(This article was first published in 2015.)
“We all need a few good mentors” read a recent headline in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. It's a sentiment I share, based on my own experience of having been poured into by older, wiser women, professors, and married couples over the years. The aritcle’s author, Fay Vincent, a former CEO of Columbia Pictures Industries, executive vice president of Coca-Cola, and commissioner of Major League Baseball, recalls the importance of mentors in his life. He says they were vital and reminiscing on their role leads him to feel “enormous gratitude.”
The imperative of mentoring
Like Vincent, I have looked back on what my mentors taught me and marvel at the debt of gratitude I owe them. If someone as gifted and successful as Vincent benefitted from mentors, how much more the rest of us? It's not just my experience or his affirmation, that leads me to vigorously promote mentoring. Someone further down the road helping you on your way is much older than the Wall Street Journal and corporate America. In Titus, the apostle Paul writes to one of his young protégés:
You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. (Titus 2:1-8)
Older believers teaching younger ones is essential in the life of the church. It is a means of transmitting the faith “so that in everything [Christians] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10). The NIV translates it “so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
The Mechanics of Mentoring
Vincent rightly notes that “mentoring is an art and it requires both time and energy,” something people aren't always able to give. How should you go about seeking the input and counsel of an older believer? I’ve answered this question, and others like it, at Boundless.org over the years. Everything from How to Ask Someone to Mentor You, to How to Be Mentored once someone has said yes, to How to Find a Good Marriage Mentor. Here's a snippet from that last one:
The point of mentoring is to find someone with godly character in the area you're hoping to work on. If you're trying to make big decisions about education or career, look for someone who has wisdom in those areas. If you're hoping to find encouragement toward marriage, look for someone who esteems it as well as models a healthy relationship with her own husband….
Being mentored means being vulnerable enough to allow someone to speak into your life. An essential precursor is trust—trust that the woman giving you feedback and advice is solid in her own faith and understanding of God's Word.
If you’re intimidated by the idea of having a mentor, or the person you want to mentor you can't see themselves in that role, the article Mentoring Myths may help you. Sometimes a person is mentoring you without really realizing it. My favorite college professor is a great example. I was telling a friend about him recently and realized as I was describing him that he was my mentor. Though we never formalized a mentoring relationship, that's what he was doing in the course of conversations about campus life and what to do after graduation. He had a lot of influence, steering me in a good direction. I didn't realize just how much till years after I graduated.
Look around at the people you go to for advice. Who's your favorite sounding board? They're likely mentoring you, even if neither of you calls it that. Because those people have such a big influence, it's important to make sure they're a good influence. Are they living a life you admire, following Christ, bearing good fruit? If so, keep seeking them out. If not, look around you, especially in your church, for input that will help you in the day-to-day, but also will prove vital, eternally so.