A Christian Perspective on Mentoring

Introduction to Mentoring

A Mentor has been defined as ‘An experienced and trusted advisor’. ¹ In this sense, there are a wide range of situations where people might be experienced and trusted advisors, or people who give advice. In this broad general sense there can be mentoring taking place in families where parents or elder siblings give advice and guidance to children about new skills such as cookery, learning to drive, or career choices. Older, more experienced friends, mentored the author in understanding school work, and in playing cricket. More recently his wife has given valuable advice and guidance about water colour painting techniques. These are examples of informal mentoring.

Professional Settings

In a narrower and more formal sense, mentors are employed in a wide range of professional settings: in the youth service to work alongside teenagers; ² in adult education (Cohen, 1995); in literacy programmes; ³ in mentoring counsellors in the US, ⁴ and in training for interim managers in the UK. ⁵

Mentoring roles are well-established in education in the UK, in schools with children to aid and assist learning. ⁶ In Chiltern Training Group, Luton, UK, where the author works part-time as a training support tutor, mentoring is a crucial part of the process of initial teacher education in UK. ⁷ On the ‘teachfind’ website, there is an illustrative video about mentoring and continuing professional development for teachers. ⁸ Mentors are not just older or more experienced people. Information technology has reversed roles and brought mentoring by the young for silver-haired surfers. The examples outlined above are but a sample of the variety of settings in which mentoring can take place.

There are different types of mentoring in addition to the informal and formal types described. Chris van Overveen discusses ‘facilitated’, and ‘indirect non-intrusive’ mentoring. ⁹ The E-How family website describes four types: directing, coaching, support and delegating. ¹⁰ The US Department of Transportation (n.d.) has published a very helpful Mentoring Handbook. This is available free online. ¹¹ The Guide says,

One usually charts unfamiliar territory when attempting to define ‘mentoring’. Mentoring is not a term that is easy to define because it is an ever-changing process. The mentoring process links an experienced person (mentor) with a less experienced person (mentee) to help foster the career development and professional growth of the mentee

The Guide describes ten different roles a mentor can assume:

Teacher; Guide; Counsellor; Motivator; Sponsor; Coach; Advisor; Referral Agent; Role Model; Door Opener.

Mark McGuiness discusses the similarities and differences between training, mentoring and coaching, ¹² although as subsequent discussion on the site illustrates, the distinctions are not always so clear or agreed. Askew and Carnell (2011) have recently clarified one way of articulating the relationship between mentoring and coaching:

mentoring is about supporting significant career changes focussed on the whole person. . .; coaching focuses on drilling deep into professional knowledge and expertise to refine, hone and tone existing skills. . . coaching is about increasing and sustaining effectiveness through focussed learning. The coach’s aim is to work with client to achieve all of the client’s potential. . . (p. 14)

The Wikipedia entries ¹³ on ‘mentor’ and ‘mentorship’, and the bibliographies quoted, give a feel for an overview of the wide variety of mentoring in different occupations. Mentoring can be related to occupational skill sets for specific jobs or roles. It can be for personal development, or for training in generic competences. ¹⁴ It can have different purposes and goals, and different skills or models of ‘mentoring’. One view of mentoring is reproduced from a section from the website Mentoring.org:

Responsible mentoring: ¹⁵

• Is a structured, one-to-one relationship or partnership that focuses on the needs of mentored participants.

• Fosters caring and supportive relationships.

• Encourages individuals to develop to their fullest potential.

• Helps an individual to develop his or her own vision for the future.

• Is a strategy to develop active community partnerships.

Types of Mentoring: Responsible mentoring can take many forms: traditional mentoring (one adult to one young person); group mentoring (one adult to up to four young people); team mentoring (several adults working with small groups of young people, in which the adult-to-youth ratio is not greater than 1:4); peer mentoring (caring youth mentoring other youth); and e-mentoring (mentoring via e-mail and the Internet).

Locations of Mentoring: Mentoring can take place in a wide array of settings, such as at a workplace, in a school, at a faith-based organization, at a juvenile corrections facility, in a community setting and in the virtual community, where e-mentoring takes place

‘Christian’ Mentoring

So what do we make of the noun or adjective ‘Christian’ mentoring? Does the process of Christian mentoring converge with excellence in secular practice?

