Senior Male Mentors
Above is an image of Clint Eastwood at age 56 while directing the 1986 movie “Heartbreak Ridge”. In this movie he plays the part of an experienced drill sergeant training some young marine recruits. This image was chosen as an example of an senior male mentor (over age 50 years old) who was training and leading young guys.
Numbers 8:25–26 (7KB)
25 but at the age of fifty years they must cease preforming this work, and shall no more do the work themselves [but instead serve in a supervisory role].
26 They may assist their brothers in performing their duties at the tent of meeting, [in a supervisory role] but they themselves must not do the work themselves. This, then, is how you are to assign the responsibilities of the Levites.”
The 7KB translation above clarifies that the senior Levites (beginning at age fifty) are to cease preforming the work but are to serve in a supervisory role to the younger men rather than doing the work themselves. This direction was given by God’s wisdom because a fully mature man of age fifty and above, has gained years of experience – which the younger men do not have. It would be tragic to allow such experience to go to waste while a senior Levite wastes his time doing mundane tasks or repetitive work that could be assigned to younger men. At age fifty, the Levite is fully mature and experienced and it is at this time that God required them to stop doing the work themselves and move into a supervisory role to begin to mentor the young men who would replace them. There is a proper way to do things and with a senior male mentor instructing the young men – they can be trained in how to do things in right manner.
This is why God required that the senior Levites stop doing the work themselves at age fifty (not because they were to retire and sit in a rocking chair) but instead they were to use their maturity and superior “life-experience” and mentor the young men after them just as their own fathers had mentored them. It is insane to reinvent the wheel by allowing some ignorant young guy to invent his own way (who knows nothing about the proper way to do things). The proper way was developed by generations of men knowing the right way to do things so that they could teach their own sons so they will not repeat the same mistakes. It is senseless and foolish for young men to work without instructing and essentially allow them to “throw back” to a time of long ago – when people were still ignorant and inventing their own “nonsense-way” of doing things by trial and error.
This principle of the “Senior Mentor” can be applied to just about any type of trade that can be imagined. Those who are fully mature (at age fifty) are doing everyone a disservice by continuing to do the work themselves. It is at this time that they are to use their superior wisdom and experience to train and mentor the young men. They should allow the young men to do the work while these “senior mentors” are to supervise them and mentor them in how to do the work in the proper manner.
The principle of the “senior male mentor” has application for our boy-training program because fully-mature men of age fifty or more can cease from doing the jobs themselves and begin their role of being a trainer and mentor to the young guys.
See the link “7K-Boys Club” for more details.