Confirming Mentoring

Introduction

When people talk about confirmation they tend to focus on the content that should be covered, read, marked, and digested by teens in order for them to be “ready,” despite strong evidence about the importance of relationships in ministry. ¹ A focus on content is well-intentioned, and it is important for confirmands to study Scripture, church history, and theology. But sometimes in our eagerness to provide young people all the right knowledge, we obscure the reality that faith is not just what you think but how you live, and the best way to learn how to live is by the example of others in the context of a community living a distinctive way of life. This is especially true for young people navigating Christian identity.

The importance of relationships and community in faith formation was driven home again and again in the research of The Confirmation Project. For us as researchers and now co-authors, our own relationship was grounded in mentoring through several evolutions: advisor and seminarian, researcher and graduate assistant, and now friends and colleagues in ministry. Mentoring was also a theme that continued to emerge from our analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data the Project collected. Of the 3064 congregations surveyed across 5 denominations, 57% use mentoring as part of their confirmation programs. As they shared the stories of their programs on our site visits, many leaders of confirmation were clear that intergenerational relationships are at the heart of their confirmation programs. We see this in the following comment by a leader at River of Hope (ROH) Lutheran Church in Hutchinson, Minnesota:

Authenticity and relationships create a confirmation program where young people do not come to learn and regurgitate information, but instead where they come and learn what it means to live their faith out for the rest of their lives within a community. The mentorship program at River of Hope is the central hub of this ministry. Built around the idea of providing a support system for the confirmands, as well as an example of what it looks like to live out your faith after confirmation, mentors are involved in all aspects of the confirmation ministry. ²

Mentoring has emerged as a significant practice in sacred and secular communities. Drawing from the 2016 US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Raposa, Rhodes, and Dietz, found that rates of formal mentoring have remained remarkably stable over the past decade with between 2 and 2.59 million, or around 1% of the adult population serving as mentors, despite more broadly declining rates of American volunteerism. ⁴ Mentoring is not a new idea, but rather a return to a way of learning which has existed since the Greek philosophers passed down knowledge, Jesus taught his gathered disciples, and Renaissance craftsmen took on apprentices to teach them a trade. ⁵

In his book on the subject, pastoral theologian Edward C. Sellner asserts that we are returning to the ancient practice of mentoring in our modern world because, despite our advances in technology and communication, we feel increasingly disconnected from one another and crave relationships of genuine intimacy, love, listening, and acceptance. “Despite our increased cynicism and distrust, we long for mentors and teachers who speak from the heart, who are graciously willing to share what they have learned in their own ‘school of suffering.’” ⁶ He draws on Trappist monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton, speaking to the pain of an era with an excess of information and a lack of connection: “Merely reading books and following the written instructions of past masters is no substitute for direct contact with a living teacher.” ⁷

As our research made the positive impact of intentional mentoring clear, it is important to note that there is a coaching explosion in our church. And this is a good thing. Christian leadership coach Gary R. Collins believes people in the church will recognize that effective leadership is coaching, and that the most effective Christian leaders (and most effective Christians) must be effective coaches. ⁸ While we respect the momentum Christian coaching is building, we believe mentoring young people is something a little different. First, it is fundamentally intergenerational. The mentors must earn the trust of their mentees. They are modeling being fully human and pilgrims on the Christian journey. Good coaching is intentional, goal-oriented, and contractual. It requires coaches to partner with their clients to ask probing open-ended questions and listen deeply in a climate of ongoing support and accountability. By perhaps subtle, but we feel significant, contrast, youth mentoring is intentional, intergenerational, and emergent. Trust is earned over time, nurturing a relationship of mutuality and authenticity. The adult models Christian discipleship while expertise is not assumed.

What is a Mentor?

In their aggregation of recent research data on mentoring and adolescent spiritual development, Kelly Dean Schwartz, William M. Bukowski, and Wayne T. Aoki argue that mentoring has historically been a primary social mechanism through which young people enter into adulthood. In the past and within other cultural systems, mentors have been non-parental relatives such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and older siblings, but in modern mainstream American culture “with [its] fractured and stressed familial bonds, teachers, coaches, youth workers, and programmatically assigned mentors are augmenting the social and parental tasks of transitioning youth into adulthood.” ⁹ Extended family networks might no longer live within close proximity to each other, which could limit opportunities for non-parental family mentoring. In the absence of kin-based mentoring, more formalized systems of support through schools, community organizations, and churches offer teens and their families support as young people go through the process of individuation. Mentoring, as part of confirmation preparation and post-confirmation integration into the life of the church community, offers teens a structured opportunity to learn from and with adults about mature faith.

