How To Start Mentoring

by Dr. Waylon B. Moore

You have been exposed to different mentoring tools that help others grow in their walk with Jesus Christ. In this Bible Study Tool, I will use a couple of my books — First Steps, based on the Gospel of John, and Living God's Word, practical lessons for applying scripture to your life.

You may recruit a few people and mentor them individually, or start a very small group (four to eight). I don't recommend you start with a group larger than that. Bible study is more fun with a group. Those you mentor need to make a commitment to the process. Many have found a written commitment, which both of you sign, very helpful. It should tell what you plan to do together, when you commit to meet, and for how long. You must model what you want the mentoree to do. This three-track guide starts with a three-month commitment.

To begin with, choose one track of my three-track system. After the initial period of three months, together with your mentoree choose another track, or if they have shown faithfulness, move into Inductive Bible Study. This requires after the initial Psalms studies a growing time of study that may involve two or more hours weekly.

Discuss: will you commit to an average of 30 minutes a day, or at least two hours weekly, for reading, searching, writing, and meditation to apply the scripture text?

Learning skills involves mentoring by the coaching or discipling methods. We help a mentoree over a problem, teaching them the “hows” of enlarging their private devotional life in Christ. One also teaches some simple spiritual disciplines, i.e. “tools” to encourage their ministry; we must do ministry together. After some months you may want to involve some new mentorees, or deepen training and ministry with your old mentorees.

Remember, choose one track to begin with!

Track 1 — Entry Level

• Assign a chapter or step from First Steps to do each week. Read the syllabus at the front of the book about the various projects you will do. Check the mentorees on scripture memory (after you've shared some good reasons to memorize — see my tips on memorizing scripture here ) and all assignments. Set the pace. You'll meet each week for an hour for six weeks. First Steps may be ordered on this web site if you don't have a copy.



• From Living God's Word (chapter 3), your notes, or from here on this web site, teach HOW TO MEDITATE, so the verses they are memorizing can get deeply into their lives. Living God's Word is available from this page.



• Next, teach them Synthetic Bible Study — the repetitive reading of a book of the Bible, all the way through at one sitting daily, for 30 days. Start by assigning them Philippians to read daily for a month. Encourage them and monitor closely so they don't miss a single day. After reading the book — in different translations if they like — then help them begin to focus on a single topic to find each time they read through Philippians. Ask the protégés to record any findings they desire. Here is a list of some topics I enjoy looking for, one for each day I read the book.
  
  
  1. Find and focus on verses about Jesus
  2. God
  3. Holy Spirit
  4. Sin
  5. Witnessing and Evangelism
  6. Return of Christ
  7. Judgment
  8. Fruit of the Spirit
  9. The Church
  10. Persecution
  11. Trials
  12. Pacesetting
  13. Modeling
  14. Forgiveness
  15. Salvation and The Gospel
  16. Best verse in each chapter
  17. Best verse of the book
  18. Key idea of the whole book
  19. Prayer
  20. Unity
  21. Obedience
  22. The family
  23. Satan
  24. Submission to authority
  25. Humility
  26. Mentoring
  27. Follow-up and nurture of new believers
  28. A promise to claim
  29. A command to obey
  30. A sin to confess and forsake
  
  Read a chapter and pray each verse back to God as you personalize the verse. Look for verses that show a path or solution to problems in your life or in the life of others.

Track 2 — Medium Level

• First Steps: meet each week for an hour using this book. (six weeks)
• Living God's Word: Set up commitment responses from those you want to attend and study daily from the text. You will need to check up on those in the group to make sure they don't get behind. This requires about 15-20 minutes a day, most of it is reading with a few fill-in-the-blanks and analysis of the text. Helps: Order two cassettes with four messages dealing with the heart of the six chapter ideas of this reference from here . We suggest you have those in your group listen to the key message of the chapter during the week. It will stimulate and encourage their study. (six to eight weeks)

Track 3 — More Advanced

Living God's Word (six weeks): Do Chapter Analysis (STS) Inductive Bible Study (see here) (six weeks). Then ask for a new commitment. Remember , mentoring involves deepening relationships, not just study. Begin with

1. Psalm 1
2. Psalm 23
3. 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
4. Complete the book a half chapter a week. Then do Philippians. Mix in Biographical and Word Studies. May I help you with these? Write me at mentors@mentoring-disciples.org.