Bio

Recently I have become a grandfather. God has no grandchildren. Each new-born life in Jesus Christ is a direct adoption into His family created by His Spirit. The only thing I have left to do is live Paul’s words to his son in the faith, Timothy, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” [2 Timothy 2:2].

Hello. I am Gary Hinchman. I was born in Huntington, WV. I went to church at Grace Gospel in the west end of Huntington on the second Sunday after I was born. I still remember my 2nd Grade Sunday School teacher having us all join hands in a circle to bow our heads to pray and receive Christ as our Savior into our hearts. As I looked up and watched all the other kids dutifully follow the teacher, I didn’t have a clue what she meant or what we were doing. But I liked to dress up for dramatic roles so I remember dressing up with a Mexican sombrero for “Missions Sunday”, even if I was blind to what the mission was all about at that time.

My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. I didn’t find out until much later in life that my dad was the youngest of 12 and that his dad died when he was two years old. My dad was raised by mothering sisters and a godly church-going mom. But he didn’t have the male role models in his life he needed to become a strong husband and father.

This explained why my dad was an absent father in my teen years during the 60’s. But as the rock song says, I was one “angry young man” in my youth because the Church in those days knew nothing about mentoring or discipleship as it is presented in the Bible and the most Christians could offer my dad was a self-righteous judgmental spirit for not “measuring up” like he should to their lifestyles, born out of stable homes where responsible fathers modeled what it meant to be a man.

As a result of this home-life, and in spite of having a very hardworking and responsible mother, I remained an emotionally immature kid full of bitterness about life. But after high school, I began asking the big questions about life [“Why am I here?” “Is there a God?” “Why does life suck?” ]. After a very brokenhearted evening of facing a drunk relative in a fit of anger, I went to St. John’s Episcopal Church where they left the front doors open to the sanctuary for prayer. At the altar in the front of the church I cried out to God, “If you exist, you are going to have to show me what to do with my life because I haven’t got a clue.”

Two days later I went to my Uncle Weir and Aunt Clella’s bookstore to get a book about God and I ended up getting a book about the devil titled, Satan is Alive and Well on the Planet Earth written by a guy named Hal Lindsey. In the twelfth chapter of the book titled The Guilt Trip he explained why Christians often don’t understand why they continue to sin even when they claim to be “saved” by God. But in this chapter he explained how Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins against God and that his death on the cross was God’s way of showing His love to me in spite of all the sinful hassles of life that seemed to keep kicking me in the face.

Eventually I finished Marshall University with a major in History and the intention of going to Dallas Theological Seminary. I earned a Masters in New Testament Theology and pastored churches for about 8 years as well as writing curriculums for high school Christian Education. But when a separation and divorce launched me into an intensive study of life skills and biblical Christian living, I came to see why no one in the evangelical church could help my dad in my early years and why few people cared to even try in my own life struggles in later years.

Christianity for many is all about “keeping up appearances” and never getting real with others so as to help them grow or allow others to help us grow. This is why The Mentor’s Foundation came into existence - to help people get real about living life in Christ so they can be a godly influence on generations growing up in this mad, mad world of self-righteous hypocrisy and unrighteous choices that we all struggle with until we are living lifestyles fully developed on the The Mentor’s Foundation. By the way, my dad came to Christ after having a stroke a few years ago and we have something from our heavenly Father now that neither of us ever knew growing up - a mutual relationship with The Mentor.