Mentoring

Mentoring is the flip side of the pastor’s public roles of teacher, prophet, and priest.
—Earl Palmer

I remember hearing some great sermons as a youth. I recall attending some outstanding lectures at Princeton Seminary. I’ve been to conferences that moved me deeply. But the most important influence on my Christian life has been individuals who have mentored me.

Bob Munger, my pastor in my college days, took time to listen to me. Lynn Bolick, a classmate in seminary, helped me think through my ideas. Dale Brunner, a colleague who, when we happened to be serving Christian institutions in Manila at the same time, was a great source of encouragement.

As one who spends most of his days preaching, teaching, and administrating a church, I know the value of congregational work. But ministry to me would be pointless if, at the same time, I wasn’t trying to mentor people as others have mentored me. For it’s a one-on-one teaching relationship that can make the most difference.

The problem is we don’t receive a lot of formal training in mentoring. Leading worship, yes. Preaching and teaching, yes. Administration and pastoral care, yes. But help in mentoring others? Not likely.

Over the years, I’ve reflected a lot on how others have mentored me, and I have done my share of mentoring as well. I’ve concluded that mentoring is the flip side of the pastor’s public roles of teacher, prophet, and priest: the mentor helps the person mentored discover the truth, follow Christ’s way, and know God’s comfort.

Here are a few ways, then, in which I minister to individuals in my role as mentor.

Discovering the Truth

Some Christians never gain confidence in their own thoughts. They never get on with their own life because they’re tied too closely to some powerful personality or dynamic leader. They’re easily victimized because they’re conditioned to feel they always need a strong teacher to clarify and give them truth. No one has helped them become confident enough to stand on their own.

They need to discover the kind of teacher who lives out the Hebrew word for teacher, morah. It comes from the same root as torah, “the way.” A morah is one who teaches by pointing out the way. That’s the type of teacher a mentor is: one who walks with the student part of the way, then stops and points out the rest of the journey. “You can figure it out from here,” I say. “You go the rest of the way yourself.”

All teachers and mentors should do at least that. But as a mentor, I want to go one step further: I want actually to learn from the person I’m mentoring. When that happens, I know I’m really mentoring, because that’s when the person is really developing his or her own thoughts.

To learn from the person mentored, I have to do at least three things:

• Stop teaching. When I’m with an individual, I have to be cautious about dispensing information about the Bible and theology. As a pastor, I usually know much more about such things than the people I mentor. It’s easy for me to slip into telling people what I’ve learned from a recent journal article or Bible commentary, especially after they’ve asked me a question about which I know something.

Although it’s appropriate sometimes to give people a straight answer, most of the time I’d rather point people to the journal or commentary, summarize it, and say, “If you’re really interested, why not read it. I found it helpful. I think you will too.”

• Listen. I had just finished my first year in seminary when I went to spend a summer with Bob Munger, then pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. With just one year of seminary under my belt, my conversations were somewhat sophomoric. Yet Bob, amazingly, seemed to enjoy hearing the little wit and wisdom this young seminarian had to offer. He actually listened to what I had to say. He made me feel like he wanted to learn from me!

And that’s how Bob Munger became my mentor—he encouraged me to voice my own thoughts. He helped me develop because his words and posture telegraphed a vital message to me: “I respect what you say. I’m interested in your thoughts. I can learn from you.”

• Encourage disagreement. The most effective mentors are those who are comfortable with a lively interaction with those they are mentoring. I cannot spoon feed information and be a mentor. It is when I am flexible enough to permit someone the freedom to negotiate with what I say that I mentor best.

When I was in seminary, my first roommate, Lynn Bolick, was an older senior. We got into our share of theological discussions, and we had our share of differences of opinion. But he never shut off our discussions, falling back on his extra years of education to squelch my ideas. He enjoyed the debates we entered into, and he gave me space to express myself. That process helped me clarify a great deal of my own thinking. And that, in turn, bolstered my confidence in my ability to grapple with important issues.

So I encourage the people I mentor to question what I say. After I’ve expressed my opinion about something, I’ll say, “You’ll have to sort this issue out for yourself, but that’s how I see it.” I might even ask if they see a problem in what I’ve just said.

Most important, encouraging interaction is a matter of not acting defensive when people disagree. I can’t jump to defending what I’ve said, but instead I must listen carefully to the reply, and yes, try to learn from what the person says.

