Mentoring Matters

Building Strong Christian leaders - Avoiding burnout - Reaching the fini

Rick Lewis

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857213679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Mentoring Matters explains a reproducible model for maximizing the potential of leaders and helping them go the distance.

It gets behind the issues of leadership skills to address the leader as a person - their spirituality, emotional health, key relationships, vulnerabilities and rhythms of life.

This approach to mentoring is highly flexible so that it can be tailor-made for each mentoring partnership, not relying on a strict format or curriculum. The mentor functions as a doctor of the soul, pulling us back to our most noble intentions and perceptive insights.

The approach is formal and organised - and highly effective.

Chapter 1

A different Approach to Mentoring

Looking back, it felt a bit like a blind date. We’d had one brief conversation on the phone and had agreed to meet at a roadside café – the ‘services’ – between junctions 25 and 26 on the M1. I was pulling together a pilot mentoring scheme for the Bible Society in the United Kingdom. Being an Australian in a foreign country with no network of my own, I had been handed a list of likely candidates with contact numbers attached. Ken sounded dubious on the phone and he still looked that way when we finally found each other.

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ he said, ‘but I already have quite an extensive network of people that I catch up with who help me with various things. Can you tell me what it is exactly that you’re offering to do for me?’

Ken had assembled what has been called a ‘constellation’ of developmental relationships⁸ comprised of specialists with particular skills, leaders of other churches, prayer partners, a small Bible study group, family and friends. Each person made a valuable contribution to his life, but he had many of these developmental relationships and wasn’t sure he had time for another one.

Like Ken, many leaders have a set of people that they can call on for particular needs. Whenever help is needed, one of those people will be sure to come up with a suitable resource. Such a range of input is a wonderful supply of raw material, but the value of that input is only fully realized when it is sifted, evaluated and coherently integrated into life. This is the kind of thing for which a formal mentoring relationship is so helpful.

Back then, I didn’t have a succinct definition, but I managed to convey to Ken that it was about promoting the work of God’s Spirit in his life and facilitating his spiritual growth, his key relationships and his vocational effectiveness.

‘You mean it’s about putting the whole thing together – about who I am inside, as well as about my ministry?’ he asked. ‘If that’s it, then I’m in.’

The difficult task of defining Christian mentoring

The concept of mentoring seems at once both familiar and elusive. At an intuitive level, we may have a grasp of what it is, but expressing it in a few words proves to be a more difficult task. I have read dozens of books on this subject and every one of them has a different definition of mentoring. Since there are so many starting points for approaching this process, it should perhaps be no great surprise that there is such a wide diversity of opinion. Yet even within the Christian literature, definitions of mentoring abound.

Stanley and Clinton call mentoring, ‘A relational experience in which one person empowers another by sharing God-given resources.’⁹ This is no doubt true of mentoring, but it could also describe so many other forms of interaction that it is not particularly helpful as a definition. Biehl prefers, ‘A lifelong relationship… in which a mentor helps a protégé reach his/her God-given potential.’¹⁰ The difficulty here is the slightly paternalistic tone conveyed by the word ‘protégé’ and the idea of all mentoring being lifelong by definition.

The word chosen by an author to describe the person who receives mentoring can often tell you something crucial about the way they conceive of the process. Krallmann, for example, offers this definition of mentoring: ‘Operating as a facilitator… to further the full release of the trainee’s talents, [the mentor] seeks to holistically impact the latter through the totality of his/ her shared life.’¹¹ There is much that is good about this definition, especially the reference to holistic impact, but the use of the term ‘trainee’ presupposes an educational model for mentoring that differs significantly from the model described in this book.

Mallison takes a more relational approach that emphasizes a spiritual goal, proposing that ‘Christian mentoring is a dynamic, intentional relationship of trust in which one person enables another to maximise the grace of God in their life and service.’¹² Anderson and Reese take this a step further, defining spiritual mentoring as a ‘triadic relationship between mentor, mentoree and the Holy Spirit, where the mentoree can discover, through the already present action of God, intimacy with God, ultimate identity as a child of God and a unique voice for kingdom responsibility.’¹³

These last two definitions point toward what I have come to see as the fundamental reality upon which my approach to mentoring is predicated: that God is up to something good in every person’s life. I believe that the best Christian mentoring takes its cue from this divine activity in terms of both ends and means. That is, good Christian mentoring is after what God is after, and it goes after it in ways that are consistent with the character and nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

In the light of so many varied approaches, I don’t presume to be able to provide you with an authoritative definition of Christian mentoring. However, at the risk of further cluttering the landscape with yet another definition, here is my succinct expression of what I believe this approach to mentoring achieves:

Within intentional, empowering, unique relationships, Christian mentoring identifies and promotes the work of God’s Spirit in others’ lives, assisting them to access God’s resources for their growth and strength in spirituality, character and ministry.

