Spiritual Sisterhood

Mentoring for Women of Color

Rebecca Florence Osaigbovo

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780830868391
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In these pages, author and speaker Rebecca Florence Osaigbovo calls all sisters to either become a spiritual mother or be mentored by one. In fact, she believes the survival of African American communities depends on the renewal of mentoring relationships.Having spent many years as both a mentor and a mentee, Osaigbovo provides here the resources needed for effective, life-giving, mentoring relationships, including help for- finding someone to mentor or someone to mentor you- deciding what to do together- avoiding pitfalls- reaching across the age gap, whether older to younger or younger to olderIn addition, you'll read stories from real mentors and mentees that reveal the life-change and lasting effects that come from vibrant mentoring relationships. Older, spiritually mature African American women also offer their wise words of advice, gleaned from years of serving as spiritual mothers to others.Whether you're in a family, workplace, school or ministry context, whether you're young or old, you can begin a mentoring relationship. Let Rebecca Florence Osaigbovo and her spiritual sisters and mothers show you how.

1

Making the Case

If I had to define the state of spiritual mothering in the African American community today, I would lift a phrase from a classic novel: it is both “the best of times” and “the worst of times.” First the good news: discipleship is alive and well among women in the African American Christian community. Spiritual mothering has been going on in the African American community for a long time, as you will hear in a story about one born at the turn of the twentieth century who did this important work.

The bad news is, we don’t have enough spiritual mothers. Spiritual mothering is in danger of becoming a lost art. Losing that gift, which primarily is passed down through generations, would be tragic, because spiritual mothering has much potential to make a major difference in individual lives, in families and in neighborhoods.

Spiritual mothers are valuable and necessary. We need them. We need to listen to them. We need their input in our lives. There is definitely room for much more intentional discipleship to take place in our churches and among Christian women.

When I’ve asked African American female audiences how many had good spiritual mentoring or discipleship when they first became Christians, only one-third have consistently raised their hands. That’s two out of three who have not had the benefit of being discipled. I do not propose that these informal and impromptu polls have any scientific significance, but if the results are anywhere close to reality, my guess is that a significant percentage of African American Christian women do not receive formal discipleship upon becoming a Christian.

It was not always this way. In what my daughter likes to call “the olden days,” the extended family was operative in the African American community. The mother of the wife or husband often lived in the home. That grandmother, whom we frequently called “Big Momma,” was an integral part of raising the children as well as the mother, showing her how to be a wife and mother, based on years of experience and biblical wisdom. Today, as we are more affluent and tend to move around the country, that is less and less our experience. It seems that we have lost the connection that ensured that a modicum of wisdom passed down through successive generations. This is sad, and a great loss among the people of God.

Spiritual Mothering Is Not an Option

Spiritual mothering is not my idea. It is something God put in place. Jesus commanded us to “make disciples.” And Paul spoke of spiritual mothering to Titus, one of the men he mentored and worked with. It’s what God desires. It works, and it is vital.

I need to make it perfectly clear: discipleship is not an option; you are supposed to be a spiritual mother. If you aren’t a spiritual mother, it may be because no one took the time to disciple you, so you don’t know what it is. Or maybe you just don’t know how to do it. I really hope it is not because you just don’t care about what God wants.

Women should disciple other women out of obedience to God. We disciple others because we love the Lord, and out of our love, we want to keep his commandment “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 18:19-20).

Believe God’s Word. Pray specifically; expect answers. Let the principles in the Bible guide your life.
Beverly Yates

Why should women in particular embrace teaching other women? Not only do older women not have an option, they have a biblical mandate to teach younger women: “The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things—that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed” (Titus 2:3-5).

This is serious. This is the Word of God. There is a purpose for older women to teach younger women—“that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” Younger women need help in knowing how to love their husband and their children. We have to be committed to discipleship on every level.

Spiritual mothering predates even the authorship of that verse. Discipleship among females is as old as Ruth and Naomi (the book of Ruth) and Elizabeth and Mary (Luke 1). In the first example, we see an older Jewish woman, Naomi, mentor her widowed daughter-in-law. Naomi never knew that her actions would put her and Ruth directly into the ancestry line of Jesus Christ, but her godly wisdom and graciousness made that possible. Mentor Elizabeth, the cousin of the woman who would give birth to that same Jesus, likewise played a very important role in Mary’s development as a woman of faith and discernment.

