Written by Rhys Bezzant | Ridley College
Our Cultural Moment
Perhaps it was a mistake. When I returned to St Jude’s Carlton recently after sixteen years away, my ministry of mentoring was highlighted in a get-to-know-you interview. In fact, one of the reasons for returning had been to identify and encourage young men and women into vocational Christian ministry, but I was unprepared for what came next. Barely a week goes by when someone at Unichurch doesn’t buttonhole me and ask to begin a mentoring relationship. Not all of them want to go down the career diversion track and begin theological study, but there is in this little pocket of the world at least a pressing need and desire for the kind of input that mentoring provides. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. We are living through a great mentoring moment. I hear of it from friends in the armed forces, in business, in educational settings, and in campus ministries. While sometimes it can mean something as base as networking to get ahead, in many other instances mentoring has the more noble goal of developing character or learning skills for service. In the postmodern world where relationships are key and truth is relative, spending time with a credentialed friend is a great forum for personal development even if it is also extremely inefficient. And now with the virus upon us, and restrictions for meeting in groups more burdensome, mentoring will become a yet more attractive strategy to pursue. What a timely invitation to write this piece.
In recent research for a book on the mentoring ministry of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) – one of my great heroes of the faith – I discovered yet more reasons why our cultural moment is a mentoring moment, having uncovered parallels with eighteenth-century New England. It seems that throughout Christian history when the institution of the church has been on the nose, mentoring ministries have thrived. It makes sense. You love the church as the body of Christ, but find its institutional life difficult to engage with. You want to offer for leadership in the church to improve its life, but the options for cultivating your calling are limited. And in the case of Edwards, his mentees had experienced the power of the Gospel in their own lives during the Great Awakening, but the established church of the day was discouraging of enthusiastic Christians and refused them a licence to preach. No wonder they turned to a senior pastor to pick his brains, receive his input and care, and to find opportunities for developing their pastoral giftings. Beyond the religious sphere, the eighteenth century was a great period for mentoring relationships for another reason: old social and political hierarchical structures were in decay in a revolutionary age, and people found themselves thinking about their identity in modern horizontal ways. Coffee houses and salons were the meeting place of the day where conversation in informal settings was prized. An era of fluidity and change makes concrete relationships of intimacy and accountability more attractive. It won’t take much to see the parallels with life in Australia in the twenty-first century.
Definition of mentoring
But all of this assumes that we are on the same page when it comes to defining mentoring, an ambitious proposition. Some Christians prefer the word “discipling” because it has New Testament support, whereas the word “mentor” is from Greek mythology and therefore should be avoided, referring as it does to the tutor Mentor who had responsibility to teach Telemachus while his father Odysseus was away fighting in the Trojan War. I understand that our approach to ministry needs to be controlled by biblical categories. But there is some contemporary relevance in keeping the meaning of the two terms distinct, and in overlooking the etymology of the word “mentor.” For commonly we use the word “discipling” to refer to the period just after someone has become a Christian when a senior believer meets with the new convert to make sure that they have grasped the basics of the faith. We might choose to read Mark’s Gospel together, or Romans, or buy a Christian workbook like Just for Starters to consolidate basic lessons of discipleship, like assurance, evangelism, godliness, church attendance and so on. To be truthful, if this were a bigger priority in our churches I would be happy, even if the longer range commitment to growth in maturity and equipping for service (which I call mentoring) were not. Mentoring builds on discipling, but has a different dynamic.
Perhaps this is seen most clearly if I make a dangerously big contrast. There is a difference between a staff meeting and professional psychiatric help. For the former, the person in authority, the team leader, calls the staff together and sets the agenda. That is the privilege of the supervisor. The goal of the meeting is largely administrative, though some personal reflections on the achievement of goals or plans for an event may be relevant too. Contrast this with the latter. It would be malpractice for a psychiatrist to command a potential client to attend an appointment. And in that appointment the goal is not to measure performance but to uncover trauma which has impacted behaviour, perhaps unknowingly. In the former power lies with the supervisor. In the latter, power lies with the client, and this is expressed through the initiative to set the time and agenda. So with mentoring as distinct from discipling. It is appropriate to take the lead in helping a young believer to get some things straight, but as we go on in the Christian life, it is also appropriate to recognise that adults learn on a needs-to-know basis, that our sins go deeper than we had imagined, and that a person needs to be ready for leadership before we ask them to take on a new responsibility. The mentoring relationship is more equal in its dynamic and more individually focused. No generic advice here, but personalised care. We don’t have to be much further ahead in the Christian walk to be a mentor, just open to hearing the details of someone else’s life and helping a brother or sister to draw down biblical truth in their own experience. An imperfect comparison to be sure, but containing some important pastoral wisdom.
