Book Review: Spiritual Mentoring

Sometime the best mentors are dead ones. They certainly cannot let you down. At least that is part of what is going in Spiritual Mentoring: A Guide to Seeking and Giving Direction. Many of us find ourselves in time of isolation as missional leaders (or any sort of leader, really) and Anderson and Reese are here to provide a guide finding mentors among the great spiritual directors of the past as well as using their lives as a model for contemporary mentoring.

Preface:

Though quite short, the preface tells us a few things that we can expect from the remainder of the book. First of all we can see that they narrowly define Spiritual Mentoring in such a way that they are in fact giving an exposition on Clinton?s idea of the Spiritual Guide and Discipler mentoring styles. They also use five stages in mentoring to outline the rest of the book: attraction, relationship, responsiveness, accountability and empowerment.

Chapter 1 An Imitative Faith

This first chapter first of all serves as an apologetic for relational mentoring. The authors take great pains to demonstrate that relational education is the New Testament pattern and then move to criticize the typical western education model. This again reminds me of the need for personal relationships in order to be conformed to the image of Christ rather my typically bookish approach. The authors are also going to seek to demonstrate the value of this type of mentoring using historical mentors in a hybrid between biography and literary process items.

Chapter 2 Reading Between the Lines: What is Spiritual Mentoring?

I love how the authors describe spiritual mentoring as biography. One author calls our seemingly random lives a pilgrimage. The role then for a spiritual mentor is to point out God?s work in connecting the seeming randomness of our lives. This is quite a bit more challenging and requires a bit more vulnerability than just giving a student some steps to aid in prayer. I need people who I can open my life up to and to become a safe person for others to do the same.

Chapter 3 The Art of Beginning Well: Attraction

This chapter is super practical. I too have wondered and asked the question: ?Is it appropriate for me to ask to be mentored? Isn?t that the mentor?s job not mine?? This does not only help by letting us know how to go about the approaching process, but it also helps the mentor and prot?g? have some criteria to determine good mentors or mentorees. The idea of making a covenant helps to set the expectations properly and prevents the degeneration of mentoring relationships over time. This allows them to be ended intentionally and positively.

Chapter 4 Developing Trust and Intimacy: Relationship

Reese?s story at the beginning of this chapter was very encouraging for me. I too meet weekly with a group of men for some spiritual direction. We meet under the auspices of studying theology, but we move quite quickly to application and discipleship. There truly is nothing ?like an apple fritter and a cup of coffee.? As I examine that bit of mentoring, I certainly see that we developed a necessary intimacy and have gleaned the friendship concept from this book to aid in future mentoring in my new location.

Chapter 5 The Spirit of Teachability: Responsiveness

The chapter covers the obvious need for the prot?g? to be teachable so that the mentor can impart some truth or skill or information to them. However, more challengingly they also cover the need for the mentor to be responsive to the mentoree. I have not done quite as well at this habit. I have a tendency towards the ?sage on a stage? and need to allow myself to be open to what God may say to me through those under my care. The chapter is also a place I will return when I find myself in St John of the Cross? ?dark night of the soul.?

Chapter 6 Exercises of Grace: Accountability

The greatest value I found in this chapter as the advice for adaptable hospitality. Too often the temptation is to do discipleship in a one-size-fits-all kind of way. In fact this brings to mind some of the thoughts of being incarnational in the previous chapters. As leaders we are always missionaries who need to read the culture of the society and those to whom we minister to be the best at adapting our ministry to their needs.

Chapter 7 The Goal of Spiritual Mentoring: Empowerment

This chapter was a bit of a departure from the style of some of the previous ones. Perhaps the personality of one author in particular is showing here. The focus on meeting with these historical mentors to teach you soul to sing is really valuable. I think it is much easier for historical mentors than we up-close-and-personal mentors. This idea has been one of the most challenging for me personally throughout this course.

Conclusion

Naturally this book will work a manual on my shelf for mentoring in the future of my ministry. The fastest application I can see of this text in my own life and ministry is to use the author?s suggestions of following these historical mentors. More specifically, I may ransack a biography and major writing of each of the mentors used in this text to chase out lessons for the particular stage of mentoring the authors of this text think they exemplify. From there I can move to more in depth study of the mentors to whom I am more attracted.