Is Christian mentoring just a label for ‘Christians who mentor’?

Some people may argue that there is no such thing as ‘Christian’ mentoring, any more than Christian Physics, or Christian Economics. There is only effective, good, bad or indifferent understandings or skills of say, Physics, Economics, or sales, human resource management, gardening, baking, or for that matter, Mentoring. On this view, all we can do is to choose the most appropriate methods of mentoring for our purposes from the alternatives available. Effective Christian mentoring will look very similar to any other kind of mentoring. ‘Mentoring is what it says on the tin’.

But this is not the only view. Take the idea of ‘Christian Philosophy’ as a model. Gerrit Glas (Glas, 2011) describes three possible approaches to the idea of ‘Christian’ Philosophy: ¹⁶

Firstly, he says that philosophy can be devoted to a Christian topic.

Secondly, there is ‘Christian’ philosophy that avails itself of a particular approach or method. In a similar way, mentoring could be ‘Christian’ in the sense that mentors should ‘speak the truth in love’, or follow the example of Jesus in making disciples. We could study and mirror Paul’s mentoring of Timothy in Acts, or his relationship with the church at Thessalonica. A particular method might be employing Jay Adams ‘nouthetic’ approach and techniques ¹⁷ and applying them to mentoring (Adams, 2010).

Thirdly, there is thinking that proceeds from a ‘particular sense of inspiration or life commitment’. Mentoring can be ‘Christian’ in that it proceeds from belief in the Christian ‘grand narrative’, and world view (Belief in the Creator Sovereign God, the effects of the Fall, the story of Redemption in the Old and New Testaments: Law, Prophets, history of Israel, and Jesus and the Kingdom, the Cross and Resurrection and the Early Church, and finally the Restoration or consummation of New Heavens and Earth).

Nan Thompson and Thomas Trevethen comment:

Mentoring, as a practice, is always embedded in a world view that gives greater specificity to our understanding of this practice. ¹⁸

If we look carefully at mentoring philosophy ¹⁹ or approaches there are aims, values and presuppositions embodied in or underlying practice. Mentoring has purposes: client autonomy on the one hand, or the acquisition of known competence on the other. In addition to aims and purposes, there are assumptions or presuppositions in mentoring: about the nature of truth; about what people should learn; or how clients best learn; how members of the group ought to behave; or what constitutes best practice.

So what might mentoring look like that proceeds from a Christian world-view? Alex McFarland has a useful summary of world views (McFarland, 2007). ²⁰

What can we say about mentoring that is based on a Biblical overview or Big Story?

It is often easier to infer from Christian belief and ethics what mentoring should not be. Here are some inferences:

Christian mentoring should not involve the misuse of power over people. The Faith teaches that we are made in the image of God, ²¹ which brings a sanctity to life, and requires ‘respect for persons’.

Mentors should not manipulate people, seek to dominate or use mentees for their own ends or gain.

We would not expect mentors to be deliberately misleading, or damaging to people in a perverted way. Why? Because truth, and ‘building people up’ are central to Christian beliefs.

Similarly using the client to satisfy the mentor’s own desires is ruled out by the Christian Golden Rule ‘to treat others as we would wish to be treated’.

Mentors might well take to heart Paul’s advice and apply it to the process of mentoring in wider professional settings:

Let your conversation be always

Full of grace

Seasoned with salt

So that you may know how to answer everyone ²²

In another letter we can infer another goal of Christian mentoring:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom. . . ²³

A common goal of counselling and mentoring is to model, and assist clients in choosing and acting wisely, and in making wise choices.^{24, 25} The letter of James speaks strongly to this author about unspiritual and spiritual wisdom (James 3, 13–18), and the book of Proverbs is much overlooked in training:

for attaining wisdom. . . . let the wise listen and add to their learning (Proverbs 1,2–6)

Perhaps we have got ahead of ourselves in making inferences from Paul’s letters and elsewhere, so let us return to the meta-narrative of ‘Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation’. ²⁶ From these paradigms ²⁷ , or models of the Christian world view as they have been called, from the overarching story of our faith are there some principles we can learn about Christian mentoring? ²⁸

Creation

First from ‘Creation’ ²⁹ we can discern an area of God’s created reality: learning, education, acquiring the knowledge, wisdom and skills necessary to fulfil Creation and Cultural mandates. By enquiring, by investigation, we can find out how things work, the best way of doing things in the natural world and in human and social worlds. Much thought has been given to mentoring, to finding effective ways of helping people to learn, and how to assist in the performing of tasks effectively.

