by Benefits of the Jesus Model:
If you invest yourself in some specific persons, your investment will not be in vain. Over time, with patience, intentional mentoring will result in good fruits:
- More caretakers will become available so the ministry capacity of your church will expand.
- This means the flock will get better care.
- And, with more shoulders to carry the leadership load, weariness among leaders will diminish and leaders will find joy.
- Most importantly, you will be honoring God’s design!
Help is Available
A helpful starter book is Mentoring: How to Invest Your Life in Others, by Tim Elmore, published by Equip, 1998.
Hands-on help: If you feel called to be a mentor, Hope Network, “Mentoring Partners,” are available to come alongside to assist you in a number of different formats. Historically, my most common mentoring format has been:
- Leading groups with 9 to 12 participants.
- Meeting one full day each month for a year on their chosen turf.
- Having additional telephone conferences or on-site visits as deemed useful.
- Including special periodic coaching for churches in transition.
However, with our expanded number of experienced mentoring partners, we now offer a variety of mentoring formats. So, we are open to tailoring a format to fit your situation.
Please note: we do not recruit mentees. Rather, mentoring circles usually form when someone in a given local area–a point person–puts a group together in his/her area and invites a mentoring partner to lead it.
Jesus, the master teacher, modeled an effective strategy for ministry development.
Mentoring! Hope Network attempts to follow the master’s model. We certainly would never attempt to improve on Jesus’s strategy.
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