Finding Personal Mentors Exercise
by Steve Hoke and Terry WallingBy this point you have clarified your past shaping and processing by drawing your personal timeline. You have sharpened your future direction with the development of your personal mission statement. The final question is: Who will help you accomplish your mission?
Are you looking for a person who can give you perspective and provide wisdom, support, resources, and guidance as you seek to grow and develop into the person and leader that God intends? Do you desire to help others grow and achieve a level of effectiveness that they have yet to experience? Do you desire to influence the next generation of Christian leaders?
What Is Mentoring?
Mentoring links leaders to the resources of others, empowering them for greater personal growth and ministry effectiveness. Mentoring is “a relational experience in which one person empowers another by sharing God-given resources” (Stanley and Clinton, Connecting, p. 33). Mentoring is making the mentor’s personal strengths, resources, and networks (friendships/contacts) available to help a protégé (mentoree) reach his or her goals.
The mentor is the person who shares the God-given resources. The mentoree is the per-son being empowered. The interactional trans-fer between the mentor and mentoree is called empowerment.
Mentors offer empowerment resources. The relationship between mentor and mentoree may be formal or informal, scheduled or sporadic. The exchange of resources may take place over a long time or just once. Such empowerment usually occurs face to face, but it may happen over a great distance (especially today using telephone, fax, and e-mail).
• Mentors empower mentorees with encouragement and timely advice gained through life and ministry experience.
• Mentors model habits of leadership and ministry and challenge mentorees to gain broader perspectives and new maturity. These lessons build confidence and credibility in mentorees.
• Mentors link mentorees with important resources, such as books, articles, people, workshops, financial resources, and opportunities to minister with the mentor.
Three Kinds of Mentoring
“Christian workers need relationships that will mentor us, peers who will co-mentor us, and people that we are mentoring. This will help ensure a balanced and healthy perspective on life and ministry,” says J. Robert Clinton in Please Mentor Me. Lifelong leadership development is greatly enhanced by a balance of three kinds of mentoring relationships - upward mentoring, co-mentoring (internal and external), and disciple mentoring (see the sample mentoring constellation below).
Upward mentoring pushes leaders forward to expand their potential. Upward mentors are typically older, more mature Christian leaders who see the bigger picture and how a leader’s current situation fits into that picture. Their experience and knowledge base is more advanced than that of the mentoree. They give valuable advice and challenge the mentoree to persevere and grow.
Co-mentoring is alongside mentoring that comes from peers who are either inside or outside a leader’s daily frame of reference.
Internal co-mentors are peers in your ministry environment who are at approximately the same level of spiritual maturity. They provide mutual growth and accountability, contextual insights within the organization, and friendship during difficulty.
External co-mentors, because they are outside your ministry situation, can provide an objective perspective and can challenge your thinking and acting.
Disciple mentoring means empowering younger or less experienced leaders. It involves you in the lives of emerging leaders whom you need to identify, select, and help develop. In these relationships you provide accountability, challenge, insight, and critical skills for new leaders.
Sample Mentoring Constellation
The following example shows the three kinds of mentoring and the types of mentors* that can guide your development:
Leaders don’t always have mentors for all the quadrants. That is normal. But long-term lack of one type of mentoring is dangerous. Begin praying for balance in the mentors God will give you.
Finding Personal Mentors
Initiating the mentor relationship is most often up to you, the mentoree. Reflect on the following questions as you begin looking for the right mentors in your life:
• What type of help do you feel you need most?
• What are your mentoring issues (needs)?
List at least three prioritized goals for your life and ministry for the next year. Next to each goal, list the name of a potential mentor. Then plot your potential candidates on the mentoring constellation below.
| Life Development Goals | Potential Mentors |
| 1. | |
| 2. | |
| 3. |
| Ministry Development Goals | Potential Mentors |
| 1. | |
| 2. | |
| 3. |
Guidelines for Mentoring Relationships
The “Ten Commandments of Mentoring,” developed by Paul Stanley and Bobby Clinton in their book, Connecting, will help guide your mentoring relationships to greater effectiveness. Use these first five as a general guide, but don’t let the relational aspects be hampered by too much formality.
1. Establish the relationship. Sometimes mentoring relationships just happen. Sometimes they are developed intentionally and cultivated. Mentoring has a better chance for empowerment when a relationship is clearly established.
2. Jointly agree on the purpose of the mentoring relationship. By spelling out the expectations, you can avoid unfulfilled expectations and disappointments.
3. Determine how often you will meet.
4. Determine the nature of accountability. Agree together on how the accountability will be set up and monitored. You can use written reports, phone calls, or general verbal feedback.
5. Set up clear lines of communication. Discuss when, how often, and by what means you will interact. Also discuss the freedom on behalf of both persons in questioning and discussing topics.
* Check out Terry Walling’s Finding Personal Mentors workbook (Carol Stream, IL: CRM Publishing/ChurchSmart Resources, 1996) for a fuller discussion of terms and types of mentors.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register