Faith Nurture, Intergenerational Ministry
The Importance of Mentoring
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Who is someone in your life that you look up to because of the numerous ways they have shaped you and influenced your life?
It wasn't until college that I heard someone tell me that whenever I met someone who I looked up to and who could greatly influence my life, that I should have them become my mentor or find a way to work under them. I had heard the word mentor before but it always had a certain amount of formality attached to it that made me too intimidated to look into it more. The college I attended had a mentoring program for students and when one of my friends asked if I wanted to do check it out with her, I decided to try it. It was then that I realized I had already had numerous mentors throughout my life, but only informally. I also realized how much more I could have gotten from that relationship if I had set up regular mentoring meetings.
One of the ways that we can develop the intergenerational aspects of our churches is by encouraging mentoring relationships among members. Mentoring is a great way to involve people from every generation in a meaningful way and strengthen relationships within your church.
Mentoring relationships can work in many ways. Sometimes they are between an older person and a much younger person. Sometimes they are between a person and someone who is a few years ahead of them in life. Sometimes people decide to do a book study together and can each learns from the other person’s perspective. Sometimes people meet to talk about what is going on in their lives in order to have someone to process things with and someone to pray with.
Whatever the nature of the relationship, it is important to keep these things in mind:
Do you have any other advice for developing great mentoring relationships? How has your church taken advantage of this great opportunity to build relationships and encourage intergenerational faith formation? Leave a comment below or tweet us at @crc_ffm.
Faith Nurture, Family Ministry
Faith Nurture, Intergenerational Ministry
Faith Nurture
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Do you have any suggestions for good books or resources about setting up mentoring programs and relationships? I believe in mentoring. I think it is something we need to be more intentional in many ways in the church, but I'm at a loss about how to start or set up opportunities for such relationships. Any advice would be welcome.
Thank you for your question. I emailed the rest of our Faith Formation Ministries team to compile some resources for you and below is the list we came up with:
We'll also have more resources on mentoring in our upcoming Building Blocks of Faith free online toolkit, so we can update you about it when it goes live on our website.
We hope these are helpful! Please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any more questions.
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