The truth of the matter is that spiritual mothering has brought African American females a mighty long way, and it’s what we desperately need to take us where we need to go. Even though we have a desire to increase it, we can’t forget that discipleship is being done, as we will soon see in the examples we will talk about.

Mentoring Is God’s School for Living

We go to school to learn math, English, history and other subjects, but not much is taught about living life. How do we manage life? How do we relate to men, such as our husbands? How do we both raise and impact our children? Where is the school for managing life, relationships and learning to make a good home? Those are some of the questions I had as a young adult.

Although that was years ago, I know some young adults today who seek answers to these same questions. They want to be able to ask someone who has “been there and done that.” Sometimes people may not even know what they need, and if they do know, they may not know how to get what they need.

God has set up a school to help women get the answers they need. This school is relational. People have to connect with others—the older with the younger, the younger with the older. There is no classroom with desks or a chalkboard or maps on the wall. Older women being involved in the lives of other women is one of the most important ways Christian women grow and mature in their Christian walk. In fact, Christian women can’t mature without older women in their lives. That’s the way God set it up.

I have had a wealth of input from mature women. As a result, God has been able to use me to minister to thousands of others. I can truly credit the women God has used in my life to pray for me, to teach me, to model Christ’s life before me with being the major means God has used to train me as a minister.

The spiritual mothering of mature women has been a large part of making me who I am as a minister of the gospel. I have not been to any kind of Bible school or seminary. Though I am an avid reader, the influence and prayers of older women are what have truly helped shape me into a commissioned minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have been privileged to be used by God to speak to and into the lives of thousands of Christian women via the avenues of writing, training and speaking at retreats, conferences and women’s days. To his glory and certainly by his enabling, I have ministered in prisons. I have ministered in Uganda and Ethiopia. I have ministered to one person at a time, and I have spoken to many. I have trained people in Christian leadership. I have written books that have collectively sold over one hundred thousand copies. I am saying these things for no other reason than to point out that God has used me as a tool in his hands to minister to many people. This is not about me; it’s about Christ in me, “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). It’s about the God-established process of training women—spiritual sisterhood. Older women, sister peers and spiritual daughters have all been critical in my development as a minister.

It is my belief that God has ordained woman-to-woman spiritual mentoring as the way to train female servants for ministry. I am not opposed to those who receive formal training for ministry via Bible school or seminary; but for the majority of women God has called to impact others, those are not viable options. God has not left us to fend on our own. He has established a way to mature and train us for the tasks he has called us to.

I’m not really different from other women. I’m a regular girl. What’s the saying? I put on my slacks one leg at a time, like everyone else. In fact, all of us are to be ministers of reconciliation. Ministers are not a cut above others. Each of us is called to teach other women.

Out of the Rut and into Discipleship

Discipleship is not just important for those who have a calling to public ministry; it is essential for all Christians to have in order to be who they were designed to be. I do not believe anyone can reach her full potential as a Christian without it. Everyone needs spiritual mothers, spiritual peers and spiritual daughters—in other words, older spiritual sisters, peer spiritual sisters and younger spiritual sisters.

If, as I gleaned from my informal polls, a large number of African American Christian females do not have the benefit of discipleship from a “mature” Christian woman, then the Christian community has suffered a large loss. Without discipleship of the majority of African American female Christians, it should come as no surprise that the majority of the people who make up African American churches have more than a few problems.

I’m not sure if our lack of attention to God’s mandate on mentoring has to do with ignorance, rebellion or just being stuck in a rut. If we are in a rut with God, we need to get out of it. If we’re stuck because another believer has done us wrong, betrayed us, lied about us or harmed us in some way, we need to get over it. And if we’re thinking selfishly, thinking it’s all about us, we need to get real with it. It’s God’s work; it’s not about us. We need to let go of our self-centered, it’s-all-about-me perspective and understand that it’s really all about him and his purposes.

