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The Sacrament of Welcome: Holy Hospitality

Some of the people I know and love are alcoholics. They struggle, yes—but they also know a truth that many of us forget: we cannot make it ahead on our own. Alcoholics Anonymous becomes for them more than a time or place; it is a circle of honesty, accountability, and grace. 

You know the rhythm: a dimly lit room, coffee in a styrofoam cup, someone begins, “Hi, my name is Keith, I’m an alcoholic.” And the room responds, “Hi, Keith.” 

Then comes the story—the ache and the hope, spoken aloud and received by others who carry their own wounds. 

One recovering addict once said, “The hardest part is coming back the second time.”  Read More

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Living the Questions: Field Notes on Mentoring

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

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Learning to Notice: Conversation with a Veteran Mentor

 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. 

Begin with Paying Attention 

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

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A Curriculum of Love: How Questions Become Prayer

A Reflective Guide for Mentors, Friends, and Fellow Travelers

The Art of Paying Attention

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

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Life Upon Life: Why Spiritual Mentoring Matters

This Fall, we will be hosting a short and sweet Mentor’s Workshop for anyone interested in sharpening their skills or preparing to mentor someone for the first time. For me, I am always and forever a student in the mentoring ways of Jesus. 

Listening to how Keith Anderson, Rob Loane, and I think about the importance of spiritual mentoring, frankly, jazzes me up. And perhaps, these excerpts from A Mentoring Guide: Christ. Conversation. Companionship will remind you as well that spiritual mentoring matters. 

The gospel plays out best in relationships. We believe this is absolutely true. It is in close relationships with others where we begin to see how Christ is actually, specifically, beautifully active in the fabric of our everyday lives. In the sadness and celebration, the betrayal and forgiveness, the division and unity, in the beauty and the muddle of our lives, we discover together the Spirit’s relentlessly creative activity.

 

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Uncle Tom’s Walks

Keith’s “Little Explorer on Board” blog last week caused me to think more about the connection between spiritual mentoring, leaving a legacy, and committing to our growth. This led me to recall one such person in my family whose influence has spread across several generations. My Uncle Tom was my dad’s uncle, one of my grandmother’s four brothers.

In my family, the Uncle Tom stories abound

Uncle Tom was quite a humorous character. In our family, the stories abound. He was the sort of person who, when told not to touch the chocolate fudge cooling in the kitchen, was known not just to brush aside such cautions by taking a finger full, but he was known to take the whole tray with him to work. As a butcher, he was known to cause a couple of unsuspecting women to all but pass out by his sharp chop of the cleaver, followed by yelling and writhing as if he had just chopped off a finger or two.

My dad tells a story of Uncle Tom taking him and his sister fishing when they were still young at a creek a short walk from their house. Now, this creek was lucky to have a couple of frogs, some worms, and a stray snake or two. It majored mostly on mosquitoes. There were no fish to be found in that creek. But my dad and Aunt Harriet were very young, and they didn’t know better. So off they went with Uncle Tom and two fishing rods. He generated the enthusiasm of a serious fisherman at a raging Montana stream. Once they got to the creek, he set them up, and they started fishing. He didn’t place them right next to each other but spread them out a bit “so that we can find out where the fish are really biting.” As Dad tells it, Uncle Tom moved back and forth between the two of them for a bit. Read More

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Little Explorer on Board

The silver-gray VW SUV stopped at the light on Highway 20 just in front of me. On the back of the car was a sticker with the words “Little explorer on board ” in cursive letters. As the father-in-law and grandfather of two firefighters, I know the sticker intends to alert first responders that a child is more than likely in the vehicle.

 

I mused about that idea for the rest of my drive home. What if we had a sticker like that on our Bibles? 

 

Spiritual mentoring is too often understood as only something between one person and an older, wise mentor—end of sentence. 

 

The driver of this SUV wants others to know they have a little explorer on board. Would they consider that their spiritual maturity, discipline, and growth have similar implications for their children or grandchildren? Read More

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Surprising candidates for mentoring

I remember when I heard Eugene Peterson tell the story of Reuben Lance, a surprising candidate for mentoring. Eugene decided he was headed to seminary. I think the elders in the small-town Montana church were a bit worried about what might happen to the hometown boy off at Biblical Seminary in NYC. “We better have someone get him ready,” they said. “Who could do it?”  

 

And this is the part of the story I love most. They asked a local handyman, Reuben Lance, to become Eugene’s mentor. The two met every week for the summer in a Sunday School classroom. 

 

They talked about life and God. Eugene said, “We got on very well. Neither of us had a name for what we were doing, but I learned a lot, and Reuben never took over. He was my first and one of the best spiritual directors I’ve ever had.”  Read More

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A bad hat, a good heart 

If you’re a Puritan, this picture might not scare you. If you lived in the 1650s, you might recognize this man whose name is Richard Baxter. He has a bad hat and a good heart and wrote an important book. 

 

It is not about a Reformed theology but about formation, primarily how people in a congregation become spiritually formed. The book is older than the United States, is still in print, and is centuries deep. It’s had that kind of impact. I’m not sure he still gets royalties, but his words still need to be heard, especially by mentors, leaders, and pastors. I’m really not cool with his hat.

 

He wrote to his congregation, “See that the work of saving grace be thoroughly wrought in your own souls.” Then, four riveting words: “Take heed to yourselves, lest you be void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others.”[i]  Read More

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Perfect people need not apply

If a resume is necessary to be involved in the mentoring ministry, the most essential guideline should be that perfect people need not apply. Mentors are not superheroes or champions. They are those who stand alongside one another with unending curiosity, inexplicable faith, and patience. You might be considering a mentoring relationship yourself and wonder if special qualities, such as a highly successful spiritual life, are required. 

 

What kind of person is best for this ministry? The more time we spend on scripture, the more we realize that there aren’t really heroes of faith or perfect people. Read More