Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines “mentoring” as “serving as a trusted counselor or guide.” It is the critical process of an experienced person passing along that experience to another in order to grow and develop that individual in a chosen vocation.
Though mentoring was only in the last few decades truly formalized as a concept, it has existed as long as humans have as the more experienced individual sought to impart wisdom.
Church history is full of examples of mentoring relationships. In the Middle Ages people were mentored and mentored new candidates to the convents and monasteries. The close living arrangements allowed the protégés and mentors to have the close relationship required for the proper training and instruction. Unfortunately, with today’s busy-ness of life, mentors and protégés often do not share living quarters. They may not even work in the same place or attend the same house of worship (they may not even be the same religion). Many times, in modern life, it is difficult to find a mentor. The older, more experienced person may not know how to approach someone and it takes time to build the requisite trust to form a true mentoring relationship.
While both mentoring and discipleship are reciprocal arrangements, their methods and goals differ. In discipling, the teacher asks the questions in order to set the context for discovery and to draw out of the protégé what is known. In a mentoring relationship, the protégé is the one to ask the questions about what he hungers to learn. The relationship often flows between the two methods.
Titus 2:1-8 explains the biblical model for a mentoring relationship. An older person who is well versed in sound doctrine and lives honestly takes a younger person under his or her wings and teaches him or her about how to live honestly and teaches that person in doctrine.
In order to have an effective mentoring relationship, the mentor and protégé must spend a significant amount of time together, or important things will be missed. Therefore, some wonder whether opposite gender mentoring relationships are appropriate. Some say that the risks are too great to even chance it: it could devolve into a more personal, possibly even sexual, relationship; if it sours, accusations of inappropriate behavior might be made; or others may perceive that there is something less-than appropriate going on between the mentor and protégé. Others believe that within certain parameters: accountability to other persons, such as their respective spouses—therefore, if one of the parties happens to be single, there must be extra caution taken to ensure the single person does not reach out more out of lonelines; and a significant difference in age between the mentor and protégé—so it would be more akin to a parent/child or grandparent/grandchild-ish situation, then the relationship could be possible.
The goal of mentoring is not merely to impart knowledge, but also character. In order to be effective, the mentor must have more life experience than the protégé. It rarely works for someone to mentor someone younger and is impossible to mentor one more experienced. A mentor must know the way in order to show the way and help another along that way. In order to do that, the mentor and protégé must spend time together, being drawn into the mentor’s world.
