Learning Mentoring

Through mentoring, persons find a way to invest and continue themselves in skills and values in the beneficiary person – often registering results more than a generation beyond the lifetime of the mentored.  This is a little perceived principle in human life ordered of God.  There is a mysterious attachment that has spiritual meaning in progression that is ongoing.  It is related to biography before and after any event.  This point is treated in the first verses of Hebrews, Chapter Seven.  When Abraham was mentored by Melchizedek, and Abraham paid tithes (the illustration of the principle) the descendants from Abraham are credited with the act – appearing from the loins of the father.  In this is also found the matter of evil influence which is carried in depravity (negative tendency).  The negatives are dealt with in the repentance of the individual and a new life begun in the redemptive plan of God in Jesus Christ.  The good that is done is never lost, therefore is not to be repented of.  It is another way, exercised with class, to give back some of what was given for good and blessing to the mentor during his or her life.  This does not deny, in human context, that some mentors and mentored are egocentric, even exploiting self.  Sometimes the mentored, taken with distorted pride, turn on their mentors. We do not deny the excellence of mentoring because of clumsy participants to the concept.  Mentors receive spiritual credit for affirmative soul investment.

There are elements of mentoring in parenting, in coaching, in teaching, in pastoring, in managing workers, but genuine mentoring goes beyond common and appropriate efforts in these duties.  Van Cliburn was mentored by his mother.  She became his piano teacher, helped select his programs, designed his regimen, and became his best critic.  She had studied under Arthur Friedheim, who had been a pupil of Anton Rubenstein and Franz Liszt.  She taught her son in the idiom of the piano as a lyrical instrument, rather than percussive.  Percussive is popular in America.  With that preparation he, an American, could win the eminent Russian honor as champion pianist in the 1950s.  On his mother’s death, Van Cliburn canceled a concert tour and, in a tribute, gave his mother appropriate credit for his accomplishments.  During most of his remaining years Van Cliburn formed an organization in which he mentored aspiring musicians.  He did not use much of his time in developing a public persona as a celebrity. The mentored became a mentor.

We might well take the magnificent mentoring of Timothy by the Apostle Paul as model for the purpose.  The time given, the instructions, the expectations, the modeling – all prepared Timothy to take the Apostle’s place after the death of the Apostle, the first leader of a number of maiden churches.  Paul set the stage in I Corinthians 4:15-16.  Paul, like most mentors, felt good about himself, and the knowledge he could impart.  Timothy apparently accepted the sonship heritage to the Apostle’s spiritual fathering and teaching.  There is little doubt that Timothy inherited the ministry of the Apostle on the close of Paul’s life.  The mentoring principle is so large in Scripture that we must not miss it in any generation for spiritual meaning.

Mentoring varies in intensity and scope as noted in other Pages in these series.  Modeling is a part of it, but all persons ought to be good general models, at least for living, but also for this or that special thing that characterizes their lives.  For example: a carpenter ought to be the best carpenter that he can be as a model of a carpenter.  Mentoring as a word is often casually used for short/long periods, but intense, of directed relationship – common with ministers, teachers, and parents.  To be a genuine mentor to large meaning one must make obvious value added factors to the life/activity of another person in a relationship, usually requiring an extended period of time to achieve.  There is something of a human contract in the doing.  To grasp mentoring between a master (teacher) and an apprentice (student), biographical experiences are excellent illustrations of how widely was the practice of this type of mentoring in centuries preceding ours.   It was strong in the early years of our country – basic to colonial America.  (The mentoring of young pastor candidates by Jonathan Edwards was a major contribution to the developing colonies.)  Presently it is more difficult in a frenetic society, but not impossible, to mentor in nearly any aspect of life.   Seek mentors.