, and opportunities to practice. Sometimes I used movie clips that allowed people to see an idea unfolding. I also drew from the lives of people whose choices made the principle real.

Instead of only describing courage or integrity, we could watch someone face a moment in which those qualities were tested. The conversation could then move beyond, “Do you understand this?” to “What do you see happening here, and how might you respond?”

I also tried to connect each idea with something people were already facing. My goal was no longer to cover as much material as possible. I wanted to offer something they could understand, remember, and use.

Teaching does not always require a classroom or a prepared lesson. It may happen beside someone while a problem is being solved. It may begin with a mistake or a question. Some of the best teaching simply gives language to something the other person has been experiencing but has not known how to describe.

Coaching: Making Room for Discovery

Coaching usually requires more listening than telling.

Most of us give advice more quickly than we realize. We hear part of a problem, recognize something familiar, and begin offering a solution. The advice may even be good, but it can keep the other person from discovering what they already know or taking responsibility for a decision that belongs to them.

A thoughtful question slows the conversation down. It gives someone room to hear their own words, examine what they are assuming, and recognize possibilities that may have been there all along.

During one Leader2Leader conversation, I coached a woman whose strengths and passions did not fit well with her current role. As we reviewed several assessments and talked about what gave her energy, she began to recognize the disconnect for herself.

I did not need to tell her which job to pursue. We considered possibilities, explored what mattered most to her, and identified a direction she could begin moving toward. She later told me that the conversation had changed the way she saw her future.

The insight belonged to her. My role was to make room for her to recognize it.

Coaching can also include practical opportunities. We may invite someone to lead a meeting, take responsibility for a project, have a difficult conversation, or try something they have never attempted. The experience gives them new information about themselves. We then help them consider what happened and what it revealed.

Questions are not always the right response. Sometimes a person needs clear direction, candid feedback, or the benefit of our experience. Wisdom includes knowing when to ask and when to speak.

Spiritual Coaching: Paying Attention to God’s Activity

Spiritual coaching uses many of the same practices, but the attention turns more directly toward God. The purpose is to help someone notice His activity and consider how to respond.

A spiritual coach does not tell another person what God is saying to them. Nor should we place our preferences beneath spiritual language. We listen carefully and help the person pay attention to what may already be stirring within them.

Where have you sensed God’s presence recently? What keeps returning to your attention? Is there something He may be inviting you to face? What response might faith require?

Questions such as these can help someone move beyond “What do I want to do?” and begin asking, “What might God be doing, and how can I respond?”

There have been times when someone came to me wanting an answer and discovered through conversation and prayer that the deeper need was clarity. Once the situation became clearer, the next step was often already within reach.

A spiritual coach does not stand between another person and God. We walk beside people as they learn to recognize His activity and respond for themselves.

Mentoring: Sharing a Road We Have Traveled

A mentor has usually traveled some portion of the road another person is beginning to walk. We can share what worked, what failed, what proved costly, and what became clear only with time.

That experience should be offered with humility. What was right for me may not be right for someone else. Circumstances change, people differ, and God does not write the same story twice. A mentor offers experience as a gift, not as a command.

Mentoring is also more than telling our stories or passing along our conclusions. A good mentor remains curious. How does this person think? What abilities are beginning to emerge? What matters deeply to them? Where might their path need to be different from mine?

I once began meeting with a twenty-seven-year-old emerging leader who was hungry for God and eager to grow. What started as coaching gradually became mentoring. He identified two areas he wanted to address: financial stewardship and his understanding of manhood.

We met regularly for several months. He developed a budget, began tithing, and worked through a book on manhood. Before long, he was sharing what he was learning with a small group of his own.

As our relationship deepened, pain involving his father began to surface. We talked about the difference between honoring someone and pretending that person has no faults. I invited him to consider what he could sincerely appreciate in his father while also acknowledging the wounds that still needed attention. In time, he worked through forgiveness and prepared for an honest conversation with his dad.

The relationship went somewhere neither of us could have predicted. What started with practical goals eventually touched something much deeper.

Mentoring often unfolds that way. A person may begin by asking for help with work, finances, marriage, or leadership. As trust grows, the questions beneath those questions may begin to emerge. Our responsibility is to remain attentive without assuming the right to enter places the other person has not opened.

No mentor is equipped to guide someone through every part of life. I have often pointed people toward a pastor, counselor, book, or another mentor who could offer something I could not. Admitting our limitations does not weaken the relationship. It makes it safer.

Life-on-Life Discipleship: Walking Together Across Seasons

Most coaching and mentoring relationships begin with a particular purpose and continue for a season. Sometimes the original purpose is fulfilled, but the relationship continues because trust, affection, and a shared life have grown around it.

This is what I mean by life-on-life discipleship.

Some Christians use the terms spiritual fathering or spiritual mothering. The biblical idea is meaningful, but those titles can be misunderstood, especially when someone claims a position for themselves or uses it to establish authority over another person.