My own definition, for what it is worth, sees mentoring as an exchange of authority for agency, such that the personal qualities of the senior Christian are applied to the growth and health of the junior Christian in the relationship. That growth might be in the realm of godliness, or it might be in the realm of competencies, either inside or outside the life of the church. We want to invest in the service and witness of another Christian, such that they become a model of Christlike priorities, actively or passively. We must remember that faith is caught as well as taught, so we should not rely exclusively on sermons to do the job. We need better sermons in our churches, for sure, but this should not be at the cost of a culture of mentoring, which the leader of the congregation is in a unique position to inculcate. A culture of honesty and accountability are the best soil in which to encourage a ministry of mentoring to grow. Mentoring is a subset of pastoral care, and pastoral care is attentive to both the health of the creaturely human being before us, as well as the Christian human being before us. Mentoring has a wide brief, quite distinct from the early input for a young believer.
Scriptural support
You won’t find the word “mentoring” in the Scriptures, but you will find everywhere the theological framework to understand its power and usefulness. For example, in Genesis 1, God creates a world that is profoundly personal, with human beings at the apex and God’s own life as the template for ours. We are after all created in his image. As Father, Son and Spirit, the most important thing we can say about reality is that it involves relationships. At the end of the account of creation, the Lord rests to enjoy all that he has made, including us! No wonder that mentoring proves effective in such a relationally charged universe. When the serpent in Genesis 3 intervenes to disorder relationships, and to bring division between human beings and God and the creation, we see another value of mentoring. Just as the serpent had to make an intervention to undo harmony, so we have to make an intervention to reset harmonious relationships. Christian ministry is all about spiritual interventions, like sermons, or prayer meetings, or small groups. Deciding to meet one on one with someone is another type of ministry whose deliberate goal is to thwart Satan’s evil plans to undo the cosmos. Mentoring is a kind of intervention, however, that gives power away.
The Old Testament is full of examples of the older leader passing on the baton to the younger leader. Whether we read about Moses with Jethro, or with Caleb, or how parents are to instruct their children in the purpose of the Passover, intergenerational education is prominent. We learn in the book of Proverbs how the father addresses the son to teach him wise ways. Either in practice or in principle, the Scriptures place a premium on learning to learn and learning to teach. In Proverbs, the assumption is that we need lots of incentives to do both, so we hear of the cost when we persist in pursuing foolish ways, or the value in undoing bad ways and learning new ones. We are encouraged to practise not malforming but reforming habits: “My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings … Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure” (Prov 4:20, 26). Mentoring is like this too. It is an individualised ministry of the Word, backed up with the example of a life well lived. In fact, the book of Proverbs is a great resource for a mentoring ministry, provoking lots of conversations about maturity and stability in the faith.
Of course the Lord Jesus didn’t just help young believers in the faith for a couple of weeks of Bible study, but hung around with the twelve, those who were committed, for 24/7 pedagogical opportunities over a period of a number of years. And remarkably he didn’t wait for people to come to him as a rabbi might traditionally have done (assuming a powerful position), but as Lord of all creation he took the initiative to approach fisherfolk in their boats and asked them to follow in a vulnerable way. He cared enough to take the risk to make the first move – not only in his incarnation but also in his public ministry. When he sent out the twelve in Matthew 10, he described their commission in exactly the same terms as his own, outlined in Matthew 4. Our ministry is an extension of his. Just as Christ prayed with and for his disciples, so we can. Just as he took up random incidents on the road and turned them into learning opportunities, so can we. Just as he expected his followers to be independent and capable when he was gone, so also we mentor others not to make them dependent on us but instead to prosper a kind of preparation for separation, as any parent knows. On the day of Pentecost, Peter was prepared theologically and practically for a sermon that marked the turning of the ages. We can be thankful that at least this expectation doesn’t fall on preachers in our own day!
