Every Seminarian Needs a Mentor: 3 Tips for Finding a Great One

We all have some idea of what a mentor is. Some of us may currently have a mentor or are even taking on the role of a mentor. However, despite the familiarity of the concept and the value many of us attribute to it, real mentoring is something that is seriously lacking today, especially within the context of ministry and the church.

Part 1: Why you need a mentor

Having a mentor while in seminary and in preparation for ministry is crucial. Why? Well, consider the words of Ezekiel 3:18-19:

Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.

A friend of mine suggested to me that all seminary students should memorize this passage of Scripture and keep it in a prominent place in our mind as we prepare for and eventually embark on the journey of ministry. These are strong words because our calling is a high calling. We are charged with making known the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are entrusted with the care and oversight of His people. Knowing that, it would take a great deal of audacity to think that we could take up this calling without learning from those who have gone before us. Needless to say, adding “M.Div.” behind your name is not sufficient preparation for ministry.

But as I said at the outset, mentoring, though a popular idea, is not practiced nearly as much as it should be. Part of this is due to the frantic pace of life we all have.Our phones are constantly ringing, we have a barrage of emails throughout the week, we have meetings to attend and deadlines to meet—it would be very hard to find the time to sit down for an hour or so every week and take up that sort of relationship. We struggle to find time with our friends or our spouses as it is, so how could we set aside even more time for a mentoring relationship? There is plenty of good reason to find the time for it.

Throughout the Bible we see mentoring relationships in place, godly leaders preparing future generations of leaders to take their place. And the pinnacle of mentoring relationships, of course, is the relationship Jesus had with his disciples. It was not unusual for that time, either. Rabbis regularly took apprentices under their wings who followed them around and drew from their wisdom. The disciples did exactly the same thing with Jesus.

Many of us are not at a point where we could drop everything we are doing and follow someone like Tim Keller around for a few years (and I’m not so sure he would appreciate that either), but the point is that we need to make time to learn the contours of ministry from those who have been on the journey for some time. Jesus had prepared his disciples for a considerable period of time in a very intimate, relational setting before he finally commissioned them and sent them out. It is an example we ought to give a lot of credence to.

Even in more recent history we see some of most prominent leaders of the church engaged in mentoring. John Calvin was intimately involved in training and guiding men who wanted to plant churches in France. Charles Spurgeon mentored many students and once they were in a pastorate of their own, he continued to keep in contact with them strengthening them and even rebuking them as needed. That is a serious level of investment in someone’s life.

The point here is that one of the most effective ways to destroy your ministry is to be proud. To think that you can engage in ministry on your own strength, relying on your own knowledge and wisdom is an incredibly proud assertion. The journey of ministry is not walked alone. We need the guidance and wisdom from those who are more seasoned in the calling.

Part 2: What a good mentorship looks like

Stephen Garber has an excellent book called The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior. The book is intended primarily for college students and teachers, its basic premise being that Christian young adults have a significant challenge before themas they seek to learn to serve God and make sense of the world in such a fragmented society. One of the key ways of helping students do this is through mentoring relationships, and so I would highly recommend the book to anyone who will find themselves in some sort of ministry position.

You might remember the post I wrote a few months ago which discussed the importance of forming a biblical worldview that shapes our ministry. I think Garber offers some very helpful considerations that can guide us in how to make that worldview function in our lives and our ministry, and that is why I am bringing his book into the discussion. One of the primary things we need if we are going to begin to live out of a particular worldview is to have a mentor who incarnates that worldview we are seeking to live out of. Having a close relationship with someone and watching them connect convictions, faith, and life can be a deeply formative experience for us. Garber says,

Though a worldview is always more than a set of ideas, it is never less than a constellation of convictions which have a propositional dimension. To understand the character of someone’s convictions, at some point, requires an understanding of that person’s intellectual history, not only the books they have read and the settings in which they have studied, but also the books and settings of their teachers, and their teachers’ teachers. And on and on. Ideas do have a history.