Let’s start out with you. Don’t look around. I’m talking to you, the one reading this book. I have a question for you: do you have a spiritual mother in your life? I have another question: are you a spiritual mother to someone else? These are the two most important questions I could ask you. We can talk about the importance of having spiritual mothers in the ’hood. We can talk about the importance of mothers impacting the lives of younger women. That’s all good. But the bottom line is, where are you and what are you doing? Are you a mother? Are you challenging, encouraging and helping one or more of your spiritual peers do the Titus 2:3 thing? Are you doing what mothers do and should be doing? If you are young in the Lord, are you being mothered? Ultimately, what’s going to count when we face our Savior is whether we obeyed his mandate as mothers and daughters, both natural and spiritual.

Women come with various personalities, backgrounds and stories. Each of us is like a snowflake; no one else is like us. But we do have things in common. One is that we need each other if we are to survive. The song “I Need You to Survive” is so true. We cannot make it by ourselves.

As I write today, the first African American president of the United States is about to be sworn in, and our country faces many, many challenges. Unemployment is steadily rising. People have lost money in the stock market, and retirement funds have been wiped out. The economy is in an Intensive Care Unit, receiving care but not getting any better. People are despairing.

We all need others to come along beside us in these times. Discipleship is coming along beside an individual and showing her what it means to live as a Christian. Christian discipleship is not attending church on Sunday mornings. It’s not reading the Bible. It’s not listening to tape series or television sermons. Spiritual mentoring is needed to help us make it through trying times.

Discipleship is how Jesus brought the kingdom of God into the earth. Thus it is the model for any and all ministry today that will have lasting effect. If there ever was a time when we needed to stand together and help each other based on the Word of God and prayer, it is now. These are exciting times. They are times when we will—with the help of God and each other—make it. But we will have to learn to depend on God, which is easier said than done. The title of the song “Learning How to Lean” says it all: we have to learn how to lean on God. This does not come naturally. Learning how to lean often means we get knocked around by the storms of life. And we can’t learn how to lean without help.

Women Need Women Teachers

We women can’t rely just on pastors to give us the help we need in our growth as Christians. We can learn principles from the man at the podium, but we need more than principles to really live out our Christian walk. We can learn a lot about the Word of God from our pastor, but God has specifically laid down the way women are to be taught to live their everyday lives: by older women. Women can better teach other women how to love their husbands; to love their children; to be “discreet, chaste homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands” (Titus 2:5). The Word of God says these areas are important so that his Word not be blasphemed. But women have to work through many struggles to be obedient to God. Guidance in this can best come from someone who is willing to get up close and personal.

Jesus tells us to make disciples by teaching the observation of all things he commanded (Matthew 28:20). This clearly means taking someone under your wings and imparting knowledge—teaching her. It is not throwing some spiritual food out to everyone at once and expecting people to get fed. One-on-one teaching is key to the disciple-making process.

The point is what you are going to do with your life while living. You are here to glorify God, and God needs to take over your life.
Shermine Florence

Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20). I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, regardless of the magnitude of the help we all have received from male ministers, there is something lacking if we do not have a spiritual mother. We can’t be successful Christians if no one has taken the time to intentionally be a spiritual mother to us. We do have a heavenly Father whom we can go to in prayer, but without a spiritual mother, the task of maturing as a Christian woman will take longer and will be much harder. If every older woman in the church today took it upon herself to disciple just one younger woman, we would have a revolution.

Mentoring Is a Win-Win

The times in which we live are challenging, and they can help all of us grow in our relationship with God. We have the privilege of sharing our opportunities of growth with others by encouraging one another, serving one another, spurring one another on to good works, loving one another—and all the one-another admonitions we have been asked to do as members of the body of Christ. As sisters, no matter our age, we’ve got to reach out to others—and particularly to those wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Making the Case
• 2 The Challenges and Triumphs of Mentoring
• 3 Who Is Qualified to Be a Mentor?
• 4 How to Find a Mentor
• 5 How to Mentor
• 6 On Location
• 7 Tips for Getting Started
• 8 A Model for Structured Mentoring
• 9 Confidentiality A Cautionary Tale
• 10 The Ultimate Example
• 11 A Real-Life Mentor Model
• Appendix A The Road to Salvation
• Appendix B Evangel Church Discipleship Program
• About the Author