Seven Essentials for Mentoring

Last week I shared a few excerpts from the book profile on Spiritual Mentoring: A Guide for Seeking and Giving Direction. This week I would like to share with you what Reese and Anderson identify as seven essentials in the ministry of spiritual mentoring. It is a bit long, but worth reading. Enjoy!

The incarnate Word.
Spiritual mentoring is relational. …mentoring is always relational, heart-to-heart, and life-to-life. Christ epitomized spiritual mentoring; through Him we learn what to teach and how to teach. Jesus’ life became His message as He revealed in practice what He spoke in words.

Grounded in the ordinary.
Spiritual mentoring is autobiographical. Wise people know how to draw things out of the heart of another…The thoughts, feelings, dreams, and experiences buried in a person’s heart generally carry a coded spiritual message. Mentors must mine these treasures, lift them to the surface, and help the mentoree see in them the pattern of God’s working…the astute mentor also knows how to illumine the mundane and ordinary times..because he understands that God is always at work. If one does not learn to look for God in the ordinary, he will miss so much.

Coming alongside.
Spirituality is partnership with the Holy Spirit…If we believe that our desire and hunger to know God and to grow in Christ is our response to His initiation, then the duty of the mentor is merely to assist another in learning to pay attention to the inner working of the Holy Spirit. A mentor is a spiritual optometrist whose task is to adjust the intensity of light through a series of lenses so that the mentoree has better vision.

The trajectory of spiritual formation.
Spiritual mentoring is purposive. Spiritual growth is a pilgrimage toward an intended destination rather than a meandering stroll around circumstances…A mentor not only helps the mentoree discern the spiritual implications of events and circumstances but also to observe that these are more sequential than random. God has set these things in motion; the key is to learn why. A mentor will help find the answer.

The essential art.
Spiritual mentoring requires listening. Once again we must understand that a mentor does not cause or create spiritual growth; at best he enhances it. A mentor, then, is one who comes alongside another in whose life God is already at work…A truly effective mentor knows how to listen to God, how to listen to (observe) his own life, and tutors others to do the same.

Not one-size-fits-all.
Spiritual mentoring requires adaptable discernment. Discernment is the ability to perceive the truth about a person or situation…Discernment knows the questions to ask that will point the inquirer toward God…For the most part, mentors cannot plot the same course over and over again; to do so is to rely on self rather than the Spirit.

Not only for specialists.
Spiritual mentoring belongs to the priesthood of all believers. …the invitation is given to all in the body of Christ. Still,…mentoring amounts to much more than telling someone else about lessons learned through experiences…In fact, knowing when to ‘get out of the way’ and let God speak directly to the heart of the mentoree is a crucial aspect of this ministry.

“A healthy mentoring relationship should help you to give voice to the song God has sung into your life…” During the course of mentoring the mentoree is enabled to see the activity of God in his life and to value that activity as a stimulus of spiritual formation. That being done, the mentoree ‘finds his voice’ and proclaims, acknowledges, and magnifies God through his uniqueness. In an ideal world, which the kingdom of God most certainly is, the mentoree then becomes the mentor.”