Last night, sitting around a table at a fast food restaurant with three women who consider me their mentor, something beautiful happened. We laughed. We cried. We challenged and encouraged each other with probing questions and biblical truth. Hope was renewed. Hearts were strengthened. Souls were filled. No one left feeling empty. All of us left celebrating Jesus in our lives.

This is my style of mentoring. It’s organic, natural, and flows from deep, authentic relationships that have been built over time.

We four women are part of a larger group of ten that meets weekly to study Scripture, pray together, and share life. We have become like sisters in the two-plus years we’ve been meeting. This group is the source of my mentoring relationships, and it has made more of an impact on me and the women than any other mentoring approach I have tried.

Finding a Method that Works

In my 20 years as a Christian, I have been involved in numerous mentoring relationships, either on my own or through church programs. In most instances, a woman would ask me to mentor her. She would want to meet regularly to study the Bible or a Christian book, or meet over coffee to talk about life and spiritual things for the purpose of growing in her faith. To prepare myself for these ministry opportunities, I read many, many books and articles on mentoring to learn how I might do it. Most were written like how-to manuals, offering checklists of topics to cover, ideas of when, where, and how often to meet, and more.

I’d like to say I did a fabulous job of mentoring those women, but things never went as described in the books. Most of the time we would meet for a while, but then life would get in the way for one or both of us and our mentoring relationship would fizzle out. Often, our meetings felt awkward and unnatural as we tried to follow the prescribed guidelines. It wasn’t that the information in the books was wrong, but those methods didn’t fit real life—at least not mine. After years of trying, I gave up on mentoring, thinking it was ineffective. When someone would ask me to mentor them, I would say no because past experience told me it would fail.

A Shift in Focus

Then I started a Bible study with a group of young adult women. As we spent time together consistently each week, we got to know each other well. We studied the Scriptures for the purpose of learning who God is, who God says we are, and what life lessons we could glean from the Bible and apply to our lives. The more time we spent together, the better we got to know each other, and the more trust was built. I began having opportunities to meet with several of the women one on one for coffee, walks, and other outings where we could talk about personal issues and questions they had about life and spiritual things. Our growing friendships created opportunities for one-on-one mentoring, and the resulting change in their lives and behaviors has been more remarkable than any programmed mentoring relationship in which I have ever participated.

What made this mentoring experience so much richer and more successful than the others? I notice a few key differences that you may want to try in your own ministry context.

Practical Mentoring Tips

1. We are friends first.

When changed lives and spiritual growth are the goals of mentoring, trust, transparency, and vulnerability between the mentor and mentee are imperative. These qualities can only be established in the context of genuine relationships. My friendships with the women in my group developed over time as we consistently met for our weekly Bible study. As trust grew they started confiding in me, asking for advice, and inviting me into their lives. Now the women consider me a friend as well as a mentor.

Many church mentoring programs match up strangers, which rarely brings true life change. In fact, studies show that unless a mentor and mentee have a basic relationship, there is little difference between that mentee and one who is not mentored. Friendship in mentoring is essential.

2. We study the Bible.

Engaging people with Scripture is critical to life change and spiritual growth. Rather than using study guides or lesson plans, we study books of the Bible. Each week we read a chapter word by word and verse by verse together, journal silently for a few minutes, and then discuss what we have learned.

Studying as a group brings the Scriptures to life because each person offers a different perspective. It also keeps our conversations focused on truth rather than our opinions. As issues come up in our lives, we look to Scripture as our guide.

This format empowers and develops emerging leaders, too. Each week a different person leads the group by studying the chapter ahead of time and setting the context for what we’ll be reading. As they learn to engage with Scripture on their own and lead the discussion, the women become more confident and passionate about reading the Bible and sharing it with others. Teaching people how to engage with Scripture creates people who can be advocates for the Bible in their communities.

3. We spend time together.

Life change and spiritual growth require time and proximity. The more time we spend together, the better we get to know each other and the deeper our relationships grow. Besides our Bible study time, our group members get together for fun, retreats, learning experiences, and more, either in smaller groups or one on one. Being with each other in different settings clearly reveals our true selves. The closer we grow together, the less we can hide our flaws, and that leads to growth as we allow each other to speak into our lives.

It’s funny; for so many years I tried to make mentoring work according to expert methods and programs, when all along its simplicity was demonstrated by Jesus in the gospels. He was the master mentor. He invited 12 men to serve people, understand the Scriptures, and live life together for three years as he modeled life with God for them wherever they went and whatever they did. Jesus knew that sharing everyday life centered on knowing God with a close group of friends over an extended length of time would be the most fertile environment for their growth. It took me a long time, but I finally got with Jesus’s program and I’m finally seeing the life change and growth I had always been longing to see.