Over the last 15 years, one-to-one developmental relationships such as mentoring, life-coaching, professional supervision and spiritual direction have gained recognition as highly effective leadership formation processes. Research has demonstrated that being mentored is one of the five critical factors contributing to healthy long term leadership and ministry.
While the value of mentoring is well established, finding trained and qualified mentors is always a challenge. Rev Les Scarborough began training leaders in mentoring skills through John Mark Ministries in the late 1980s and has developed his program into a three year action – reflection course that thoroughly equips leaders to nurture and mentor others.
The program has been further developed by the many trainers that have been equipped through a train-the-trainer program in facilitating the Mentor Equipping course. Tim Dyer is available to facilitate both the Mentor Equipping program and the training of program facilitators.
10 Objectives of the Training Program
The Mentor Equipping training course has 10 distinct objectives for participants around which the training is organised. These give a general framework to the content of the course.
- To internalise a vision for mentoring others into ministry, leadership and maturity
- To develop an understanding of the Biblical basis and theology of mentoring
- To engage personal spiritual formation as a mentor
- To understand the dynamics of the mentoring relationship
- To acquire interpersonal skills essential in mentoring
- To implement a 1 year model of mentoring with 2-5 mentorees
- To collate and develop personal, leadership and ministry resources for use in mentoring
- To complete the action – reflection learning assignments in mentoring
- To allow mentoring to be shaped under supervision
- To cultivate a personal style and ministry of mentoring
A more detailed outline of the training program and a full course profile is available from Patricia at John Mark Ministries.