A lot has been said and written recently about the importance of intergenerational ministry. The Sticky Faith research has pointed out the importance of adult mentors in the lives of students.
I think many student ministries assume they are doing well in this area simply because they put adults in proximity with students. Personally, I do not believe that quality mentoring relationships will naturally grow out of proximity. It takes intentionality. Here are 3 ways we intentionally promote intergenerational mentoring.
1. VISION VOLUNTEERS
First, we INSPIRE our volunteers to become mentors. Before every Sunday or Wednesday night we hold an hour long leader meeting and one of the things we do in these meetings is tell stories of great mentoring. We talk about how our volunteers have made a difference in the past and how each person investing in the lives of students today is altering the trajectory of a student’s life.
We EQUIP our volunteers to become mentors. We teach them how to pursue students, how to manage and effectively lead a small group, how to interact with the parents of their students, and how to handle crisis conversations. We don’t hold quarterly or even monthly training meetings; we train our volunteers every time we meet for large group.
We EXPECT our volunteers to become mentors. We believe so deeply in intergenerational mentoring that we create standards. I understand that it is impossible to quantify mentoring but we do our best to do it anyway. We require a certain amount of small group activities, one-on-ones with students and parent interactions.
Although our mentors are volunteers, we still hold them accountable to their role. If they aren’t performing, we carefully confront them. If after a few more weeks they still aren’t performing, we fire them and find someone else who can mentor our students. Yes, you can fire a volunteer. This is how deeply we believe in intergenerational mentoring.
2. STRUCTURE FOR MENTORING
We happen to believe that over time, small groups are a great place for mentoring relationships to develop. Because of this we don’t ask students to opt into a small group. We simply place EVERY STUDENT IN A SMALL GROUP and leave 30 minutes at the end of every LifeLine night for small groups.
Mentoring relationships take time to develop so we leave our small groups intact for all three years of middle school and all four years of high school. Particularly in high school, we believe that SMALL GROUPS TAKE 1-2 YEARS TO BUILD TRUST. The next 2 years are fertile soil for mentoring relationships.
3. SIMPLIFY PROGRAMMING
We believe that faith is best learned outside of the church building. Students need to see faith lived out in action. Because of this belief we require our volunteers to get on their students turf and to interact with them outside of our student ministry programming.
We know that volunteers only have so much time to devote to ministry. Because mentoring outside the church building’s walls is a premium, we simply cut our programming to make space and time for our volunteers. WE DON’T DO EVENTS. Our senior high ministry literally has no events other than our Sunday night programming, snow camp and mission trips. We simplify so that our volunteers can commit to pursuing their students outside the walls of the church building.
“No events!” You say? Are you crazy? Well, I guess that was a lie. We have all sorts of events but we don’t schedule them—our small groups do, organically. They are better and more strategically targeted than anything our staff could ever dream up.
So there you have it. 3 simple ways to promote mentoring in your ministry. How have you promoted mentoring relationships in your setting?
