04/04/2023
Partnership in mentorship: A personal experience
Many have defined mentoring as a reciprocal
learning relationship in which a mentor and mentee agree to a partnership, where they work collaboratively toward the achievement of mutually defined goals that will develop a mentee's skills, abilities, knowledge, and/or thinking.
Among Christians, a spiritual mentor is someone who cares about another and wants the best for them. A spiritual mentor encourages one to invest in a strong relationship with God. As a result of this encouragement, one can grow spiritually and become mature in their faith and are helped to put their faith into action.
Many people have the desire to live out and share their faith, teach others about Jesus or be a part of a ministry, but unless reciprocity and collaboration are fully built into the mentoring process, not much can be achieved.
In my case, the Call of God to enter Christian Ministry came to me 21 years ago as a young working woman; full of life with great hopes to pursue my career in development work. To answer or not to answer the Call was the difficult question. As I began to contemplate more deeply how I would invest my life for the future, I became convinced that I would not be happy unless I served God in full-time work. After all, even during my development work I was always overjoyed with every opportunity to share my faith with others. In obedience to His Call, I followed and entered the Ministry of Helps. Since then, I have served in various capacities in Christian work.
It has been my privilege to serve with a number of gifted servants of the Lord, who in one way or another, influenced my personal life and work. Some were pastors. Others were lay Christians. Most of them were models of Christian maturity that impacted my social life, helped me face some of my challenges and helped to shape my dreams for a life with Christ. These people had walked the path of ministry before me, had experience, and attempted to share that knowledge with me as we served together.
While this relationship helped me in some aspects of my Christian life and work, it was not without challenges which, looking back now, could have been avoided through a well-structured mentoring programme, complete with reciprocity, collaboration and partnership.
Firstly, I was not prepared for the reciprocity and collaboration required in mentoring. I was stubborn, young and thought I knew more than I did not. Consequently, I did not fully draw upon the wisdom and wealth of knowledge of these individuals as much as I could have, when I had the opportunity.
In addition, although they were helpful, these older servants of God were often too busy and gave only limited time to my development. I needed more of them, and I needed them to want more from me. Much as they tried, the elders did not fully avail to me their strengths, resources, and networks. This again, was because there was no structured program for my mentorship which would have facilitated my learning of the foundational lessons of ministry, the essential skills of leadership, and the enormous challenges of character building, in the context of a loving, caring relationship.
In short, I had no mentor per se. What I needed was a MENTOR. I needed someone whose sole desire was to see me win in a structured manner. These kinds of leaders are rare jewels who should be taken full advantage of when the opportunity avails itself. I believe many other people like myself are not able to easily find them and fully benefit from them except in a structured manner.
The great need for mentors cuts across disciplines and is a reality. Men and women everywhere call out for help, encouragement and advice from those who have walked the path before them but the ensuing relationship should be formal and structured in order for it to produce the best results. It must be a reciprocal learning and collaborative relationship. It should be a partnership, with a focus to achieving mutually defined goals.
Pastor Gloria
President
WALM