In this chapter I intend to explore that statement one piece at a time, particularly noting its application to the task of mentoring Christian leaders, which is my present focus.

Essential characteristics

Intentional

Christian mentoring is intentional because in its primary sense it is done on purpose. Now, to be fair, there are many examples of relationships carried out in a haphazard, unintentional way that might be termed ‘mentoring’ in a secondary sense. These relationships are not usually called mentoring by those involved in them – they are usually simply known as friendships. Whatever functions of mentoring these friendships display, they occur incidentally and are not the principal focus of the relationship. At best, this is a relatively weak form of mentoring.

On occasion, certain outstanding individuals are also referred to as mentors who serve as models and inspire others toward Christian maturity. This is a little misleading. They are only ‘mentors’ in a derivative sense through the sort of pseudo-relationship we may have with someone not personally known to us but who has an impact upon us. They would be better termed ‘heroes’. An intentional mentoring relationship need not necessarily be a formal one, with the structures and processes that I recommend in this book as appropriate for leaders. However, meaningful mentoring will not be achieved without a conscious, deliberate, intentional decision to pursue it with someone whom we allow to get to know us personally.

I love having stimulating conversations with leaders about the issues they face in life and in mission. It’s great fun tossing around ideas and looking at things from different angles. But it is disappointing to see some leaders unwilling to go the next step and thoroughly work through the implications of these discussions personally. It seems to be something of a game to them. I notice that when it gets to a point requiring deep personal change or serious work on some issue, they pull back from pursuing it intentionally.

Chris was one such person. This young woman came to me angry about what had just happened at her church. According to Chris, the Elders had pulled someone from the worship team because they had discovered something dark about their past.

‘This is typical!’ she said. ‘They are so afraid that a scandal might damage their precious church that they treat a person with no grace at all! This is what institutional churches do – they don’t act like Jesus at all, they just screw people up.’

Clearly, several things were going off in Chris all at once; some good, some bad. It was going to take some sorting out to discover what God was up to in her life.

We had spoken previously about the difficulty she was having fitting in with a conventional church. Friends of hers were interested in talking about Jesus, but she knew for sure that there was no way they would ever relate to her church. She had read some books about alternative forms of church and sensed a stirring that might have been from God about perhaps helping to start something up. Now that she had finally severed her ties with her old church, I asked her if she would like to work together on finding a way forward.

It was a moment of truth, and she didn’t grasp it. Chris had isolated conversations with several people who might have been able to turn this crisis into an opportunity for growth, but she chose not to become intentional about any of those relationships and has drifted into impotent disaffection with church and faith.

In the midst of a constellation of developmental relationships a Christian leader may have multiple mentors, both sequentially through life and concurrently at any one time. My observation is that where Christian leaders intentionalize and formalize at least one of them, they gain the maximum benefit from the personal and spiritual investment that mentoring relationships can bring.

Empowering

Feelings of powerlessness are common, especially for leaders facing the challenge not only of living their own lives effectively but also of advancing God’s cause in an indifferent or hostile context. Aware of this, Paul wrote to Timothy reminding him that ‘God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.’¹⁴ Timothy is not the only leader ever to have struggled with timidity. Who wouldn’t be a little uncertain when dealing with spiritual mysteries and seeking to lead people in ways that we are not altogether expert in ourselves? It is perfectly understandable that young leaders and mature leaders alike should have moments of hesitation, wondering if they have taken everything into account and whether or not their judgment is accurate. Lurking in the background are voices of self-doubt: ‘Who am I to be leading these people?’

Empowering relationships take people from a place of inner weakness, where they feel powerless and overwhelmed, to a place of inner strength, where they feel able to respond constructively to their situation. Inner weakness is characterized by timidity, double-mindedness, anxiety, hesitancy, procrastination and self-doubt. Inner strength is characterized by confidence, endurance, patience, determination, hope and courage. A Christian mentoring relationship has the capacity to address the disempowerment experienced by leaders in two ways.

