I hope you can feel my passion around mentorship as you read this, as if we were sipping coffee face to face. There is often confusion of how mentoring and discipleship overlap and intertwine.
For the sake of our teen girls and the focus of this blog, let’s keep the definition of “mentorship” centered around the following:
- “Spiritual mentoring is a relationship between mentor, mentee, and the Holy Spirit. Through this relationship, the mentee seeks to discover what God is already doing in her life, and thereby grow in friendship with God, identity in God, and awareness of God’s call.”
- Even more specifically, mentoring as seen in Titus 2 is when older Christian women (more specifically, more spiritually mature) mentor young Christian women. Together they can focus on things that the younger woman is struggling with and take the time to guide her on how to apply the truth of the Bible to her life.
First of all, on a very personal note, I don’t think I would be half the woman I am today without the incredible mentors I’ve had. The wisdom I’ve needed over the years has changed and I am eternally grateful for the way God has used different women in my life in different stages to shape who I am today. Now, at 28, I am so passionate about doing the same for younger ladies. We need to be the women who we needed as teen girls.
With that said, let’s jump into practical next steps!
- If you are asked to mentor, consider it an honor and privilege! You can take the 1:1 route or you can create a group of 3-4 young ladies and mentor them together. Considering they may be in similar life stages, this could be helpful for them to learn to be sharpened by each other too! No matter what way you go, pray for wisdom and strategy!
- Find a book on biblical mentoring and discipling. Two great books to help get you started would be Growing Together by Melissa Kruger or Show Her The Way by Mary Margaret West.
- Take notes and follow up on all the things! Be actively finding ways to speak into their spiritual giftings and steer them away from their temptations. Follow up on prayer requests months down the road to show what praying without ceasing looks like and to remind them that they are not praying alone. Then finally, keep them accountable! Ask them how their time spent with the Lord is going and what they’re struggling with understanding in Scripture. And if they say they are going to serve here, or be more positive in regards to a class, or be more active in their youth group—ask them specific questions to help them follow through.
- After a year from any mentoring experience, the true accomplishment in mentoring or discipling is seeing your teen girls do the same for someone else. This also takes mentoring and support. There is so much beauty in seeing multiplication.
Be reminded, there’s no such thing as a perfect mentor—just a consistent one that points to Jesus.
Source: Melissa Kruger, Growing Together (Crossway Publisher, 2020).
Natalie Profetto works as a Project Manager at String Theory Charter School in Philadelphia. She gets the privilege of organizing creative experiences for High School Students. At The Block Church, she oversees small groups across all locations. Natalie believes wholeheartedly that whether you work for a church, school, hospital, law firm, etc – all of life is ministry. She was recently married on Nov. 20th, 2021. Her and her husband love food, entertaining, and seeing the world. They are passionate about building God’s church. You can find them serving faithfully every Sunday at their local church. Connect with Natalie: Instagram
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