Mentoring research is a growing field that can help examine these learning relationships through the lens of the social sciences. A pioneer of ecological systems’ theory, in which young people’s development is influenced by their agency in a particular social location within interconnected environmental systems, Urie Bronfenbrenner put forth this understanding of mentoring, which emphasizes mutual, positive relationship:

A mentor is an older, more experienced person who seeks to further the development of character and competence in a younger person by guiding the latter in acquiring mastery of progressively more complex skills and tasks in which the mentor is already proficient. The guidance is accomplished through demonstration, instruction, challenge, and encouragement on a more or less regular basis over an extended period of time. In the course of this process, the mentor and the young person develop a special bond of mutual commitment. In addition, the young person’s relationship to the mentor takes on an emotional character of respect, loyalty, and identification. ¹⁰

The social sciences bring strengths from interpretive and positivistic inquiry that together distill the psychosocial mechanisms of mentoring and inform program design, implementation, and evaluation to assist young people in reaching their developmental goals. While spiritual development is a part of the broader developmental process, it is also somewhat unique: “Spiritual mentoring, one particular form of mentoring, may be characterized by greater depth and may be more explicitly concerned with our vocation and relationship with God, but as we will see, it cannot be totally removed from the more ordinary forms, since they are so closely intertwined.” ¹⁴ Mentoring as part of confirmation can certainly draw from the learnings and best practices of secular mentoring programs and is concerned with all around psychosocial health and well-being, but it must also be attuned to the particularities of our Christian tradition. Our telos as Christian leaders of youth ministry is not simply to form young people who meet the markers for healthy adulthood. Our call is to equip youth to live more fully into the reality that they, like us, are made in the image of God and as mature disciples are called to lives that follow God’s teachings and Jesus’ example.

Our research made it very clear that young people want their confirmation preparation to be real and responsive to the conditions of their lives, not an experience of dusty doctrine crammed down their throats. Healthy, well-trained mentors are well equipped to provide such attentive and adaptive support.

In his explorations of Christian spiritual mentoring, Sellner cites the scriptural tradition of God as a feminine Wisdom figure who “in each generation passes into holy souls,” making them “friends of God and prophets” as well as providing “comfort in cares and sorrows” and acting as teacher and guide (Wisdom 7:27; 8:9–16; 9:10–11). In Isaiah 53:4–5 we hear of God’s self-emptying and willingness to heal us through his wounds and in Isaiah 61:1–3 of God bringing good news and binding up broken hearts. Throughout Scripture we encounter a caring God who is friend, teacher, comforter, and guide and this God becomes incarnate in the life of Jesus. Jesus taught his disciples that their whole lives must be their teaching to the world and that they would be known as his followers by their own willingness to follow his example and share all that they are and all that they have with each other. ¹⁵ Living into this model of incarnational discipleship, mentoring allows lay confirmation mentors to live into their own call to share their lives, their stories and their brokenness, with young people who are in the process learning to claim their own embodied faith and identity. “Spiritual mentoring is an age-old Christian tradition, a calling and a gift more common then perhaps previously thought. It depends more on mutuality, reciprocity, and friendship, than direction given from ‘the top down’ or a relationship with someone who supposedly has all the answers while the other is only a passive recipient of such wisdom.” ¹⁶ We do not learn our faith through a series of checklists of creeds and memorized doctrinal statements, but, in the tradition of God made flesh, we learn from enculturation ¹⁷ immersed in the lives, practices, and stories of others.

Consistent with both Scripture and the mentoring literature, confirmation mentors offer their own story of faith as well as guidance and support to the confirmand. They transmit faith through relationship from one generation to the next, which simultaneously enriches the faith-life of confirmand and mentor thus deepening the discipleship culture of the whole congregation.