First, there is the kind of interpersonal empowerment that is familiar within many helping professions, including secular mentoring. In mentoring programmes provided by some corporations to their promising young executives, empowering relationships are offered as the main attraction. Eric Parsloe, one of the experts in this area, describes empowerment as resulting from access to such things as:

• a source of reassurance; a backup figure;
• a help in lateral thinking and achieving overview of career and organization;
• a driving force to push them if they need it;
• an alternative and detached point of guidance from immediate manager;
• an opportunity to see clearly what skills and experiences they need;
• a chance to learn organizational skills;
• a qualified sounding board for any questions or problems they encounter;
• a chance to become acquainted with someone much higher up in the company.¹⁵

The power that mentorees derive from such a relationship consists mainly in gaining confidence to commit to action. With a small amount of input and judicious affirmation from someone they respect and trust, mentorees build inner strength. There is a sense in which simply having a mentor alongside to assure you that you’re not completely stupid is a very empowering thing. It does instil confidence to go ahead and do the thing you had in mind when a mentor validates it with genuine affirmation. Mentors empower others by reminding them of facts they may have temporarily forgotten or may not be weighing correctly. There might be a process of questioning by the mentor, but when she leans back and says, ‘Okay, that makes sense,’ it can strengthen the heart of a mentoree significantly.

However, a mentoring relationship between two Christians is empowering not simply because of this human interpersonal dynamic. There is an additional capacity to address inner weakness that comes from the power of the Holy Spirit – a factor that goes beyond anything that you’ll read about in secular mentoring models. I believe this is what Paul was alluding to when he wrote to Timothy. As Timothy’s mentor, Paul was able to speak into his life, reminding him of a profound reality that could bring him inner strength to overcome his timidity and whatever sense of powerlessness was driving that feeling.

When two or more Christians come together in the name of Jesus, he is present with them by his Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus provides the power to first of all change the very being of the mentoree through personal transformation, bringing inner strength in a more profound way than information and affirmation could ever achieve. Beyond this, the power of the Spirit enables that inner strength to be applied in action through the operation of gifts of grace. The work of the Holy Spirit is released through a Christian mentoring relationship, and that is what makes it distinctively empowering.

Unique

When I began to research mentoring in earnest after several years of amateur dabbling, I was looking for a ‘best practice’ method. It seemed to me that my home-grown approach was all over the place. What I would do with one mentoree would be quite different from what I would do with another. I thought that couldn’t be right. As if mentoring were like carpentry or engineering, I sought to track down the most successful techniques of the experts and distil them into a standard method that would be easier to teach others and more easily replicable by them in their own contexts.

It was not difficult to find standardized mentoring processes, especially in the secular marketplace. Management consultancy firms have them as a matter of course. They claim to tailor-make these mentoring programmes to suit each specific context, but in reality it only takes a little tweaking of the template here and there, and a comprehensive system can be rolled out in no time at all. The drawback is that these systems turn out to be cold and clinical and those involved feel like they are just going through the motions. From the feedback I gathered, it appears that these programmes only work well where someone trained as a mentor departs from the script and works with their mentoree in a nonstandard, individualistic way.

This reminds me of Jesus, who was constantly departing from the script and dealing with people as individuals. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus never heals two people in exactly the same way, never steers a conversation down a path he’s used before, never preaches the same sermon twice, and never becomes predictable, but is always creative and highly adaptive to each new context. His Spirit, alive and active in every Christian, is still working in this free, non-formulaic way. As a mentor, it’s a challenge to keep up with the ever-fresh activity of the Holy Spirit that is unique in each case.

Since every human being is unique and no two leaders have exactly the same calling, I urge that each mentoring relationship and the activities that spring from it be devised fresh and new every time especially for that individual. There really is no effective ‘one-s...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. A Different Approach to Mentoring
• 2. An Ancient Art for a Post-modern Context
• 3. Navigating the Perfect Storm
• 4. Getting Started
• 5. Giving Your Best to Mentoring
• 6. Getting the Most from Mentoring
• 7. The Mentoring Relationship
• 8. Mentoring Methods
• 9. Challenges in Mentoring
• Appendix 1: Surprised by Pain
• Appendix 2: A Sample Annual Summary
• Bibliography
• Endnotes