Lesson 1: What Is Mentoring?

Mentoring is:
1) A relational experience through which one person
empowers another by sharing their wisdom and resources.

Mentoring is not:
1) A program or production line to proliferate leaders
2) Restricted to people who likes structures or are highly disciplined

When a person chooses to mentor, he is selecting and limiting the volume of people he meets at one time so as to better multiply himself. The transaction goes from informational in nature to transformational. This can be observed through the life of Jesus Christ as He focused on His twelve disciples (not the crowd) and invited each of them to follow Him on a redemptive journey. Jesus invested vast amount of His time speaking truths into their lives and preparing them for the Great Commission. 

This is an intriguing phenomenon. The Son of Man came down from heaven and He could have beckoned a thousand to follow Him but He strategically chose only a handful to train. From a human perspective, it sounds rather inefficient. Couldn't Jesus have done more than just twelve? But scriptures remind us of how those twelve turned the world upside down and swept the gospel across continents after the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Clearly, the Son of Man redefined effectiveness and knew what He was doing.

Dawson Trotman once said, 'More time with less people equals greater impact for everyone.'

A teacher delivers content that is academic, cognitive and cerebral. Though it engages the mind, the teaching is often passive and theoretical. Teaching is the most efficient in transferring information verbally in a classroom, but not the most effective for transformation.

On the other hand, a mentor relates to an individual(s), engages the heart and has a curriculum that revolves around on-the-job-training. The experience is pro-active and practical. Teaching may provide assessment and correction that are highly essential for growth but it fails to provide accountability, feedback and debrief.

In a Greek culture, which embraces the Classroom Model (teaching), it is common to ask the question, "What is the subject you are studying?" In the Hebrew culture, the question would be, "Who are you studying under?" The emphasis is on the mentor, not the material.

Acts 4:13 says: 'When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they note that these men had been with Jesus.' 

In this passage of the Bible, the teachers and elders of the law were dumbfounded by these two apostles. The most significant aspect is that they were with Jesus. The focus is on the 'who' and not the 'what.'

At the heart of mentoring, it is simply about a master
asking his disciple to go on a life journey with him.

Project Paul

Semester 1 of University in the National Institute of Education (NIE) has officially ended. It has been a fruitful journey. Each step of the way has sharpened my vision of becoming a teacher. I have spent a great deal of my life serving in different leadership roles. I have taken the role of a:

1) President
2) Chairman
3) Treasurer
4) Secretary
5) Orientation Leader
6) Captain
7) Committee Head
8) Ambassador
9) Army Officer (which is my proudest role in life)

But I have come to discover that my greatest passion in life is nurturing people. I believe today's youths are tomorrow's leaders. Success without a successor is a failure. I want to invest and bet my last breath on them.

I want to become a teacher in life. Like Jesus.

In the upcoming posts, I am going to address the topic of mentoring the next generation. I will crystallize and archive some of the key lessons that I have learnt in the past semester.

Mentoring is a powerful phenomenon and tool that many leaders in many churches and even corporate organizations are starting to embrace today. There is a leadership deficit in today's world and history tells us that there are only two most efficient ways to train a good leader-either through mentoring or adversity. How do we pass on our legacies to the next generation in an era of peace such as ours where leadership qualities like integrity are not valued?

In my quest to promote mentoring, I will be referencing from Dr. Tim Elmore's book, Life Giving Mentors, which is an incredible library of profound wisdom, rich with resources pertaining to mentoring. All credits of what I am about to share goes to God who enabled Dr. Tim Elmore to write such an excellent, modern piece of work.