The Mentoring Dilemma
I used to hate when people talked about their mentors.
When I started down the path of ministry as a vocation, I quickly began to hear this word mentor tossed around the church environment. As a youth pastor, I had the role of helping volunteer leaders become mentors to students. When this goes well, it was and continues to be one of the absolute best parts of what I get to do.
Now when it comes to me, I did my best to mentor students. I have my share of success stories, failure stories, and times when I really did this wrong. As I have looked back on previous versions of myself, I find myself regretting the lack of mentors in my own life at a young age. I wondered why people weren’t choosing to mentor me. It made me hate the whole mentor thing.
I never considered my situation might be my own doing.
From my experience, there are two types of mentors. A professional mentor will share knowledge and wisdom with the result of helping a person do a certain job or role well. A personal mentor serves as more of an encouraging presence and offers guidance in overall life.
Throughout my church jobs, I was often paired with lead pastors who were not wired or willing to mentor their staff in either of these ways. This doesn’t mean they weren’t good people or good pastors, but it has more to do with their own personal make up.
It wasn’t until I worked at a Christian school that my supervisor, Jim, was intentional in mentoring me professionally and personally (that’s him in the picture).
I recall a conversation we had at the end of a meeting where I had learned so much. I asked Jim, “Do you think maybe we could meet once a month just so you can teach me more about leadership?”
Without hesitation he said , “No, I don’t think we can do that.” This was followed by a pause and a grin that even now I can see played out in slow motion. He continued, “I think we should meet every week.”
Boom. There it is.
I have often heard people on both ends of the spectrum, mentors and people desiring mentors talk about either the lack of people to pour into or the absence of people investing into them.
I can tell you how to be a mentor or get a mentor. I promise this will work. It might be bumpy, but it’s worthwhile.
If you want to mentor someone, invite them into your life.
Spend time with them. Share the things you want to pass on. They will either respond with eagerness and want more, or they will not.
If they don’t want it, ween them off and choose someone else. It’s that simple.
In my early 20’s I worked at a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the pastor I worked for really tried to mentor me. I wasn’t having it. I was too immature, too arrogant. He moved on and there are literally dozens of people he invested in who are doing huge things around the world. It was my loss.
In Florida, my supervisor invited me into his life. I ran errands with him (we would go let his dogs out sometimes, yes, that’s random but it happened), and he shared things I needed to know. I responded by wanting more, and he was willing to give it. Before I moved to Iowa, Leslie and I spent time at his home in Michigan getting wisdom before starting this current chapter.
Now to the other side of things.
If you want someone to mentor you, ask them.
They will either say yes and you’re set, or they will say no and then you ask someone else. Maybe they say yes and flake out. It happens. Call them out on it or move on.
Life is just too short for us to sit and wait for someone to invest in us. There are not enough years in our existence for us to hope someone will ask us to pass things on to them.
There are people that I have been intentional in spending time with. When they respond and invite more conversation, ask more questions - then we keep going. When they don’t, well I think you get the idea here. Bottom line is that it’s not someone else’s responsibility to get you a mentor or find a person that you can invest your life into.
You have to do something.
Today, I have a handful of people I call mentors. There’s Jim in Michigan, Bill in Florida, Chris in California, Maggie in Pennsylvania. There’s Scott and Stephen in Indiana, and a different Bill in Illinois. Some I talk to regularly, some I haven’t talked to in a long time - but I know they’d pick up if I called. There are people I work with that I have learned a ton from as well.
Hear this. Every one of these people didn’t come into my life until I was in my late thirties. It took me this long to learn how this mentor thing worked.
It’s never too late to ask someone. Learn a new job, new skills, or have someone share their wisdom with you. Make a choice to pour into someone you see potential in.
Take a step of faith.
Stop waiting for someone else to do something.