Four Features of a Healthy Mentoring Relationship

With youth comes a certain amount of arrogance and a certain amount of pride. As Pastor Matt Chandler has often said, sometimes life just had to beat that out of you. At the end of the day, there are a lot of young seminarians and young pastors—commonly lumped together as “millennials”—that will choose to find landmines by stepping on them.

Many of us, however, would prefer to skip a few explosions. And most older pastors recognize they would have had a healthier start in ministry if they only had a mentor.

Mentoring and apprenticeship programs are popping up all over the Evangelical ministry world. Not long ago, many pastors held to a series of unspoken rules of ministry promotions: start as a youth minister and work your way up. By the time you get to senior pastor, you’ve likely been humbled more than once. With the millennial generation pushing back against the idea that there are “promotions” in ministry, coupled with a serious dearth of veteran pastors to fill the pulpits at hundreds of thousands of churches, many are starting lead pastorates relatively young. Church plants, revitalizations, and a slew of young pastors at large churches has become commonplace.

Many veteran pastors have noticed and have seen the need to help those God is raising up. Most young ministers and seminarians I meet have spoken to me about the hunger to have a godly mentor. Often, however, the veterans go without mentees, and the young men can’t find help.

It seems to me that there is really one main reason for this lack of ministry mentoring: we have no idea what this would look like.

What does it look like for a pastor to mentor a seminarian that isn’t on his church staff? What kind of man should those early in their ministry look for? As one who has been fortunate to have great mentors, I’d like to suggest four features of a healthy mentoring relationship. Read more