Natural versus Formal Mentoring

Church size and culture may determine whether natural mentoring provided by existing intergenerational relationships within the congregation would be sufficient for confirmation preparation or whether a more formal and structured confirmation mentoring program would be more appropriate. A 2002 study found that adolescents naturally seek out adults as mentors as part of their development. Such mentors are characterized by providing emotional and psychological support and encouragement as well as fostering a spirit of mutuality. ¹⁸ These natural mentors are often part of the young persons’ kinship system and are distinct from programmatically assigned mentor bonds. ¹⁹

A small congregation with a strong tradition of intergenerational ministry might already have natural mentoring that is actively modeling mature discipleship and helping young confirmands to claim their own. In an interview conducted as part of The Confirmation Project, the Rev. Justin Michael McIntosh who is the rector (senior pastor) of Leeds Episcopal Church, a small and vibrant congregation in rural Virginia, said that while confirmands will work with a mentor on a community in-reach project as an expression of that confirmand’s baptismal ministry, the parish’s confirmation program relies primarily on natural mentoring within the parish because there are already strong relationships across generations within the congregation, and to formalize the mentoring program would feel disruptive to the communal spirit of the place. “This is such a small community that it would be really easy, I think, to over-structure things when it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Basically, all of these kids are interacting with adults in this church all the time. Their real formation happens just in the informal structures, not the program.” ²⁰ By contrast, congregations with less of an emphasis on intergenerational ministry or that are program-sized or larger can benefit from the structure and accountability of a more formalized mentoring program. Whether mentoring is natural or formal, it is vital that all adults with regular contact with young people be vetted or screened for their maturity of faith and action. In particular, adult volunteer mentors who meet with young people in any form of church-sponsored ministry should be trained in an approved abuse prevention program in order to foster a safe environment for adolescents’ holistic growth.

Transmission of Faith through Modeling

Mentoring, both as a Christian practice and from a social science perspective, is based in the practice of modeling. Modeling then is the mechanism for transmitting faith from one person, the mentor, to another. In Luke 10:25–37, when Jesus was asked by a lawyer who he was required to view and love as a neighbor, Jesus did not give a pronouncement of his growing movement’s theological doctrine or a comprehensive list of who was a neighbor and who was not. Instead he told the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which he offered up the story of a passerby who cared for a wounded man when his own people would not. Jesus finishes the tale, “Go and do likewise.” In their 2012 article, Doug Oman and Carl E. Thoresen argue that much of people’s learned spiritual behaviors such as compassion, forgiveness, or devotion come from seeing those behaviors modeled by family and community members as well as through oral, written, or electronic media. ²¹ By seeing a trusted adult practice spiritual behaviors, for example in our own Episcopal tradition a person living out the Baptismal Covenant, a teenager is better equipped to do the same than if they just read about the Baptismal Covenant. “Central to spiritual modeling phenomena is what we term observational spiritual learning, that is, the learning of spiritually relevant skills or behaviors through observing other persons.” ²² Spirituality is difficult, if not impossible, to teach in the abstract with some sort of instruction manual, and must instead be embodied and made incarnate.

This modeling of spiritual behaviors as a way to pass on the tradition has been practiced by religions around the globe and throughout time, and now the psychological research supports it as both a way of teaching the practices and content of faith but also of improving the broader society. “At the core of increasingly perceived relevance of spirituality for secular institutions is a growing social scientific recognition that religion and spirituality are not merely a compendium of dogmas and codes of behavior (‘Thou shalts’). Rather a central component … involves high-level learned skills related to wise living and effective self-regulation.” ²³ When mentors model their faith, they are not only influencing that direct church community but are also instilling a larger value of applying the lessons of faith to life in the world, respecting the dignity of every human being. Such engaged, practical formation mirrors Diana Butler Bass’s observation that growing churches have reversed the traditional sequence by which individuals became members. ²⁴ Gone is the assumption that people move from right belief to right action (behavior) and then into full membership (belonging) to a local congregation. Mentoring, like Bass’s observation, begins with real relationships (belonging) and moves through healthy practices (behaving) as a young person discerns and claims authentic belief.

This incarnational mentoring matters: Our national survey found that positive mentoring experiences lead to growth in believing and behaving measures which increase over the course of the mentoring relationship. This is consistent with other studies that show that young people are more likely to learn spiritual behaviors and show positive psychological and behavioral outcomes in the context of a relationship with a trusted adult and mentor who is “perceived as significant to the mentee over an extended period of time.” ²⁵ These mentoring relationships must be lasting, and the mentor must give of their time, wisdom, skill, and story. It is in this altruistic act of giving without the bonds of familial attachment that the mentor models the value of communal and social connection, and the connection of the individual to the broader whole.

