Mentorship/Discipling, what is that?
Now, I first off have to differentiate between some things. The family is the primary engine for discipling someone, especially young people, however scripture does have examples of people being made a disciple by other people. Secondly, it seems that many people think that you should exclusively mentor people that have been believers for a while.
People who think this way neglect the Making of Disciples, the going mandate of Matthew 28. This was written in the sense that evangelism and discipleship could be synthesized. This text does not make a distinction between the two in the Great Commission, so this means going to the unregenerate(the unbelievers), sharing the Gospel (the good news of Jesus Christ), and discipling them if they become a Christian .
That is in the great commission Evangelism and Discipleship are intertwined in one term and it is MAKE DISCIPLES. So, before I continue that had to be made clear.
Once again much of this can be found in the Book Master Plan of Evangelism By Robert Coleman, there is also an earlier edition.
The remainder of what I say is applicable to New Christian converts as well as Christians in need of direction, and can be transposed to someone who wants to know how to be mentored or mentor.
First off, who do you approach? If you are a growing follower of Christ, be on the look out for people that the Lord might have you be a mentor to. Keep this in mind because there are a great number of "babes" in our Churches that have been there for years, but are still "babes" spiritually. So look for those who are really interested in growing. These people are noticeable, eager, engaged, have things to add to the conversation. These people don't just show up to corporate worship and walk away, but rather, these people are truly wanting to grow. They are also people that you mesh with personality-wise. You don't necessarily have to have the same personality, but it is such that you would be able to spend large amounts of time and energy with the person. I have had guys that I started to mentor only to point them to someone else because of the stark differences in our personality.
Another way of finding the person that you will mentor is letting them find you. If you are in a position to teach, then maybe you should teach on the topic in your Small Group, ministry meeting, large group, or maybe a group of couples or families that go out to dinner or come over for dinner and strike up the conversation, and direct it in a way of talking about your mentoring, or being mentored. SIDE NOTE. Sometimes you have to plant the seed by educating the people before they know that they need to act on something. This has been my method I have taught about when I was in a position to teach, or I talked about it in a general sense with persons I thought were ready but wanted to see if they thought they were ready. I had one guy that while we were just chatting about the need for me to grow in their faith and I started talking about mentoring. He talked to me a few days later, and I started to mentor him. This took place in a very casual way, not a big deal.
Now when a person approaches me, if they are a person who has been in Church a long time I ask them to read something in scripture and come back to me and let me know,
1. Why would I have them read that in light of their request, and two are there in questions that you have about the passage. I try not to tell them what the passage means. I want to see several things, one are they committed enough to finish the task in a timely manner.
2. It lets me see how they best learn. (do they make a detailed outline, did they just summarize it for me, do they make bullet points and question)
3 It helps to start the wheels on being in the word and starting all this on the word of God.
4. What do they hope to have happen from their time with me?
5. Their conversion story; this is pivotal to understand before you press on.
So from there, we talk about Sin issues in their life, and about where does the enemy know where to get us. The big ones come out and that gives me a base to break down where the sin is in their life and how it manifests itself. I write this stuff down for my viewing only (for the sheer fact of remembering, I don't know about you but memory is not the gift that I am known for). A great book that covers the sin issue and uncovers lots that we don't even see is "The Pursuit of Holiness": By Jerry Bridges
Then this is where the Coleman book comes in, I now know the person on some level I understand where the enemy attacks them, I can see how they learn, read, regurgitate, how they came to know Christ etc.....
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