In this way, the people I’m mentoring gain confidence in their own ability to discover and understand God’s Word to them. They see that I don’t teach, but listen, and not just listen, but learn from them. They see that they have something significant to offer.

Discerning God’s Will

In our prophetic role, pastors need to challenge people to keep the faith, fight the good fight. And often that means giving a forceful word to the congregation.

The other side of being prophetic, the side that the mentor highlights, is being an encourager. The goal is the same—living faithfully a Christian lifestyle—but the means are different: encouragement, affirmation, praise.

Again, as a mentor I don’t want to tell people what God’s will is for them; I want them to discover it for themselves. And that happens best, I’ve noticed, when I affirm what’s going right with a person.

• Express encouragement regularly. A young lawyer in a class I taught recently wrote a paper on 1 Corinthians 15. He didn’t just parrot back my lectures, however. He went beyond what I had taught, doing his own study and making his own breakthroughs. He grappled with issues we hadn’t discussed in class; he dared to draw his own conclusions. It occurred to me as I read his work that I was learning from this student. So on his paper, along with his grade, I wrote a note saying his ideas had inspired me.

Sometime later he told me that little note had bolstered his confidence to work through his own thoughts and draw his own conclusions. I had confirmed that his thinking was sound, that his ideas were exciting and helpful to me. He began to have the confidence that he could teach.

I didn’t plan for that one note to have that impact, but when I regularly encourage, some of my notes and words will.

• Build trust. People are vulnerable about things most precious to them. So poets don’t want to share their poems with someone bored by poetry; musicians don’t enjoy playing their compositions for someone who doesn’t care for their style of music.

So I can encourage another in the things that matter only if the person will share what’s important to him with me. That means I have to attend to the slow business of building trust. And that involves listening with interest to what the person shares with me and affirming the good in what they say and do.

Gradually, the person I’m mentoring will share deeper thoughts and talk about their more exciting dreams. And that’s when my encouragement will really count.

• Don’t qualify the affirmation. I meet many people who are discouraged because what personal encouragement they have received has been qualified: “Yes, that’s true enough. But you forgot about this.” Some have been in a Christian atmosphere where leaders always corrected them or added, “You did that well, but you also need to improve in this area.”

Instead, I look for ways to give simple, direct affirmations without the “buts,” without having to add anything. “You know,” I’ll say, “you’re doing some very good thinking about this.” Period. I simply affirm the people for what they’re doing right. Since the people I mentor are serious about their walk with Christ, I know in most cases they’ll eventually figure out where they fall short. In the meantime, I’m giving them confidence that, when they do see a shortfall, they’ll be able to do something about it.

I call this kind of prophetic mentoring the ministry of agreement. The Greek word for agree is homologea, “to say the same word.” When I agree with someone, I don’t feel the need to add a single word—I say “the same word.” I affirm what they’ve done well. This doesn’t mean I never correct or take issue. It means I honor the discovery the person has made, acknowledging new footing that’s been established.

• Confront only when you’ve earned the right. Naturally, as in any meaningful relationship, there comes a time when the mentor must confront the person being mentored.

For instance, I’ve been working with a young man for whom I have a great deal of respect. He has tremendous potential. But there is one area of his life in which he has been unrealistic: he has not been responsible in the financial support of his marriage. He’s had trouble finding and keeping a job because he has set his sights way too high. His wife was supporting him and the family, but the bills kept piling up. One month recently their phone was cut off.

I had been encouraging him for months, trying to discern the direction God is calling. But at that point, if I said nothing about this problem, I would have become co-dependent to him, enabling his destructive patterns. So I had to help him see he needed to get a job: pump gas or wait on tables in a restaurant or sweep floors—anything. He needed to do something now for the sake of his wife and family, but also for himself.

I couldn’t have done that at the beginning of our relationship. And I can’t do that in every mentoring relationship I have—sufficient trust has not been established. But since I’ve been this man’s friend for some time now, and since I’ve done nothing but encourage him up to this point, I’ve earned the right to tell him what I think he ought to do.

A mentor, then, offers encouragement, and sometimes direction, so that the person mentored can move ahead on his own with confidence. The goal of a mentor in medicine, for example, is to help another acquire the courage and independence of thought to do surgery alone, without needing the mentor looking over his or her shoulder. The goal in Christian mentoring is to help people discern and follow the will of God on their own.