Isaiah explained how agricultural methods were given to people by God. ³⁰

All this comes from the Lord God Almighty.

So it can be with educational methods. By deep reflection about mentoring we can ‘think God’s thoughts after Him’. Much can be learned from secular writing about mentoring as the Bibliographies for this paper illustrate.

One key purpose of Christian mentoring might be to help people acquire the knowledge and skills to fulfil God’s creation purposes for human beings to ‘have dominion’, ‘to work and take care of the planet’.^{31, 32} Whether it is business management, nursing, teaching, or any other profession, trade, or role, mentoring can help people acquire the expertise to perform well, to serve the human race, and to create work and prosperity. This is one aspect of general Christian mentoring in wider dimensions of life.

Christians believe human beings were made in the ‘image of God’. There are different interpretations of the meaning of this expression. ³³ But put simply, human beings are sentient, rational, volitional and creative beings, made for relationships, dependant on community. Mentoring can assist people in becoming what they were intended to be in exercising imagination, problem-solving, gaining wisdom in economic, social, and political competence. ³⁴ Christian mentoring in its broadest sense can assist people in becoming what they were designed to be by God, fulfilling wonderful potential. It might be in generic competences or in specific performance skills.

One implication of ‘image of God’ for mentoring procedure and practice is ‘respect for persons’. This respect means unconditional regard (‘chesed’: loving kindness) for the mentee. It involves keeping confidentiality, and working out a covenant agreement between mentor and mentee about purposes, agendas, frequency and length of meetings. Mentoring should be agreed, not compulsory or imposed. The purpose of mentoring is ‘shalom’ wholeness, ³⁵ human flourishing not manipulation or dictatorial relationships. ³⁶

Learning and human development are dimensions of the wider created order, for instance, for children, for parents, for keeping God’s Law, for the nation of Israel keeping covenant and learning from mistakes. The prophets call the leaders and people back to the Covenant. Learning is a recurring theme in Biblical narratives, in the Proverbs, and in the teaching of Jesus and New Testament writings.

Fall

So what can we understand about the goals and methods of mentoring from a Christian understanding of the Fall? In the Genesis narrative, disobedience, and desire for wisdom and autonomy, lead to distortion in the Creation. Sin spoils God’s original intentions for human beings. The results were physical death, work becoming hard labour, the ground being cursed, and human relationships distorted. Worst of all, human beings were shut away from God, alienated and under judgement. Theologians ³⁷ explain how the Fall has infected all aspects of human life: thought, imagination, behaviour, family life and relationships. Even mentoring can be affected and infected by distortion, partial knowledge and wrong presuppositions.

For the author, as a Christian, the mentoring relationship should be conditioned by agape love, shalom, and righteousness but it can be tainted, perhaps not intentionally (many professional mentors think carefully about high ethical principles), but some of these factors can infect. For example, authoritarian stances or wielding power over people; self-interest or egotism or desire for popularity; distorted truth (how easy it is to put a spin on things to please clients); in extreme cases there can be moral corruption as we discussed from Paul’s writing. Mentor interventions (Heron, 1975) can be mischievous, or subversive, against agreed goals. Interventions can be pathological and damaging to people. ³⁸

Mentoring can be affected by human limitations, the effect of the Fall on the mind and human knowledge. This can be shown through inappropriate interventions, being too confrontational or ‘preachy’, or insufficiently invitational. Other effects might be the promoting of the mentor’s agenda or desire to direct clients to particular solutions. Timing can be astray, or not appropriate, and mentees can be unreceptive. (The author worked with a trainee who always felt he was right. He would not listen, and eventually failed his course for qualified teacher status in the UK.)

