Weaving a Life of Relationship and Experience
A review of Mentoring: Biblical, Theological, and Practical
Perspectives
for the Englewood Review of Books
Edited by Dean K. Thompson and D. Cameron Murchison
Foreward by Jill Duffield
Afterword by Martin Marty
Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2018
By Jennifer Burns Lewis
Every now and then one encounters a resource that provides a
treasure trove of information and perspectives that enhances one’s ministry and
life. Mentoring is just such a
resource. Educators, parents, seminary staff, field education supervisors, spiritual
directors, coaches, denominational leaders and everyone called to nurture and
encourage relationships with emerging Christian leaders and well as the
emerging leaders themselves will find thoughtful reflections from multiple
angles as they seek to mentor, understand the mentoring process, or assist
those merging leaders in identifying great mentors.
Editors Dean K. Thompson, president emeritus and professor
of ministry emeritus at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and D.
Cameron Murchison, dean of faculty emeritus and professor of ministry emeritus
at Columbia Theological Seminary, have compiled twenty-one essays from other
recognized leaders in the church.
Distinguished mentors themselves, Thompson and Murchison offer a
compendium of articles arranged in four parts, addressing biblical and
theological perspectives on mentoring as well as a section devoted to diverse
nations and international communities of mentoring, and a fourth section about
mentoring to and across the generations. The diversity of perspectives and
topics provides a rich anthology of information and possibility for this time.
Scholars Walter Brueggemann and David Bartlett lead with
articles about mentoring in the Old and
New Testaments. Brueggemann begins with the statement that mentoring as an idea
is a quite modern notion, but that “remembered experience that is mobilized as
guidance for new circumstances” is as
old as social relationships that help one of the parties in the relationship to
flourish. Tracing early narratives, he reviews the relationships of Jethro and
Moses, Moses and Joshua and Eli and Samuel as examples of powerful mentoring.
He then helps us journey through the prophetic and royal traditions to spot
other instances of mentoring relationships. Bartlett’s article concentrates on
Paul’s mentoring relationships and Jesus as an example of being “more than a
mentor.” Both articles help provide a biblical framework for mentoring that
invites the reader to consider the many examples of biblical models of
mentoring as instruction, exhortation, and call to imitation.
Turning to theological perspectives on mentoring, four
scholars offer some of the most practical insights on the gift and task of
mentoring. Currie, Long, Miles and Rigby suggest that there are pastoral
dimensions to mentoring, that the role of the preacher can be one of a mentor,
that mentors have potential conflicts and ethical standards to uphold as they
approach mentoring, and that feminist mentoring adds a dimension to mentoring
that shifts the relationship from disseminating wisdom to evoking the skills
and gifts inherent in the person being mentored. Rigby offers a perspective
that bridges mentoring and coaching, so popular in recent years, and provides a
foundation that points to a feminist perspective that is a rich and meaningful
contribution to the work of mentoring.
Perhaps the greatest contribution this volume makes are the
essays that point to unique and particular perspectives on mentoring
African-American men and women, the history of mentoring in the Roman Catholic
tradition, what it means to mentor and be mentored as Latin@ leaders, and as
East Asians. Each essay provides insights and scholarship and experience that
opens a window into diverse communities, with the reminder that “a good mentor
provides guides and clues for the journey” but that each person will forge a
unique path. That’s wisdom for all.
Mentoring concludes with a section on generational
mentoring, including articles written by author pairs who offer a dialogical
approach to mentoring youth, reflections on mentoring and being mentored in
academia, and possibly the most dynamic article in the anthology, an article
about cross-generational mentoring by Ted Wardlaw and Camille Cook Murray. In
its authentic reflections, the final essay points out that adaptive mentoring
is mutual, intentional and the living embodiment of what it means to be part of
a great cloud of witnesses who mentor each other, particularly in a world of rapid change and reforming.
This gem of a book concludes with a beautiful afterword by
Martin Marty, who engages in a bit of beautiful reflection and mentoring in
response to each author in the anthology. Throughout all of these essays
together with Marty’s concluding remarks is an embrace of scripture as the
binding thread, which is no surprise, given the Reformed background of nearly
every one of the contributors. One of the contributors comments that sometimes
were are mentors and we do not even know it. That’s a very good reason to have
this book close at hand. Without a doubt, Mentoring is a book that
provides its own sort of mentoring to those who are helping to shape the future
of Christian leadership in authentic, challenging and faithful ways.
