Mentoring in the local church

We’re about two years into an intentional process of building mentoring into the culture of our local church. 

We have chosen a low-control / high-nurture approach, which seems to be working for us, but slowly. This means that we do not commission certain people as official mentors, or keep records of who is mentoring who, or make guarantees that we will match mentorees up with mentors. 

What we do is to alert the whole church generally and prospective mentorees particularly about what to look for in a good mentor, train anyone who wants to be trained as a mentor, and keep telling the stories of how mentoring relationships are  helping people significantly with their ongoing journey of Christian discipleship. 

When people come to the leadership looking for a mentor we ask lots of facilitative questions to help them identify people who they might ask to be their mentor. We want people to take initiative in asking someone to mentor them and take responsibility for the outcomes of their choice. 

If the person is really stumped we might come up with three or four options, but we are careful not to make a single recommendation. This way none of the mentors in our church are acting on behalf of the church; they are not part of a structure or an official programme. 

Because we don’t keep records it’s hard to say what the take-up rate has been, but we’re encouraged. We’re glad that this is not yet another program that we have to keep cranking. This approach feels sustainable over the long haul without any back-breaking effort. 

If there’s any downside, it’s that we’d like the uptake of mentoring to move faster. But to force that along would mean operating levers of control and we suspect that would kill off this thing that seems so alive and healthy. I’d welcome comments about this approach of ours and I’d love to hear from others who are experimenting with fostering mentoring in a local church setting. What’s working?

Rick Lewis