The Silence of Mentoring

With Military Prayer Day preps taking up a lot of my time, I haven't written about mentoring much. Sadly enough, I'm not the only one who has been silent lately on the topic of mentoring. A cursory look at Google's blog search will show that very few blogs are currently talking about mentoring. Most of the ones that do represent an organization dedicated to mentoring. Sadly still, most of those organizations are dedicated to mentoring youth.

Of course I don't think it's wrong to talk about mentoring youth. Some of my Sailors are so young that they might as well be youth. Some of them certainly still make decisions like youth. However, virtually no one is talking about mentoring as it relates to adults, and even more so the church.

Should the church be silent on this issue? NO!

Jesus mentoring 12 disciples. That alone should be all that is needed to spur believers to mentor. John the Baptist had disciples, Paul mentored Timothy, Titus, and others. Peter mentored John Mark. The list goes on and on. Yet we don't hear about mentoring now.

Several people I've talked to say they know what mentoring is about, but they don't actually use it. If they do know what it's about, they are failing those they should be leading. I don't want to believe that they are doing this. Still, the truth hurts sometimes.

Sailors, you should be mentoring. I don't want you to mentor because it's a Navy program and you're mandated to do so. I want you to do it because you have wisdom to pass on. And, if you're a believer in the military, then this is doubly true. We all need you to pass on your wisdom. Don't make our junior Sailors learn about it the hard way. Give them a leg-up on life and help them out!

End the silence on mentoring. Get to it!

To learn more about mentoring, look into my ebook called, Building a Mentoring Community. If you don't want to pay the $.99 or if you're out at sea, I will give it to you for free as a download. Let me know!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is great! Amen, to you for wanting to support your brothers and sisters. It's too bad more military men and women with a faith won't stand up and bound together, it's your community, your family. Help it grow in a healthy direction.

The Navy Christian said...

Stephanie, thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate it. It really works for the civilian world too, I'm sure (just haven't lived that part yet). Do you mentor?

Unknown said...

I've been a mentor before and it is so rewarding just to be there for someone. As of right now I move a lot and don't have solid roots anywhere which makes life a bit different. My brother is in the Navy and has struggled finding a good faith based group that has a family, supportive feel. That kinda thing definitely makes a difference, community is so needed. :)