For that reason, I prefer language that describes the relationship. Life-on-life discipleship means walking closely with a few people over time. It includes prayer, encouragement, correction, and shared experience. It also gives people the freedom to know one another beyond a particular goal.

My relationship with Paul Stanley eventually became this kind of relationship. He coached and mentored me, but over time we grew beyond either description. We knew one another’s families, walked through losses and transitions, and shared parts of life that had nothing to do with a program or a particular goal. That is why, in time, he became another father to me.

Before our daughter Elise was married, she often invited young adults into our home for fellowship, games, and worship. On one occasion, I spoke with them about the Father’s love and the belonging He gives His children. Denise and I then prayed with them individually.

I was deeply moved by how many needed the simple assurance that they were seen and loved. Some wept as those truths were spoken over them.

That evening did not make Denise and me spiritual parents to everyone in the room. It reminded me how deeply people long to be welcomed and given a safe place to belong.

We cannot share that depth of life with many people, nor should we try. But there may be a few whom God invites us to love and walk beside through many seasons. The relationship is not built around a title or dependence. It grows through trust and the willingness to remain.

Helping People Learn from Life

The purpose of investing in someone is not simply to help that person perform better or move into a larger role. I hope people come to understand more clearly how God has made them and what He has placed in their hands. I want them to become able to make wise decisions, carry responsibility, and offer something of themselves to others.

This is not only about people with titles. Each of us affects the people around us, whether or not we hold an official position.

That kind of growth rarely comes through instruction alone. Life is already teaching us, but we often move too quickly to notice.

As a father to Elise and Jonathan, I tried to pay attention to the lessons life placed in front of us. A success could open a conversation about gratitude. A mistake could become an opportunity to take responsibility without allowing failure to define them. A disappointment might reveal what they valued or where they were placing their hope.

The same thing happens in friendship, ministry, and work. A difficult meeting, an unexpected conflict, or a decision that turns out poorly may teach more than a prepared lesson if someone helps us look at it honestly.

I have often called this evaluated experience. Experience alone does not necessarily make us wise. Wisdom grows when we slow down and consider what happened. What went well? What did the experience reveal? What might we do differently next time? Questions like these can help someone recognize abilities, desires, fears, or patterns they might otherwise miss.

This was one reason practical assignments mattered so much in Leader2Leader. Emerging leaders worked on real problems and watched experienced people wrestle with decisions that could never be reproduced in a classroom. They were given responsibility and then invited to reflect on what happened.

Those experiences often revealed more than an assessment or conversation could. People discovered abilities they had not recognized. They noticed the kind of work that gave them unusual energy. They also saw places where further growth was needed.

Mistakes became part of the classroom. When people believe every failure will be used against them, they learn to hide. When they know they can face the truth without losing their dignity, they are more likely to take responsibility and learn from what happened.

Grace does not remove consequences or excuse carelessness. Grace allows us to tell the truth while continuing to believe that something better can grow from it.

Investing with Wisdom and Care

A generous heart may want to help everyone, but we cannot walk deeply with every person. Our time and attention are limited. Some relationships will last for years. Others may be meant for a single season or conversation.

Jesus cared for crowds, traveled with a larger company of followers, chose twelve, and invited three into a few particularly important moments. His love was not limited, but His time was focused.

I try to treat every person with dignity while being prayerful about deeper investment. I look for someone who is teachable, willing to act on what they learn, and open to honest conversation. I also pay attention to whether the person wants what they receive to become useful to others. This is not a measure of anyone’s value. It simply recognizes that a fruitful coaching or mentoring relationship requires something from both people.

Before I agree to walk more intentionally with someone, I find it helpful to ask:

1. What would you most like to understand or develop during this season?
2. What kind of help are you hoping I can offer?
3. Are you willing to prepare, speak honestly, try something new, and follow through on what you discover?
4. How will we know whether our time together is helping, and when should we stop and review it?

When the relationship is explicitly spiritual, I may also ask where the person senses God at work and what might be receiving His attention.

Their answers may show that I am not the right person or that what they need is different from what I can provide. That is important to know before expectations begin to form.

I also need to ask some questions of myself. Do I have the experience and capacity to serve this person well? Can I enter the relationship without needing to control the outcome? Am I willing to listen long enough to understand the person in front of me rather than assuming that their path should resemble mine?

These conversations do not need to make a relationship feel formal. They simply bring expectations into the open.

Consent is especially important when one person already holds authority over the other. An employee may not feel free to decline an invitation from a senior leader. A younger Christian may believe that spiritual maturity requires accepting every suggestion made by an older person. The greater our authority or influence, the more carefully we should protect another person’s freedom.