But their history is never abstracted—it always has a ‘blood-stained face,’ as Camus put it so poignantly. Ideas inherently have legs, human legs. And so we must understand that finding a mentor who incarnates the worldview is one side of a reality whose other side is that the ethic of character teaches that beliefs are most clearly seen in behavior. For a student to truly understand the content of his convictions he must see them lived—students need to see their worldview incarnated in the lives of their teachers, if it is to be grasped in a way that can make sense of life for life.

Although what Garber is saying here is not framed in the context of seminarians and mentors in pastoral ministry, perhaps the point is clear to you already. All of our convictions, from our most basic commitments to our views on the Church and the pastoral calling, influence how we think and approach ministry. In many cases, though, we need to learn how to make these connections and this is best done in the shadow of a mentor who has already learned to do that faithfully.

But we don’t want to talk about this only from a more abstract point of view, so let me note that this mentoring extends right into the practical realm as well. We need mentors who will teach us to pray and read Scripture, teach us how to love our flock, to care for those in need, teach us how to listen and how to counsel, show us how to lead and encourage. We need a mentor who will support us and guide us, but who will also rebuke us when we become proud. It should be clear by now that this is a very intense and involved relationship. It really is essential to have people who are that involved in our lives.

While there have been scores of books written on these things, there is no substitute for watching someone doing it and learning from their example. A mentor plays a pivotal role in forming who we are.

Part 3: Considerations for choosing a great mentor

The last step is actually finding a mentor and entering into that relationship with them. In principle, this is actually quite a simple thing to do. There are basically three things you want to take into consideration.

Work on developing a philosophy of ministry

I have heard people lament that seminary focuses too much on theological development and not enough on how to implement those ideas into ministry. That may be true, but that means then that the onus is on you to spend some time figuring out what ministry will look like. Read books on the subject, visit other churches, talk to people in ministry, read different blogs, and immerse yourself in Scripture. If you are going to go into ministry you need to be prepared for that, and while you don’t have to have all the nuances of a philosophy of ministry figure out, you should at least have an idea focused in on as to what your ministry will look like.

Find a mentor who is engaged in ministry and models your philosophy of ministry

Even if you have some of these things figured out in your head, you may not know quite yet how to hit the ground running, so to speak. At this point you want to align yourself with someone who does. Find a person who shares many of your ideas on how to approach ministry and begin to watch and observe them closely. Ask them how they prepare for a sermon, how they counsel people in various situations, how they deal with the more political side of church leadership, how they balance their time, and so on. And then watch them do it. Arrange to spend a good amount of time with them. Meet with them regularly to talk, work with them if you can. Remember the relationship Jesus had with his disciples. Try to contextualize what that mentoring relationship would look like today.

Set yourself in the community your mentor is involved with

Be involved with the community that is being impacted by the philosophy of ministry you and your mentor share. Watch how that philosophy shapes and molds the people you are ministering too. There is no better way to determine if your ideas and approaches are contributing positively (or negatively!) to your ministry to God’s people than to see how it impacts them. Are they growing and being fed? Are they being transformed by the Gospel? Are they energized and equipped to serve God in different capacities? These are the sorts of things you can learn in this context.

If you know what you are looking for in a mentor and how that relationship will help you in shaping your ministry, then how do you actually get involved in a mentoring relationship? It’s very simple. Just ask! Find a person you have a reasonably close relationship with and who you would want to be your mentor and ask them to take up that role. Explain to them why you feel a mentoring relationship is important and how you feel they would be a blessing in helping you prepare for ministry. I’ll give you another little tip as well—if they are hesitant to do so or even say they’d rather not, they’re probably not the type of person you want mentoring you anyway.

Now, obviously there will be obstacles for some of you. Perhaps you live in a place where there are few churches and few pastors or other leaders in ministry who you could approach. Maybe you have not developed a reasonably close relationship with the leaders in your community. I would encourage you, then, to do all that you can to overcome these obstacles and find ways to work towards a mentoring relationship. Maybe that could be a point of discussion for you as our readers to contribute to in the comments.

Hopefully it is clear by this point that having this sort of relationship as you prepare for ministry is very important. A mentor can be an incredible blessing as we learn what it means to serve God and His Church in our ministry. What better way to learn than to be in the shadow of someone whose life reflects a heart fully committed to Jesus Christ.