Intensive Mentoring: The Spiritual Guide

Nicole's parents left Paris today to return to South Dakota. Our 3 year old accompanied me to the airport this morning to drop them off. I discovered today that he does much better if I explain several times ahead of the fact what we are going to do. While he didn't say much during the airport trip, I enjoyed having his company nevertheless.

Chapter 4 of Stanley and Clinton's book "Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life" is titled "Intensive Mentoring: The Spiritual Guide." Many points in this chapter ring true in my spirit. Here are some of them.

The primary contributions of a Spiritual Guide are accountability, decisions, and insights concerning questions, commitments, and direction affecting spirituality (inner-life motivations) and maturity (integrating truth with life). Simply stated, a Spiritual Guide facilitates spiritual development and maturity at certain critical junctures in a disciple's life. A Spiritual Guide is a godly, mature, follower of Christ who shares knowledge, skills, and basic philosophy on what it means to incresingly realize Chistlikeness in all areas of life. Spritual Guide-mentors are specialists at assessing spirituality. This differs from Discipler-mentors, who seek to enable others in the basics of following Christ. (p. 65)

You will usually need to be discipled only once in a lifetime (as you start on your journey of following Christ). However, from time to time throughout your growth in Christ you will need a Spiritual Guide. Discipling is training intensive, Spritual Guide-mentoring is reflective intensive. A Spiritual Guide will move you on to interdependence, which implies healthy independence with mutual dependence for greater growth and ministry as part of the Body of Christ. (p. 66)

An interesting counterpart of the Spiritual Guide is developing in the business world... the Executive Coach...For many executives this type of personal guide is not a frivolous benefit but a necessity. So it it with a Spiritual Guide for all those who desire to strongly follow Christ and finish well. (p. 66)

FUNCTIONS OF A SPIRITUAL GUIDE (pp. 66-67)
* Help believers assess their own development
* Point out areas of strength and weakness in spirituality
* Help believers identify needs and take initiative for change and growth
* Provide perspectives on how to develop growth and depth
* Provide accountabillty for spiritual maturity.