The most powerful and affordable Christian Leadership degree available.
As a contextual partner of Calvin Seminary's Empower program, 222 Leadership Seminary provides contextual learning experiences, on site mentoring, and regular and substantive feedback and support.
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About Christian leadership education
You feel called to ministry but don’t know where to start. You want a Christian leadership education, but you can’t afford the tuition fees of most institutions that offer such programs.
Imagine being able to get an accredited Christian leadership education without going into debt and without having to travel far from home. As a contextual partner of Calvin Seminary’s Empower program, 222 Leadership Seminary provides contextual learning experiences, on-site mentoring, and regular and substantive feedback and support.
Mentorship and Mentoring
222LeadershipSeminary is Advanced Discipleship
Mentoring is a key concept in the Bible, though the word itself is not used. From Abraham and Isaac, to Jesus and his disciples, to Paul and Timothy, mentorship as concept is key to the development of the people of God. Using a different word, it is discipleship that guides and teaches the recipient to adopt and mirror some of the knowledge and competencies of the leader. It is more personal than a class or guided study; a person’s fully revealed life is being shared as much as information. Conceptually the learner is being taught to imitate the knowledge and experience of the mentors, until their own practices and events are owned and taken to heart. The goal is not to make clones of the mentors, but to help shape the emerging and developing Christian leader uniquely grow in knowledge, confidence, and competence that can be passed on in the same type of developmental experience to follow-on learners. A major goal of 2LS is to involve you in an experience that is so good you will want to pass on, and you will be fully capable of doing so.
The Apostle Paul spelled out mentoring as his leadership model very simply. “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me—put it into practice” (Philippians 4:9). He is saying, “Let me mentor you. Let me be your role model.” He reminds the Christians at Thessalonica to “follow our example” (2 Thessalonians 3:7). Example. Teach. Model. These are all aspects of mentoring which are indispensable in developing fully devoted followers of Jesus and in transmitting the faith from one generation to the next. It goes without saying that if mentors expect others to follow their example, they must be wholeheartedly committed to following Christ. Any hint of hypocrisy—“do what I say, not what I do”—will be detrimental to both the mentor and his charge.
As you experience at 2LS, there is no “one-size fits all” mentoring experience. The mentoring experience will change depending on the subject matter and the mentors involved with the interaction. You may, or may not, have different mentors during your time to mastery and competence, and you will most certainly have a variety of experiences. Your success is our highest desire and our greatest spiritual responsibility. We want you to be an effective leader for the church/ministry, and we want you to have the time of your life! The spiritual life is to be characterized by joy. And work.
What mentees can expect in our times together
The educational experience will vary and this is by design. The “real world” isn’t the same all the time and you will be learning to adapt. You may have different students coming and going in your cohort. Depending on the subject matter and how the class leaders decide to present it, you can expect to do a good deal of reading, reflecting, writing papers, case studies, with a large amount of interacting and discussing, as well as pointed questions from mentors. There will be times when you are asked to research and present your findings to the group. The biblical phrase of “iron sharpening iron” is an excellent description of the process. We will get you ready for all of this. Remember, we want you to be challenged and competent. You will not always be comfortable, so
What mentees can expect in our times together
The educational experience will vary and this is by design. The “real world” isn’t the same all the time and you will be learning to adapt.
You may have different students coming and going in your cohort. Depending on the subject matter and how the class leaders decide to present it, you can expect to do a good deal of reading, reflecting, writing papers, case studies, with a large amount of interacting and discussing, as well as pointed questions from mentors. There will be times when you are asked to research and present your findings to the group. The biblical phrase of “iron sharpening iron” is an excellent description of the process.
We will get you ready for all of this. Remember, we want you to be challenged and competent. You will not always be comfortable, sometimes quite uncomfortable, as that is part of being competent under pressure. Toward the end of a given cohort experience we will prepare you for your competency evaluation, which may take any number of forms. Written, oral, demonstration, project, or other means. All the relevant mentors will need to agree that they believe you are now competent in the educational field as given. We will give you the results: You will not fail, but you may have to do more study and preparation to be competent. Your success is our goal.
