Christian Mentoring is one person with greater life and/or ministry experience coming alongside another to assist them to grow and flourish in their life and ministry. Some have described it as counselling or coaching.[1] But it is not. Whilst it may have elements of this, referring for other’s skills in various different areas reflects mature mentoring.
One purpose of mentoring is to help mentees tap into the knowledge of those with more experience than themselves and learn faster than they would on their own. It’s also an opportunity to grow their network and connect with leaders rather than only their peers.[2]
5 commonly recognised and helpful C’s of mentoring are:
Competence, Character, Confidence (with humility),
Connection and Compassion.[3]
With these thoughts in mind regarding Christian mentoring, we can ask “Is Mentoring Enough?”
Let’s look at a fun, creative example:
In Karate Kid, Mr Miyagi teaches our hero and rising star, Ralph, how to “wax on, wax off”, how to fight effectively through life’s lessons. He’s a classic mentor. Even in this fictional, fun story “is mentoring enough?” Well, Ralph has his Mum, his girlfriend, some school friends, teachers and so on. So, not even in this classic example of mentoring is there one perfect mentor for life.
Relying on one person as a Christian mentor is dangerous. The mentor could take too much power in the person’s life (as was seen in the 1980’s in the extreme Discipleship movement), the mentor could have flaws and blind spots (all of us do don’t we?!), they could fall morally, or even become sick and be unable to continue. So, having a mentee only depend upon us as a sole Christian mentor and person of influence in their lives is fraught with risks and dangers.
Some of this is not ‘rocket science’. Most Christians are part of Christian community, churches, most have pastors, most have friends, some are in Life Groups (church small groups), most go to their GP (although sometimes not often enough), many have a spouse or otherwise trusted Christian friends, and some go to a counsellor or psychologist if needed, some may have a professional supervisor, coach, spiritual director or other people in their lives.
Then here we have a clear answer. No. Mentoring by itself is NOT enough.
Creating a circle of support is a healthy way to do life as Christians. Some or even all these above could play a part in creating this circle of support for our mentees.
So, what’s our part in this? We need to be clear when we are mentoring people the limits to our reach, responsibility and influence guiding our mentees to create their own circle of support.
A brief personal comment by way of example: I have 4 mentors (in different areas of my life), a professional supervisor, have seen counsellors before, love my pastors and church, am happily married, and have been part of Life Groups for more than 40 years. And yes, I do see my GP regularly, as needed ????
Mentoring is NOT enough by itself, but it is a great and wonderful shaping relationship (for us and) our mentees and contributes beautifully to our mentees’ circle of support.
– Brian Birkett
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mentoring
[2] https://www.togetherplatform.com
[3] https://eric.ed.gov