| Return |

The Making of a Mentor

Alicia Chole

Jesus modeled the key to fulfilling the Great Commission.

Let me illustrate form and substance. An orange has two parts– the form (peel) and substance (juice). What if I thought that form (peel) was the substance? That form would nourish me? What would I taste? Bitter, because form without substance is bitter.

Jesus quoted Isaiah 29:13 in Mark 7:6: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (NIV). To those in leadership, He said they come near Me with their mouths, their hands (form), but the substance (heart) I long for is far from Me.

I was at a table with women in their 80s and 90s that I consider mentors. They were from a different Christian heritage. They were sharing their concerns about music in the church and how studies had shown that when this music was played, cows stopped giving milk and chicken died. As I listened, I realized, They are talking about my music, about my worship.

This is an issue of form and substance. These were women of God, but the substance of their worship can’t be carried by the forms that carry my worship.

So, let’s apply this principle to mentoring.

It is easy in mentoring to substitute form for substance. Most often when we speak of mentoring, we speak in terms of essential forms. We start a program. We get a book. We go through a workshop or a worksheet. It’s easy to confuse implementing a program with investing in a person. And it’s easy to confuse organizing people for discipling people.

Our focus is going to be the substance of Jesus’ model.

I get a lot out of reading books written by dead women who have put their hearts in books that mentor me. But whenever I see a woman of God, if I can, I grab her. The worst that can happen is she can say no. So I grab mentoring moments when I see the hand of God on another woman of God.

Jesus’ model

Jesus offers us a cause that’s the size of the world (Matthew 28:19,20). The emphasis of the Great Commission wasn’t go; it was give, by teaching, baptizing, obeying. When God was designing His world-sized strategy for revealing His love and salvation, He selected as His strategy a life. A life that played with children. A life that walked in the marketplace. A life that went fishing and paid taxes. A life that rejoiced at weddings and mourned at funerals. Emmanuel walks among us. Life to life; shoulder to shoulder. Think how different the world would be if unbelievers could say of the people of God: "They walked with me, not just talked at me."

Jesus preached to the multitudes; He counseled the questioning: He concentrated His life in a handful of ordinary men. His prize wasn’t information; it was transformation.

When you see "disciple" in the New Testament there is a one-to-one correlation. It comes from the word mathetes, meaning a "learner." The infinitive "to learn" comes from a root that is significant–thought accompanied by endeavor. Jesus could have chosen any word to be a symbol of what He wanted us to be and do. He said, "Go and make disciples. Go and make those who will accompany their learning by living."

In Jesus’ day, it was common in the Greek world and in the Jewish world for philosophers to have disciples. John the Baptist had disciples. Some Pharisees had disciples. So Jesus tapped into something that was tangible in a way that’s not as prominent in our culture and took it to a higher level.

What the Jewish rabbi was looking for in a student was potential. The rabbi would offer the student knowledge and methods. The disciple’s focus would be to study the Word and other books written about the Word. A disciple of a rabbi would dream of becoming a rabbi himself.

The initiator in a discipling relationship with Jesus wasn’t the student. It was Jesus himself. Jesus is the One who said, "Come, follow Me." The student’s qualification was just availability.

Jesus offers not only knowledge and methods; He offers himself. He offers relationship. What distinguishes mentoring from merely informing is relationship. We study Jesus’ model and we model Jesus’ method, but only Jesus gets to be Jesus. Jesus has no understudies. I may be a slightly younger or slightly older sister who comes alongside to walk with another, but Jesus is still Jesus. We must study His model; we model His method, but He gets to play himself forever.

A disciple’s perspective

To commit to be a disciple of Jesus was to commit to make disciples for Jesus. Disciple-making is not a sign of leadership. It’s not a sign of special giftings. Healthy things reproduce themselves.

Discipling and mentoring aren’t functions of personality or position. Start coming alongside someone, and Jesus will transform lives through you as you follow His model. The essential nonnegotiable ingredient is "withship." In Mark 3 He appointed the Twelve, designating them as apostles that they might be exceptionally busy and exhausted. No. That they would "be with him." That’s your job description.

Discipling that Jesus modeled definitely caught on with Paul: "The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others" (2 Timothy 2:2). Group instruction is part of the office God established as a teacher, but it’s not a substitute for relationship.

Look at the numbers of people Jesus dealt with. Throughout the Gospels He spent time with the crowds; but as He was getting closer to the Cross, He began investing more time in the Twelve. Then more in the three; then more in John. Did Jesus prioritize His relationship with the Twelve because nobody else was gathering on the mountain to hear Him preach? Did Jesus prioritize relationship with the Twelve because everybody in that entire place had already received their healing? Did Jesus prioritize qualitative, purposeful investment in 12 very ordinary men, because nobody had further questions?

I suggest that Jesus walked past need to prioritize relational investment.

At times we are going to have to walk past some needs, if we are going to follow Jesus’ model of concentrating our life on a few. We’re going to have to come to peace with them still shouting at us and not wait until they are silent in order for us to follow His model.

A disciple’s primary assignment is to be with me, and my focus is to call a woman I am mentoring to be with Jesus. And I am alongside her as she cultivates that holy place hidden within her and learns the startling source of true authority.

When I begin a mentoring relationship, one of the things we do is discuss several items. I ask, "What is your expectation of us beginning to spend more purposeful time together?" We discuss how often we’re going to meet. When I was single I was mentoring 12 women. Now that I’m a married mom with a hunger to write, I need to make space for that. Set parameters for expectations.

Health in the mentoring process is nurtured as the students learn. Learning goes in seasons. We have denial, then discovery, and then application. And that can take a lifetime. And there is the power of not settling for information, but moving on to integration.

I encourage giving principles instead of formulas. Students might ask, "Alicia, should I do X?" Inside I am saying, No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. There is a time to speak a clear word of direction. But most of the time I need to say, "Let’s go to the Bible and examine some passages that may have something to say about the decisions you’re making." So we go to the Word. What I’ve done is taken a huge risk for the sake of their future. One day the student will be gone and she doesn’t know what to do because it’s a situation that wasn’t on the list I had given her. But if I teach her to love and to hold on to and to study the Word of God then even when I am not there, she will make the right decisions based on the Word.

Expose them to responsibility. See where they shine and start letting them develop in that. Give them the freedom to fail. All failure is not sin.

The releasing dimension is where that formal discipling relationship comes to an end. You send them out to their own ministry. Let the reality of God echo through your humanity to awaken them.

Think now about the women of God, the men of God, who have significantly influenced you toward Christ. What was it about them that made such a deep impression and deposit in you?

I have been asking this question for 17 years and not once have I ever had anyone say the thing about them that was so transformational is that they were powerful preachers or fantastic singers. What comes forth consistently is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The character of God deep within changes our world. That’s what will change the lives you invest in as you follow Jesus’ model of shoulder to shoulder. Concentrated, qualitative investment. Focusing people toward the Master. Focusing people toward Jesus and allowing the fruit of the Holy Spirit within you to help them grow and become like Him.

• home
• about us
• resources
• women in ministry
• faq
• past themes
• contact us