Problems and issues can arise, such as mentoring decaying into socializing with a mentor going ‘native’. ³⁹ A weaker form of distortion might be ‘avoidance’ of confronting issues by either mentor, mentee, or both. The questions of accountability may not be thought-through (For what? To whom?). Christian mentors can work with secular ideological presuppositions unconscious of the inconsistency with the Christian Faith (e.g. proceeding with the idea of ethical neutrality where the client decides what ought to be done no matter how harmful to others; or taking a non-judgemental stance which grows out of a post-modern notion that no-one knows what is right, all opinions being equally valid). ⁴⁰ Even well-meaning mentoring can be inappropriate to client or system needs. There can be unintentional lack of respect, insufficient time spent in building a relationship of trust. Mentors can make interventions that are not spoken in agape love. Purposes and objectives can be unclear or confused. There can be ‘slippage’ in timing and forgetting of the purpose of the session.

With the best will in the world we are social creatures affected by culture and current ideas. Much will be that which is true, noble, right, and admirable, but there are the tainted, and distorted things too. This is why Paul says ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’. ⁴¹ He is talking about how human culture is tainted, can be distorted, and corrupted by sin and rebellion against God.

Redemption

Now this is where thirdly we think about Redemption. So how does all that God has achieved through Christ affect our mentoring? Does it mean that mentoring when practised by renewed minds is perfect?

Of course not, even as recipients of God’s love and forgiveness, even with a faithful desire to mentor ‘speaking the truth in love’ we will make mistakes, fall short, and have imperfect knowledge. Our minds are being transformed, but we have not yet fully attained. Some of the best and valuable mentoring the author has received has been by a secular colleague in a university setting. There is no room for hubris or exclusivism.

Here are some suggested ‘redemptive’, restoring principles for mentoring.

We may not ‘get it right’ until the Consummation the age to come but we can ask ourselves prompting and probing questions:

We can evaluate and renew our minds, and allow our thinking and mentoring practice to be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

The object and purpose of mentoring can be restored:

Firstly, generally, in giving people (or helping them develop) skills to fulfil the creation and cultural ordinances, to seek wisdom, applied knowledge, and sound judgement, and to acquire competence in professional settings. We can love of our neighbour by helping and assisting as appropriate.

We can restore or transform our methods of mentoring by listening attentively, responding, checking our understanding. We can use a range of questions, exploring, motivating, focusing, judging readiness. We can encourage, challenge, and help people formulate goals. We can help them review, and evaluate, and hold to account. All things can be done in agape love. We can model loving-kindness, mercy, justice and righteousness. Mentoring mirrors the work of the Spirit.

Consummation

We have already mentioned the ‘now but not yet’. ⁴² The Kingdom is here. We are invited to the Light. We are citizens now with special privileges and responsibilities, but our vision is imperfect, knowledge partial, faith wavering at times. The consummation is still to come, first Paradise when we die then when Jesus returns in glory the new Heavens and Earth. The whole Creation is yearning, standing on tip-toe for that Redemption.

This vision gives us hope, ⁴³ motivates our service which we know is not in vain.

What is imperfect now will be made perfect. Who knows how God will use all our sanctified skills and experience laid up as treasure in heaven? Without the Consummation so many questions would be left unanswered, so much suffering might be meaningless. Life itself would be without ultimate purpose if death were not swallowed up in victory. The New Heavens and Earth will involve unimaginable opportunities!

There is so much to learn from secular writing about mentoring. Kolb’s experiential learning cycle has proved a helpful process for the author in mentoring. ⁴⁴ He employs this process with the mentoring of trainee teachers and in research supervision.

So for Christians mentoring in secular settings there is much to think about:

Am I just a mentor who happens to be a Christian?

How far is my mentoring role compatible with my faith?

Should I keep Faith out of practice?

Have I examined the assumptions and presuppositions my professional role is built upon?

How can I inform my practice with a Christian world view?

How can I mentor in a secular setting in a way that is deeply Christian?

Mentoring in the Church ⁴⁵

The author can look back in life to a particular Sunday school teacher who was an exemplary mentor in encouraging him to think about the Christian faith. In churches, Christians seek help from others who are further down the road of a Christian’s journey. We may call this mentoring or perhaps discipleship in matters of faith, ethical issues or spiritual advice. It is difficult to clearly distinguish between what is mentoring, and what is discipleship, or Christian encouragement, or personal prophecy.

