Mentoring

In light of our Gen1K goal of 1000 healthy churches in a generation, we recognise the need to work toward the growing competency of pastoral leaders. Mentoring is a place where ministers can continue to be life-long learners, where they develop themselves in relation to their ministry and wider context – to practise, learn and be held and supported in that process. The distinctive with mentoring, however, is that this is a relationship of expert and novice, where the mentee is seeking the learned-wisdom, expertise and guidance of the mentor.

Mentoring is typically not as prevalent as professional supervision or coaching and has much less structure. It is far more common for informal mentoring relationships to exist which are often initiated by the mentee who is seeking to grow in a particular skill set.

The exception to this however is when the pastors of ‘sending churches’ (ie. those churches which are intentionally ‘sending out’ church plants) approach the Baptist Association for a mentor who has been a sending pastor previously. In this case, the Baptist Association will seek to find an appropriate mentor.