Boundaries matter as well. A coach is not a counselor. A mentor will not be equipped to address every emotional, relational, financial, or spiritual concern. A discipleship relationship should never become possessive. Wisdom includes recognizing when to continue, when to step back, and when to involve someone better prepared to help.

We should also be honest about our motives. Sometimes the desire to be needed can hide inside the desire to help. We may enjoy being the person with the answers. We may feel disappointed when someone no longer turns to us as often. Those feelings are worth noticing.

Healthy investment eventually requires less of us, not more. The person becomes better able to make wise decisions, recognize God’s leading, and take responsibility for their own life.

The Aim Is Maturity, Not Dependence

Paul told Timothy to entrust what he had received to reliable people who would be able to teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). The investment moved from Paul to Timothy, from Timothy to others, and from them to still more people. That is the quiet multiplication at the heart of discipleship.

Our purpose is not to gather people who will always need us. We want them to know who they are, exercise good judgment, carry responsibility, and eventually offer what they have received to others.

Over time, the relationship may change. Someone we once taught may become a trusted friend. A person we mentored may surpass us in an area and become someone from whom we learn. That is not a loss. It is part of what we hoped for.

One of the foremen who participated in Leader2Leader gave me a simple picture of this. After learning about individual strengths, he returned to the group responsible for unloading coal trains and managing the coal pile. He invited the members of his team to consider their own strengths and the work each of them did especially well.

They rearranged several responsibilities around what they discovered. The operation became more efficient, but something else happened. People became more engaged because someone had taken the time to notice what they could contribute.

The foreman did not wait until he considered himself a teacher or an expert. He took something that had helped him, adapted it to the people he led, and helped them recognize something valuable in themselves.

This often begins in ordinary ways. Someone who has been encouraged begins encouraging another person. Someone who has been mentored begins walking with someone else. A person who has learned to recognize their own gifts begins making room for the gifts of others. The investment continues, often in ways the original giver will never see.

What Has Been Entrusted to Us

When I look again at the names on my timeline, I am reminded that much of what I now carry began as someone else’s gift.

Dad brought me into his world. Bruno showed me the beauty of simple faith. Denise helped me hear God and understand my own heart. Paul shared wisdom, questions, friendship, and years of experience. Many others taught me, corrected me, encouraged me, and believed in me.

I cannot repay those people by returning everything they gave me. The best way I know to honor their investment is to offer what I have received to someone else.

There are people around each of us who may need something God has worked into our lives. They will not need everything we know, and we will not be the right person for every need. But a lesson gained through faithfulness, failure, suffering, family, work, or years of walking with God may become an answer to another person’s prayer.

Someone may also need us to see what they cannot yet see in themselves. A gift may still be hidden beneath insecurity. A desire may not yet have found its proper expression. An experience that once seemed disconnected may turn out to be part of a much larger story.

We do not need to force a relationship or pretend to possess wisdom we do not have. We can begin by paying attention. Who is already near us? Who is asking questions? Who has shown a desire to grow? What might need encouragement, opportunity, or time to develop?

We can begin in ordinary ways. Invite someone to coffee and ask what is happening in their life. Listen carefully. When it may be useful, share a lesson that cost you something to learn. Give the person room to try, and remain close enough to help make sense of what happens.

We plant. We water. God gives the growth. In time, the person beside us may do the same for someone else.

Questions to Sit With

1. Who are the people who most influenced you? What did each one contribute?
2. What have God and life taught you that may now be useful to someone else?
3. Is there someone already near you whom you may be invited to walk with more intentionally?
4. What might that person need most from you right now: an example, clear instruction, a thoughtful question, honest feedback, an opportunity, or simply your presence?
5. What expectations and boundaries would help the relationship remain healthy and free?
6. Are you helping this person grow in wisdom and responsibility, or become more dependent upon you?

Putting It into Practice

Choose one person who may benefit from what God and experience have taught you. Ask what they hope to understand or develop, and listen carefully. Together, agree on one practical next step and a time to reconnect. Keep their maturity and freedom in view.

Prayer

Lord,

Thank You for the people You have used to shape our lives. Thank You for those who taught us, encouraged us, corrected us, prayed for us, and allowed us to see what faithfulness looked like in everyday life.

Help us recognize what You have entrusted to us and hold it with open hands. Show us the people You may be inviting us to walk beside, and give us wisdom to understand what they truly need.

Teach us when to speak and when to listen. Help us ask questions that bring clarity and offer truth without diminishing another person. Give us eyes to recognize what You have placed within them.

Keep us humble enough to acknowledge our limitations. Help us release people rather than make them dependent upon us. May those we serve grow into the people You made them to be and, in time, freely offer to others what they have received.

We entrust their growth to You.

Amen.

Appendix: Six Ways We Invest in People

For the count of 307 questions mentioned in the introductory video, see Martin B. Copenhaver, Jesus Is the Question: The 307 Questions Jesus Asked and the 3 He Answered (Abingdon Press, 2014).