Next year, our area is kicking off a focused effort for one-on-one discipling and mentoring of leaders, mostly college sophomores (the year after our FYL program).
If we all got in a room and tried to find a consensus about “how do we share the gospel with people”, we would probably all describe almost the same thing (with some variations here and there). But, if we did the same thing and tried to find a consensus about “how do we disciple and mentor people”, I think we would be all over the place. One reason is that “how to do it” is not as explicit in the Bible as is the gospel (I could talk a lot about that, but I’ll save that for a later day). Because of this, I think most people feel like they are starting with a blank page when they think about adult discipleship and mentoring. I don’t have a blank page, I myself have been discipled and mentored, and have done that for others as well, and, as you might imagine, I usually have lots of ideas about all kinds of stuff, including this. But, I would imagine the collective readership of YLHelp has bigger, better ideas, more experience, and better questions as well.
Just to be clear, this would not be leader training. This would be something along the lines of a college aged person meeting once a week or every other week one-on-one with someone more mature in their life and faith.
What works?
What doesn’t work?
How do you find mentors/mentees?
What direction do you give for these relationships?
Do you have a training for the mentors/mentees?
Any tips from those who have been doing this as a YL area for more than a year or two?
Thanks again for your help!
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One thought on “Help Needed: Mentoring and Discipleship for Leaders”
We just had our committee “adopt a leader”. Basic I know and won’t work in larger leadership areas, but maybe if you invite other adults not on committee into it. Our leaders filled out and interest, contact info, favorites, etc. sheet, and each committee person took one. Committee members are asked to meet with their leader or contact at least once a month- lunch, phone call, note, etc.- and pray for their life and ministry to kids. As we build towards launching full blown YL College, this is helping us as one of the key components to our YLC ministry we hope will be matching many YLC participants up with a mentor in their field of study. When we invite people to do this a couple years from now, we will have already learned a few things and have people who can share their stories of investing in our college aged leaders now.
We have YL leaders that are student athletes at the university, and one caution is to watch this process closely if you have NCAA athletes. One of our committee member is considered a booster, and the leader he chose happened to be on the football team (not the reason he chose that leader). He can only take the leader out to lunch once a month, and the leader has to report it to the compliance office. Thankfully the athletic director is our committee chair’s husband and the football coach appreciates his players involvement with YL, and so they said something before I even thought of it. Just a caution if you have NCAA leaders as leaders.