In church life we could have ‘Christian’ mentoring devoted to Christian topics such as helping Christians grow in faith. There are nurture groups or one-to-one relationships where the leader or mentor does not take a didactic role but acts as a mentor in the sense discussed earlier. Church leaders can mentor and model how to lead worship in a way that develops beyond hymn singing to praise, to adoration and pouring out thanksgiving and love to God: worshipping ‘in spirit’. Leaders can mentor fellow believers in evangelism and mission, sharing the Faith – as Bill Hybel (2006) ⁴⁶ mentors conversational evangelism so effectively in this author’s view. Christian mentors could use ‘best practice’ of secular techniques, but just differ in the goals of discipleship or Christian growth.

But we have suggested that Christian mentoring goes beyond this. Mentoring in churches can be illuminated, and underpinned by our Christian world view as explored earlier. Practice can develop out of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation. We can bring our practice into subjection to the Lordship of Christ. Christian mentors should avoid meeting their own emotional needs through mentees, as Paul taught the believers at Philippi:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁴⁷

The author has been re-reading Paul’s letter through the lens or eyes of a ‘mentor’. It is possible to learn much about the moral framework for Christian mentoring from Paul’s letters:

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious . . . hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy. ⁴⁸

Clearly then we can infer that there is no place in Christian mentoring in church life for the subtle sin of ‘selfish ambition’, certainly not for jealousy, nor rage and lack of self-control. Mentors need to avoid the subtle temptation of breeding dissensions by being drawn-in in sympathy and colluding with people. These would be out-of-bounds when we should be carrying ‘each other’s burdens’ fulfilling the law of Christ. ⁴⁹

Paul adds malice, slander, and telling lies in another letter ⁵⁰ urging us to ‘put to death’ these behaviours.

A quick survey of the letters to the Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians yields a rich seam of some ‘objects’ and ‘purposes’ of Christian mentoring, together with advice about the process, e.g.

Live a life worthy of the Lord and . . .

please Him in every way:

bearing fruit in every good work,

growing in the knowledge of God,

being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might

so that you may have great endurance

and patience,

and joyfully giving thanks to the Father ⁵¹

This is a very clear statement of the goals and purposes of mentoring in churches.

The author asks himself if this is what he aims to bring about through the work of God’s Spirit. Am I praying to this end? We can also evaluate how well we are doing by these criteria.

Mentoring in church life is subject to all the distortions we mentioned earlier. We have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness. We are being conformed to the image of his Son. In Christ the perfect image of God is restored. The new man is being formed in us. But we live in the ‘now, not yet’. Our knowledge is partial, skills limited. We wait for the Consummation. It will be interesting to see whether there is mentoring in the new Heavens and Earth, and what it may be like?

Paul’s aims for these Christians were to

continue to live in him,

Be rooted and built-up in him,

Be strengthened in the faith. . .

overflowing with thankfulness. ⁵²

Mentoring can be a valuable process for developing the learning that God has for us, alongside proclamation, teaching, and pastoral care. In God’s salvation purposes, we can help build faith, Christian growth, and Christian virtues, maturity in Christ. (Paul’s prayers for his readers are insightful in this regard.)

A church’s mentoring practice can be broad and loose in the sense of teaching, advice, or encouragement in families, or in the Fellowship, given in love by experienced and trusted people. It can be more formal or structured for particular purposes.

It can operate at different levels empowering people for various roles and functions such as serving, leadership, evangelism, and social action. Mentors can be models to assistant ministers, to new missionaries, to group leaders, deacons, parish council members, youth leaders. ⁵³ There is a long list of roles and functions that need ‘showing how’ (it is interesting that Paul was a model ⁵⁴ ). Mentors can do things together with the mentee, then observe the mentee, and give supportive feedback, so that confidence and expertise grows.

Much informal training, learning by imitation, and advice may be given, but is there any coordination of training and mentoring in our churches? Do Elders, diaconates, and church councils plan for training needs?