Mentoring is also well suited to the ministry expectations of Paul in his letters. Paul expects leaders to empower others. He wants to build up those in his churches so that they too might teach and train others. According to Ephesians 4, our job as leaders is to equip the saints for works of service. With the gifts of the Spirit, our job is not to become self-focused but rather to build up the body with the capacities and energies that the Lord has showered on us. Peter uses the language of the spiritual edifice like a temple that we each have a part to build (1 Peter 2). We each have a ministry of the Word, for when the Spirit comes we each have a ministry of prophesying (Acts 2:17-18) as the prophet Joel foretold. That ministry of the Word might mean preaching sermons, but it could also mean timely teaching one on one. Mentoring is the most basic ministry of the Word, and one in which God delights!
Mentoring is profoundly biblical, even if the word never appears in the Scriptures.
Cultivating leaders
Not only is our culture ripe for the pursuit of mentoring ministries, in our churches the need has almost never been greater. I don’t have to persuade my readers of the challenges to Christian ministry in our own day. Churches are seen as toxic. Compliance to government or church agencies is onerous and burdensome. Entertainment and leisure activities are so much more attractive – or at least less demanding – than self-forgetfulness and moral reform. But we do need to reclaim the personal in our ministries to reclaim heart to heart relationships. Programs can go only so far in promoting maturity. I am not saying that small is beautiful, but I am saying that our culture is shaping people in such a way that we are increasingly desperate for the human dimension, even in a church where there are plenty of bums on seats. I understand that there are many – too many – demands on pastors in the complexity of our world, but we neglect the ministry of mentoring to our peril. Was John Wesley too busy to mentor John Fletcher as his successor to lead the Methodist movement? Was Jonathan Edwards too busy to mentor Joseph Bellamy, who himself mentored perhaps sixty men into ordained leadership? Was Sarah Osborn too busy in organising prayer meetings in Newport, Rhode Island at the time of the revivals, to mentor individuals? No and no and no.
I fear that in my circles at least in Melbourne we have neglected mentoring future leaders. There are some, of course, who have benefited from a senior Christian investing in them over a number of years. But many students at Ridley have never known mentoring and yearn for it. And how many more students could there be at Ridley if only their pastor or small group leader had taken an individual aside years earlier to encourage them in holiness and wholeness, and to train them in skills for service, even suggesting that career diversion might be something to consider. Every pastor previously had a different job, and we never regret a pastor having made the decision to move out of that previous employment to take up the responsibility of caring for us in our church! To put it frankly, we don’t have enough people, men and women, in the ministry pipeline to provide for the spiritual needs of our grandchildren. What can we do, apart from suggesting they go to College? Start with encouraging the practice and culture of mentoring in our church. Put it on the agenda of our eldership or parish council meetings. Celebrate the mentoring relationships that do exist. Read a book about it!
Getting started
It really doesn’t take much to get started. You don’t have to be particularly saintly or academically qualified. You don’t have to have been mentored yourself. You don’t even need much time on your hands. You just need to be a couple of steps ahead of the person you meet with and believe that you have something to offer for their life stage. You could meet at a café to talk about the sermon you both heard last week. That takes the pressure off doing preparation, though it would thrill the preacher to learn that their own efforts in preparation were being multiplied. You could chat while you are taking the baby for a walk around the block or going to the supermarket. What mum or dad doesn’t enjoy a helping hand while doing something as banal as the shopping? Time can be redeemed and turned to spiritual good while engaged in daily chores. For the younger Christian to see how an older believer is handling the pressures of family life, and to be able to talk through life decisions, or life pressures, under the common authority of the Scriptures, is just gold. It might be that you do have time to read a Christian book together to talk about when you meet up, in someone’s home or in the pub. Finding common cause in a particular theological topic or pastoral issue can sharpen our teaching and obedience, and bless others in the fellowship immensely when we share with them what we are learning. You might choose to start the mentoring relationship through a common activity and only gradually build towards more focussed theological discussion, and so be it. There are any number of on-ramps. My plea here is just to encourage you to get onto the freeway whatever way you decide to do it!
The biggest blocker in all this is lacking confidence. But with belief in God’s power and intervention in our life, we grow in strength and capacity. Psalm 18 begins with the psalmist’s desperate weakness, but after God has made a dramatic appearance, the psalmist doesn’t focus on his own needs but instead can claim that his arms can bend a bow of bronze. God’s power provokes not the psalmist’s passivity but instead the psalmist’s confidence and action. Meditate on this psalm, and get to it.
