When I first began the work of mentoring, I looked for manuals, methods, and models—anything that would give me a clear path forward. Over time, though, I learned that mentoring isn’t a formula; it’s a way of being present. What follows are my own “field notes,” drawn from the wisdom of Margaret Guenther, one of my early teachers and companions in this vocation. Read More
You know, when I first began mentoring, I thought my task was to give advice—to help people make better choices, live more faithfully, grow in wisdom. But over time, I learned that real mentoring is less about telling and more about noticing. It’s about paying attention to the quiet, sacred movements that shape a person’s life.
Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33), and that has become a touchstone for me. We are, each of us, formed by what we seek — by what we value most. Our role as mentors is to help others see what is shaping them, often without their awareness.
When you meet with someone, start with their image of God. Everyone carries one, whether they realize it or not. I sometimes ask, “What picture of God lives in your heart right now?” or “When you hear the word God, what comes to mind?” Those questions can open deep wells. Many of our early images come from childhood — parents, teachers, pastors, even the tone of a church sanctuary. Over the years, those impressions harden into assumptions. As mentors, we’re inviting people to revisit them and ask whether their image of God still holds life and truth. Read More
Every one of us is being shaped by what we love, chase, or cling to. Mentoring isn’t about handing out answers; it’s about paying attention to the subtle ways our lives are being formed—through joy and sorrow, success and disappointment, stillness and motion.
“Spiritual direction is really about learning to see. The mentor helps another person look for the fingerprints of God in the ordinary.” — Margaret Guenther
To walk with someone in their becoming is to practice reverent curiosity. These questions are not meant to close a conversation but to open one—an invitation to honesty, discovery, and quiet wonder. Sometimes, the most genuine form of prayer begins with the courage to ask. Read More
Mentoring like Jesus reminds us that he not only preached, taught, and explained—he sometimes resisted the instinct to explain. I know the feeling too well.
My urge is to speak, to fill the silence, to provide my answer to their “problem,” to tell them how it worked for me. As a rabbi, Jesus’ goal was seldom informational. More often, it was formative and especially transformational.
When she first sat at her mentor’s table, she couldn’t precisely tell you why she was there. Her life wasn’t falling apart, her prayers didn’t feel hollow, her faith hadn’t been shaken, but she was looking for something more. “I think I have settled for shallow waters along the shore, and I know deep waters are calling to me, I know that deep calls to deep.” She didn’t expect answers, but maybe good questions, presence, and trusted words to help in reading the stories she knew. God was still writing with her. In the weeks that followed, she experienced a slow, steady uncovering of grace in the deeply personal, ordinary, sacred steps of her journey.
Spiritual mentoring, or simply call it spiritual friendship, is an intentional and deliberate process of sacred conversations for the purpose of soul formation. From my own experience with the mentors of my own life, I know it to engage at least three common experiences… Read More
"Practical. Insightful. In my 50 years as a pastor, I’ve read many of these. This is THE best. I ordered 12 to give as gifts.”
