Who’s in your Entourage?

The other day I saw a picture of Jay-Z going into a hotel and he was surrounded by his entourage.  I thought, “What if all of us had an entourage like that to give us support?”

As I thought about my life, my family, and my relationships, it made me ask 2 questions:

1. Who is in my entourage?
2. Who’s entourage am I in?

I looked at Jesus’ life, and I realized that he built an entourage around himself.  In addition, he put himself in other people’s entourage.

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:

Luke 6:12

 Samuel – Mentor/Father in the Faith

Jonathan – Peer/Friend

 Abigail – Conscience Awaken-er

 Abishai (Mighty Men) – Kindred Spirit/Warrior

 Saul – Trainer

 Nathan – Truth-Teller

 Mephibosheth – Compassion Producer

Solomon – Legacy

Leonard Sweet in his book, 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without, had this to say about relationships.

—The real meaning of life is not a journey question or an arrival question.  It’s a relationship question.  Your journey and your destination are both important, but neither is possible without an answer to this prior question:  Who do you have with you?

Your fate is not the result of your faith alone, for no one stands alone.  Relationships don’t stand alone either.  All notions of self-sufficiency need abandoning.  Without the involvement of others in your future, you have no future.

It strikes me that one of the key roles for all parents of teenagers is to help them build their entourage and to help them be in other teen’s entourage.  In addition, every one of us parents of teenagers needs this also.  I believe I need about 5 other parents of teens to help me understand my family, guide me spiritually, help me break out of the denial I am in, and to encourage me to keep growing.  In addition, I need young people to help me see my parenting and my kids  from a different perspective.

One breakthrough we could all work on over the next 4 months is to build and be in an entourage.