It reinforces the fact that the individual’s identity goes beyond the “self.” That is, we have an identity within the community that transcends our individualism. The mentor therefore serves the important task of connecting the child or adolescent to the larger whole and enables the youth to identify a transcendent self, a spiritual self, mediated through the mentor relationship. ²⁶

Christian mentors can create space for teens who are engaged in the natural process of separating their own religious identity from their parents’ religious identity to explore what they believe about God. “An experience of the transcendent may come from a relationship with a significant other because it is in relationships that adolescents explore the significance and meaning of life.” ²⁸ The Trinity reveals that God’s very nature is to be in relationship. As people made in God’s image, we too are called into connection. Having a mentor invest the time and care into the development of the mentee illustrates the core of individuation: we are not independent, but interdependent. We are not just individual Christians, but the body of Christ. We can think of no more appropriate way than mentoring to prepare for and live into the process of confirmation, in which a young person takes on the promises made on their behalf at their baptism and claims their own ministry, their unique Christian vocation, within the community of the church.

Mutuality of Mentoring

Mentoring is not just beneficial for confirmands, but also for the mentors themselves. In her book, Stand by Me, Jean E. Rhodes explores the benefits that mentors receive by acting as companions on the way to young people, asserting that while the literature does not often acknowledge the emotional rewards that mentors receive, “it would be a mistake … to assume that the mentor gets relatively little from the relationship. And indeed, when one member derives little or no benefit from a relationship, it will become unstable and may disintegrate.” ²⁹ While the literature might want to highlight the selfless giving on the part of the mentor, a relationship in which the mentor received no joy from their ministry with their mentee would not be life-giving to either person because the mentor would become burnt out and the mentee would likely feel like a burden. “On the other hand, when adolescents see that admired adults find it personally rewarding to spend time with them, they feel a new surge of self-worth and empowerment.” ³⁰ That the mentoring relationship be mutually beneficial is actually essential to the health and well-being of the mentoring relationship.

Parker Palmer describes the necessary and life-giving mutuality of mentoring relationships in The Courage to Teach:

Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching’s great rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor. It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn. ³¹

An Intergenerational Ecology

A holistic ecology of lifelong faith formation in a congregation, with mentoring flowing throughout, closely resembles the early church’s process to prepare adults for baptism: the catechumenate. In the ancient and modern practices of the catechumenate, individuals who seek a deeper relationship with God through Jesus Christ are welcomed into the Christian community with a public rite, a service of “admission.” They are assigned a sponsor who walks with them, prays for them, and accompanies them toward a public rite of initiation (baptism). Committed seekers are offered an intentional experience of the tradition through regular attendance at worship, Bible reflection, and service in the world, just as confirmands are assigned a mentor who accompanies them while they attend classes, participate in worship, and commit time to serving in the world. The pace of a traditional catechumen’s faith development, or that of a confirmand, depends on their responsiveness to the experience. When seekers in the catechumenate feel ready to commit more fully to preparation for baptism, they participate in the rite of enrollment. When confirmands decide for themselves that they actually want to be confirmed, something changes. A season of intense preparation begins as catechumens approach the font and confirmands their confirmation day.

Our research found that mentors played an important role in the intense preparation for confirmation. In several Presbyterian congregations, mentors supported young people as they wrote creeds and presented them to the Session. ³⁴ In congregations using Confirm Not Conform mentors worked with their confirmands to help them choose, memorize, and explicate a portion of Scripture for the “I Confirm” service. ³⁵

Youth confirmation mentoring done well is embedded in the life of the congregation. Just as the catechumenate provides an ongoing rhythm for lifelong Christian formation and discipleship, mentoring is a process for mutual formation of young people, adult mentors, and their congregations. Positive mentoring experiences were found to lead to growth in the believing and behaving measures of young people, logical results of experiencing God incarnate in one another.

Conclusion

Supported by both our scriptural tradition and social science research, mentoring allows lay confirmation mentors to live into their own call to share their lives and stories with young people who are in the process learning to claim an embodied faith and identity. This method of teaching and learning is especially appropriate because the research illustrates that people’s learned spiritual behaviors such as compassion, forgiveness, or devotion come from seeing those behaviors modeled by trusted adults with whom they are in lasting relationships. This modeling of care for the other, illustrated by the mentor in their care for the confirmand, also teaches the confirmand that we are not independent Christians, but part of an interdependent body of Christ.

In addition to being beneficial for the confirmand, this passing down of faith through relationship from one generation to the next also enriches the life of the mentor/presenter and helps them live more fully into their own development and baptismal ministry, which then in turn enriches the whole church. Mentoring is not a one-off programmatic “add-on.” It flourishes in faith communities that demonstrate continuous commitment to the discipleship of all ages.