Knowing God

The pastor as priest acts as intermediary between God and the people. At a minimum that means I pray to God for my congregation. It also means that sometimes I’m called to announce to my people God’s forgiveness, in the public declaration of pardon following the confession of sins, for instance. Another priestly function is the administration of the sacraments.

The mentor’s priestly function, though, is not to stand between God and the person mentored but to help the mentored person discover the comfort and forgiveness of God for himself.

This type of priestly mentoring can also take place in prayer groups. For fifteen years now I’ve been meeting with a group of Presbyterian pastors. We meet monthly for what we call “supportive visiting and prayer.” We talk about our needs and then pray for each other. In that setting, I’ve often experienced the grace and comfort of God, mediated through my pastoral colleagues. In that setting, they’ve become priestly mentors to me, not announcing the comfort of God, but praying with me so that I might know it personally.

Beginning the Mentoring Process

Each mentoring situation is unique, but there are several things that have helped me develop meaningful relationships with those I mentor.

1. Create encounters. I can’t be a mentor unless I have contact with people. So I deliberately become a part of small groups so that I might meet people whom I can mentor.

For example, I’ve offered a special theological study group every spring and fall throughout my ministry. For six weeks I have the chance to get close to certain people. Even though sometimes seventy or eighty people come, it still opens doors so I can get to know a few of them.

I’ve also been involved with a men’s prayer group on Wednesday mornings. Almost weekly for nineteen years I’ve been able to get close to the men who attend. I also have taught annual classes at New College at Berkeley. I’ll get a chance there to get to know a group of people, read their papers, and form friendships. Retreats I attend and even Sunday morning preaching may also open the door for meeting people. I watch especially for those who make the effort to make an appointment or come talk to me as a result of those encounters.

2. Fade into the relationship. Naturally, I can’t just announce to a likely candidate, “I’m your mentor. I’m going to shape your life.” Instead, I’ve learned I have to send signals that let a person know his life will be safe with me molding it, because in the end, it’s the person who has to trust me to be a mentor.

The signals, of course, are many of the things I’ve mentioned above: I have to stop teaching, listen, and encourage where I see growth. When those signals are flashed time and again, the person I’m interested in mentoring begins to let me see more and more of his life.

So it’s not a matter of not being a mentor one day and being a mentor the next. I didn’t fully realize that Bob Munger was a mentor to me, for instance, until I looked back on my experience with him years later. Mentoring, like most relationships, is something that deepens gradually.

3. Offer regular check ins. Mentoring is rarely an intense relationship. I don’t have a list of people I contact each week, week in and week out. It’s more of a natural interaction with people when I happen to see them.

Still, I have to make the effort to stay in touch, so I want to give people opportunities to check in, to tell me how they’re doing and what they’re thinking about.

Although sometimes I’ll set an appointment with a person, most of the time I just watch for the chance to strike up a conversation with someone after a class or meeting, for instance. That’s when I’ll ask, “Where are you at right now in your thinking? What can I do to help you in your journey?”

Sometimes I organize opportunities for people to check in. For instance, I regularly offer writing groups, where writers and poets share their work with each other. But I also want this to be a place where before or after and even during the meeting, individuals will briefly and informally tell me what’s going in with them.

4. Fade out of the relationship. Mentoring is not like a therapeutic relationship. It’s not seven weeks of sessions that are then terminated. I think of it more as an ongoing, highly flexible relationship, checking in with another human being, possibly for the rest of life.

There are different levels of involvement, however. And over time the intense mentoring will give way to less regular, more infrequent meetings. If I have a good mentoring relationship, even if I haven’t seen the person for months, we check in with each other in a matter of minutes: I find out quickly what the person’s thinking, where he’s growing, where he’s hurting.

Consequently, I have never become overloaded with mentoring relationships, because, while some are relatively intense for a time, they don’t remain that way. There are waves of involvement, where some get a great deal of personal attention and others do not.

If I were to reduce the role of a mentor to its simplest terms, I would say a mentor is a friend. Many friends have shaped my life, though they may never have considered themselves as my mentors.

Sometimes my friends have helped me discover truth, sometimes they have encouraged me, and sometimes they have mediated the grace of God. And always, my friends valued and affirmed me. And because they did, their influence has changed me and continues to help me, even now as I mentor and influence others.