The Importance of Mentoring & Being Mentored in Pastoral Ministry
Growing Your Mentoring Relationships
Most of us pastors have heard about the value of having mentors in our lives. Mentors can be coaches and cheerleaders, goal trackers and supporters. For many of us in ministry, we desire to learn from those who have gone before us, who have served faithfully, and can now pass on their learnings and wisdom.
Finding and growing mentoring relationships can be hard though. Where do you start? How do you find the “right” mentor? How do you honour the relationship and time they invest? Should there be frameworks and questions you use or should it stay more casual and friendly?
A lot of us want to grow in our mentoring relationships, forming new ones, or strengthening our existing ones. So to start off the New Year with our current Incubator, we invited Carson Pue to join us to share about his life, ministry, and learnings on mentorship.
As we debriefed with the crew, we realized how helpful it was to keep leaning into this topic of mentorship. So we want to share some of the best resources our team knows of on mentorship to help you in whatever life stage or season continue to grow in your mentoring relationships.
Curated Content For You
Video
John Maxwell on Mentoring: 4 Questions To Ask To Maximize Mentoring Relationships
In this lesson, John shares both how to receive mentorship and how to be a great mentor to others. By asking the right questions, we can move our mentoring relationships forward to deeper intentionality and focus.
Article
Why Pastors Need Mentors and How to Find One
Mentoring isn’t something reserved for "church members" or "new" pastors, and it’s not something church leaders should avoid. Mentoring can be an ongoing, beneficial activity as long as you’re open to someone speaking into your life.
Helpful Reads
Books on Mentorship we recommend.
Mentoring Leaders: Wisdom for Developing Character, Calling, and Competency
by Carson Pue
Carson Pue offers a practical yet spiritually-focused mentoring framework to help emerging Christian leaders strengthen their character, calling, and competency.
The Mentoring Church: How Pastors and Congregations Cultivate Leaders
by Phil A. Newton
Raising up young leaders in churches isn’t just the job of a senior pastor, but of the whole congregation. Mature, resilient leaders and pastors are formed by churches that embody cultures of mentorship, not just programs. Learn how your church can become a mentoring church in this great resource from Phil Newton.
New Resources. Check These Out.
The BibleProject App
The Bible Project released their latest project, a brand new app to make their resources more accessible and to give a totally redesigned way to read and explore the Bible.
Learn more about the app here.
Life On Purpose Series by Alpha Youth
A new series to equip students to share life, faith and Jesus. This four-episode series works well as an envisioning and training resource for youth groups in mission and evangelism. It’s designed as a lead-up towards an evangelistic or missional initiative such as an outreach event, missions trip, or student-led Alpha.
Access the Life On Purpose series here.
A Canadian Church Story
What I Didn’t Know About the Church Down the Road
“God was doing a great thing in my area, using some great churches, and it wasn’t on my radar.”
There are many important lessons and reminders that might have surfaced reading this story about Max, Ali and Buena. Perhaps one of them is that God is always doing much in His Church, and often right under our noses. And in the same way that was true for me, it is likely true for you. Who knows what the Lord is doing in and through the churches around you right now; stories that if you knew them, would widen your view of His Kingdom and fill you with hope.
God is on the move in our nation and we don’t need to look far to see it...