What might a more formal structured Christian mentoring session look like in a church? Clearly it will have Christian goals as discussed earlier. It will be entered voluntarily, be built on a relationship of love and respect. Mentees need to feel genuine respect, warmth, and acceptance. There can be great vulnerability. People seek help informally from those they respect and trust. Agendas will be agreed not imposed. It will be conducted in a Christian manner as suggested earlier. It will have a finite life, and be time-bounded. It would be helpful if a covenant of aims values and procedures could be drawn up and agreed.

Here is a suggested ‘acetate structure’ (transparency) for readers to consider, to lay-over more formal mentoring sessions as a guide. ⁵⁵

Mentors prepare with prayer and meditation

Mentees pray for grace and a fruitful outcome, a receptivity, a willingness to learn

(A 2/3 air-time for the mentee, and 1/3 for the mentor is a useful guide).

Is there a risk of mentoring straying into ‘self improvement’, self-esteem boosting, personal growth or client-centred therapy influenced by the Human Potential Movement? ⁵⁶ As Christians there may be a need to ‘Keep the main thing, the main thing’ as someone has said.

So What is the Main Thing?

What is the object of mentoring for the Church? As I have mentioned earlier, Paul’s letters are a source of inspiration for thinking about mentoring, particularly Colossians. Colossians 1,5 illustrates the aim of mentoring: ‘Faith in Christ; Love for the saints; Faith and love that spring from hope that is stored up in Heaven’.

Ministers will look for evidence that the Gospel is ‘bearing fruit and growing’ v.6.

Paul prays for what might be the focus of mentoring:

Asking God to fill you with knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. (v.9)

These might be some objectives for church-based mentoring:

Mentoring can be one of the range of processes in addition to ‘proclaiming’, ‘admonishing’ and ‘teaching’ (v.28), and informal encouragement to these ends.

It has been beneficial for the author to re-read the letter to the Christians at Colossae ⁵⁷ through the lens of a mentor. Perhaps it should be read and re-read and applied to our mentoring at all levels of church life for the development of a whole host of activities: there is Bible reading, meditation and study, prayer and intercession, praise and worship, developing Christian character, teaching doctrine, learning how to serve, mission and evangelism, problems in family life, and ethical issues in society. Mentoring could be used for training in a variety of levels and degrees of leadership, and for a myriad of atomised skills needed in the family, workplace and wider society.

There are a range of situations, issues, ethical problems, and personal tragedies in people’s lives. Employment and marriage issues arise. Christians face illness and trauma. Pastors, ministers and elders may need to distinguish and disentangle mentoring from counselling, and from aspects of pastoral care. The Christian worker needs to know which role is appropriate for the situation. One minister the author spoke to viewed pastoral care more holistically. Certainly, mentors will need guidance in this and perhaps supervision and feed-back sessions from wiser believers.

So what clusters of skill, and competence do we need to possess or acquire to mentor in church settings?

Here are some suggestions readers might like to consider:

These qualities, capacities and skills can be ingredients of mentoring at all levels of informal and formal mentoring in churches. Mentors need a close ‘walk with God’. Mentoring needs the qualities of truth-telling, trustworthiness, and tactfulness. Mentors need energy, enthusiasm, enterprise and emotional intelligence. ⁵⁹

The study of Jesus mentoring his disciples, and further reading of Paul’s practice (e.g. his relations with the church at Thessalonica) will yield rich insights. Similarly the reading of Proverbs chapters 1–9 will encourage wisdom as a goal of mentoring. ⁶⁰

Some readers may know of church mentoring programmes, or have experience of mentoring in congregations. What has been the fruit of mentoring? It would be good to share these on CRIAN. ⁶¹

Conclusion

In this paper we have looked at the nature of mentoring, and how we might bring a Christian mind to our practice. Then we have considered the nature of mentoring in our church life, what should be our goal or objectives, and some of the qualities and skills needed in mentors.

The author hopes that this exploration and the resources and references may contribute to further understanding and discussion of what mentoring might look like from a Christian perspective.

He considers it a privilege to mentor, because it means we are being a respected and trusted facilitator and advisor. This creates a ‘calling’ on the way a mentor conducts her/himself.

He would welcome responses from readers, particularly from wiser and more experienced Christian mentors (at brianwakeman@yahoo.co.uk).