MENTORING OF YOUNG LEADERS
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT AS A LEADER
July 24, 2015MINISTRY HIGH-LIGHTS FOR THE WEEK
August 21, 2015Do you have a Mentor or a Mentee?
Mentor
A mentor is: an adviser, guide, guru, counselor, consultant; confidant (e).He/she is: a trainer, teacher, tutor or instructor. The Lord always brings raw materials to us. He rarely brings a finished product. He also brings imperfect vessels to us. He again brings people with very poor backgrounds and His plan is to turn this simple common men and women into people that will do extra-ordinary things in His kingdom. Many of these men and women will only get their God given potential into action through mentors. People that will see what these people do not see, people that will give them time when no one else will, people that can encourage them when they fail.
Jesus was the greatest mentor that ever lived, he turned a group of 12 uneducated, simple men most of whom were fishermen and made them into fishers of men. He used these few people to birth the greatest movement that history has ever seen and that is the Church. It all came from one thing Mentoring.
Jesus’ model was: Teach them the principles of life. Show them how you do ministry. Ask them to do what you do while you are watching them. When they return, use their success and failures to again teach the key principles. Then launch them out into the fields. Be available to counsel whenever they need more help but do not do it for them.
A few things to note about being mentored or doing effective mentoring.
1. You should always have a mentor or mentors in your life as an individual.
2. Look out for a leader who you can look up to, whose character and ministry you respect.
3. You can have more than one mentor; we always have people we look up to in different spheres of life.
4. When you get a person you desire to be your mentor, directly approach him/her and request him/her to accept you as person he/she can help.
5. Request your mentor for a scheduled time when you can sit for at least an hour a month where you can talk and pray together.
6. Mentoring only happens when you trust each other; therefore work on this trust factor. It means each one of you should be comfortable enough in each other’s presence; you need to open up to your mentor as your relationship grows.
7. It is always advisable to have mentor of the same sex as you, this is because this relationship can easily grow into an unhealthy relationship if you do not watch out.
8. What do mentors and those mentored talk about? The answer is everything. And to be specific, if your mentor is helping you in ministry then your conversations should be more in that area; if it is on a professional job level then spend more time in that field.
9. Mentors should however be careful that they do not make their people helpless or dependent on them to make decisions. A mentor does not make decisions for you; he helps you to think through your decisions; he helps you to look at the objective side of the things you are doing and he helps you to own your decisions.
10. Every minister should have at least 2 people they are mentoring in ministry. And every lead pastor should be a mentor to the ministers on his team; actually that is your main work.
