What Does it Take to be a Mentor?

Recently, while we were vacationing with our family and my daughter's new in-laws, her mother-in-law shared how she believes the Lord wants her to become more involved in mentoring younger women.

Her dilemma is that she hopes to be moving this year and does not know if she should begin mentoring women in her present church or wait until she moves and establishes relationships with a new group of women.

My daughter has mentored two teen girls over the last two or three years and two of my sons have sought mentors. I have observed several things.

• A mentor has to be willing to commit their time. There is no way to mentor without meeting together regularly. I suppose this can also be done via telephone or email. However, there seems to be something about communicating face-to-face that encourages trust and bonding.
• Praying for your mentored person is a necessary component of the relationship. It is easy for us to respond with our own advice, but God's council could be very different.
• Let them talk. A few years ago I met with a young homeschool mom who wanted advice regarding how to organize her homeschool day and still maintain a reasonably clean home. As we met and spoke for several hours over coffee, it became apparent that her real need was help with the relationship between she and her husband. If I had immediately charged in and began giving advice, she might never have gotten to the root of the problem she really needed help with.
• Be consistent. If you plan to meet every week, set the time aside and treat it as an unbreakable date otherwise every life interruption becomes a reason not to meet and the relationship falls apart.
• Treat your mentoree with respect. They might be decades younger than you or just a few years, but that does not make you a life expert. A mentor is a guide, a support, and an encourager, not a prophet from on high.

My daughter continues to mentor a high school student, her other mentoree has gone on to college. Both of these lovely young women contributed toward making her wedding day special by assisting with various small tasks.

My sons? Not so much success. The men they met with, men they respected and admired did not follow through for very long. Meetings were cancelled and my sons were not contacted. They both felt rejected and undervalued. The saddest part is that my sons felt these were both strong men of faith who they hoped would help guide them in their walk with Christ. I continue to pray for committed mentors for all three of my sons because while parents are great, being able to talk to another mature adult with a different perspective is invaluable.

Linking up with Kate at Teaching What is Good











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Word + Spirit = Power

I chose to review Word Spirit Power: What Happens When You Seek All God Has to Offer from a list of potential review books because I've been thinking about the Holy Spirit frequently this year.  I feel like I have a reasonable understanding of the God the Father and God the Son, but don't understand God the Holy Spirit very well.

Word Spirit Power is written by three men, none of whom had a charismatic or Pentecostal background.  As each shares his testimony he explains how he had an encounter with the Holy Spirit that changed his life and led him to a charismatic-type belief in the role and power of the Holy Spirit.

However, the main premise of Word Spirit Power is that the emphasis on the word of God, the Bible, coupled with visible manifestations of the Holy Spirit will cause churches to experience and more fully understand the power of God.

R.T. Kendall, one of the authors, states that "Word" churches expect to hear but not see much and that "Spirit" churches expect to see but not hear much.  He believes that when the word and spirit come together in churches, people will see the power of God manifested.  All the authors feel the time of unification of the word and spirit in churches is coming soon.

I appreciated reading each man's testimony and how he attained a new understanding of the Holy Spirit's role in his life.  The back cover of the book states that the three men together have over 170 years experience in the ministry and I feel that added weight to what they had to say.  They utilize the Bible extensively to illustrate their points which I thought also added credence to the discussion.

I've belonged to both word and spirit churches as a Christian so I've experienced the strengths and weaknesses of both types of churches.  Do I agree with what the authors have to say?  Some of it.  Do I disagree with what they have to say?  Some of it.  But their passion for both God's word and His Spirit are fervently expressed throughout each author's section of the book.

My real disappointment was that the book wasn't what I'd hoped it would be about.  My search to learn more about who the Holy Spirit is and what His role is in a believer's life continues.

Word Spirit Power: What Happens When You Seek All God Has to Offer by R.T. Kendall, Charles Carrin, Jack Taylor
Chosen Books, 2012
Christian Living, 207 pages


The publisher provided a free copy of the book for my review.  All views expressed are my own.