Where will you find a mentor who grows how you think rather than helps what you do? How will you encourage your up-and-comers to find mentors who challenge their abilities as decision-makers not just teach them ways to do things? In what completely different industry will you find a rising star that will benefit from your experience?
The answer to this question is about five books! It is asking how to find a mentor, but it is also asking about how to find a rising star who will benefit from your mentorship.
So the big answer is that we all ought to become more aware of the desperate need and great value of mentoring relationships. Paul seems to be addressing this dire dearth of such relational building of others:
Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. (1 Corinthians 4:15-16)
Finding mentors. First of all, if those need mentors are responsible to “find a mentor” then it is necessary for mentors to exist in the first place.
That means then that first of all the need for a mentoring relationship must be recognized by the organization or ministry. Then it must be promoted within the culture of a ministry and mentors will need to step up and become available in the first place.
Then those who will be mentored will actually have mentors available to them. But on the other hand it seems that more often than not it will be the mentor who takes the first step in the direction of a mentoring relationship.
We have plenty of teachers – they are a “dime a dozen.” Many people are willing to instruct others in the “secrets of success,” but few are willing to help other develop good patterns of thinking. This means mentoring must go beyond delivering another “How to” lecture. Mentors must become deeply involved in pouring experience into the lives of the rising generation.