Directions for Mentors
Your/our role as mentors is to use our experiences and educational background to use our lives as “Paul’s” to develop our “Timothies” into future Pauls capable of ministry and reproduction. This will be a challenging to us as it is to the students as all of us have different experiences and educational training. That is to be expected and it is a good thing for the students. This is also means that there will need to be ongoing discussions among the mentors, especially in the early course experiences, to keep us on the same page. Prior to the first academic class the mentors will need to agree on what needs to be presented in the course and the proposed means to move the students toward competency in that subject.
Each mentor will be furnished with the psychological and educational profile gleaned from the first evaluations done when the student begins. This will begin to give us an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and how we can help them mature and improve. This will mean listening carefully to their participation in discussions, their depth of understanding, and their ideas on how the subjects can be applied. Also of note is the student’s motivation, initiative, and creativity in regard to ministry. (We may need to develop a rubric for these.) There is a four part Competency Rubric to be reviewed as the class begins and held before the students several times so that they mentally adjust to what is going to be expected of them.
Near the end of the course, the mentors will meet and review what they know of the students and their participation, and recommendations made to individual students on areas they may need to concentrate on before the main evaluation. Notes should be kept on each student with strengths and areas for improvement before the final review. Care should be taken to make sure that this is not presented as “do or start over” but it needs to be taken seriously and meet the requirements. The mentors time is valuable also.
One of the most important aspects of mentorship is listening. Listening to what the mentee thinks, how they view something, listening to hear what they already know, what they may misunderstand, how they may have been influenced. Naturally the companion to listening is asking leading questions. Not leading questions in the legal sense, where questions are asked to elicit an answer the interrogator with an answer that they want, but open-ended questions that take thought to complete.
Here are some examples of questions and their progression to greater depth.
- Questions That Bring Connection– These are initial questions that encourage everyone to participate. They allow for communication that is low-risk and safe. You want to help everyone to re-connect with each other after some time apart.
Here are some examples of these types of questions:
- Icebreaker Questions
- Does anyone have any praise reports?
- How is your week going?
- Questions That Lead To Dissection– These are questions that typically follow a passage for discussion. They move people into spiritual discussion where the Word of God is explored and pondered. Insightful perspective can be gleaned from new and seasoned believers.
Here are some examples of these types of questions:
- In your own words, what is the overall message of this passage?
- What stands out to you as we read those scripture verses?
- Why do think the Lord thought it was necessary to include these verses in the Bible?
- Questions That Cause Reflection– These are questions where you encourage people to talk more about themselves within the context of Biblical truth. In this stage, you are shifting the conversation for people to share on a more personal level.
These are useful as people share more of themselves and their thinking with reflection questions. You will hear more about families, successes and failures, and life lessons. These are good for bonding and spiritual probing.
Here are some examples of these types of questions:
- Have you had someone in your life that modeled the principles in this passage? Explain.
- Can you think of a situation or circumstance in your own life where you experienced what these verses are teaching?
- What is a verse that has meant a lot to you, and why?
- What are some of the benefits of applying this verse to our life?
- Questions That Provoke Inspection– This is part of what your cohort meeting has been building towards.
At this point in the time together, it is hoped that people feel that the discussions are relevant, important and worthy of their effort. Now is the time for that carefully worded question that can only be answered with risk-taking transparency.
When you prepare this question(s) you need to begin thinking about how you will lead the way as the leader. Think about how you are going to answer yourself? How are you going stretch yourself and open-up to the group? If you have assistant leaders, encourage them ahead of time to consider how they will respond as well. They will learn to do as you do.
The majority of the time, the mentor will be the first one to answer the tough question after it is asked. Leaders want to model honesty and trust in hopes that it will invite others to do the same.
Here are some examples of these types of questions:
- What are some obstacles to applying this verse to our life?
- Is/Has anyone recently struggled with…?
- As we’ve been discussing this, what is the Holy Spirit showing you personally?
It should go without saying that the examples given above are generally worded for any topic or theme. These are simple questions and as the leader knows more of what the subject will be, the mentor should plan more in-depth meaningful questions.
Notice the progressive sequence that slowly leads people to greater intimacy and examination within the group. A small group discussion should start out above the surface with the goal of getting everyone beneath the surface. If we want to consistently see people be real and authentic in our groups, we have to plan in a way that creates the opportunity for it.
Mentees should have the opportunity to be the leaders on some of these group questions while the mentors evaluate how they do. Helpful suggestions would follow.
