This week’s blog post I had the honor to extend a few questions to a very good friend and sister of mine in the body of Christ, Virginia Kangueehi.
Virginia has had her own experience of good and bad mentors, but each of these experiences have shape her one way or another. She is both a mentee and a mentor to others.
How would you explain Mentorship in your own words?
Mentorship is a deliberate process to help people grow to their full potential. Mentorship is the process where you want someone to move from point A to point B, where point B is a better place and point B is fully realizing that person’s potential.
“Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God” Ephesians 4:1.
In order for someone to walk worthy of their calling they need to be driven in that motion by someone who has taken the road before you. The Apostle Paul was Timothy’s mentor and he helped Timothy establish ground, and even after Paul died the gospel continued. Why? Because Paul had ensured that whatever he imparted on Timothy had so much value that Timothy could live out his potential even in the absence of his mentor, Paul.
That’s why mentorship is so great compared to managers, most of the times we can’t walk in managers’ shoes because they never taught us how to be great as they are or to be even better then them. And with mentorship it’s different, it’s beautiful, it’s kingdom minded because you help someone grow into a better version of who you are and most importantly a better version of themselves to reach their potential for themselves even if they are in a different sphere of influence.
Mentors will look after your heart with due diligence especially if they are serious with the things of God.
Virginia Kangueehi
Why is Mentorship so important?
“Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit. Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honorably in everything we do” Hebrews 13:17-18.
The importance of mentorship at the end of the day is that you are raising up people who can honor authority and are not rebellious. You are raising up people who are transforming and can then transform society and transform the motion of things, the status quo and to see things in a clearer vision. Mentorship helps to push people beyond what they know and beyond how they’ve been raised, and it helps to remove the scales from their eyes.
The most important would probably be that mentors hold you accountable!
People are going through so much and they fight their battles alone, but mentors are the ones that will have your back! Mentors are one of the people that pray for you and that pray over you because you have submitted under them. When you identify the areas where you are struggling with your mentor whether it’s your health, work, family, relationships, friendships, laziness and procrastination, finance, church, committed towards your work, taking off social time etc. your mentor is accountable for your spirit.
Furthermore mentors are the ones that are constantly covering you in prayer.
It’s important that mentors are people that you can count on. It’s a value chain. Personally, my mentees know they can reach me any time of the day, because I’m responsible for them and I am someone they can count on and that’s so important. Christ didn’t die to create islands out of us, He created a community. He wants us to fight each other’s battles, help each other grow and nourish each other. So whoever is struggling, needs to reach out for help. Many of us didn’t know how, and that’s why we needed people who has helped us to know what we know now. And I’m still learning because I don’t know everything, and part of that I still need people. We never arrive until Jesus Christ returns. That’s why it’s so important to have a mentor!
In addition mentors help you get quite and actually think of what you are going through. For example, when my mentor calls me and she would ask ‘Virginia how are you doing’, and in that moment it makes me get quite and think how am I really doing? Have I gotten into the routine of saying ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ to my colleagues or I’m I really going through things that I haven’t dealt with, and now I’m being asked to deal with these things. Mentors ask you the rigid questions.
People always say you don’t have to make your own mistakes, learn from others. And that’s where mentorship comes in, mentors guide you and help you to learn from where they failed so you don’t go down the same road.
How has mentorship personally impacted your life?
Mentorship has impacted my life in such a great way. I currently have a mentor. However most of the cases where I’ve learned a lot is from the questions of my mentees because they ask me questions that would tricker something within me. And when I give advise or insight on a topic, I realize what I’m saying is something that I’ve known, but haven’t applied, so it becomes alive in my spirit and immediately I can align it with a situation that I haven’t dealt with in my life.
Mentorship has influenced my life in a very positive way. I remember there were so many times when I wanted to make emotional and entitled decisions. This thing of “I’m a child of God, I can’t go through this” or “I deserve the very best”, this entitlement that creates pride within us and we think it’s humility. My mentor has helped me take the scales of my eyes, and she has helped me change this narrative of “I deserve this” so that I can see myself through the eyes of grace, through the eyes of mercy, through the eyes of what God has redeemed me from.
Mentorship has helped me not just to pack up and leave from a job, or pack up and leave my family. There were many times I wanted to move out of the house, and whenever I met up with my mentor she would ask me the basic questions and she told me “if the maturity of the questions are not ‘yes‘ you stay where you are”. While you are waiting, you serve, because while you are in that season God want’s you to learn something. He is the one that opens and closes the doors.
For the longest time I wanted to buy a car and my mentor had to really sit me down and ask me the basic questions: ‘how will you pay the premium’, ‘how will you survive’? The thing is, when we want something in life everything else is clouded by this idea of what we want that we forget what is most important and we forget the price that we would have to pay once we’ve possess this thing.
Mentorship has helped to shape the woman that a lot of people see today as strong and determined. I wasn’t that woman at all, I would’ve probably taken a lot of detours and I would’ve made a lot of mistakes and then I would’ve had to learn from those mistakes, thanks to mentorship, someone else helped me not to go through the fire.
Where I am at right now is because someone else did their job well, unselfishly without prejudices.
How do you, as a mentor, help your mentees grow?
I can personally say I’m such a great example of failed, succeeding, and work-in-progress mentorship. After I attended ALI (African Leadership Institute), I had to get myself a mentor and then I had to get two mentees. Which today one of them is still my mentee and the other one backslided, however I still check in on her from time to time.
For example, I have a mentee in South Africa, and she would sometimes call for a mentorship session, and I would give her advice and insight on a particular situation, and I can actually influence her life although we are in two different countries. I try to make the communication and getting in touch between me and my mentees easy, not everyone can afford to go for a cup of coffee, so I gladly mentor people from the comfort of my home.
I help my mentees establish a firm foundation in Christ, and help them grow spiritually. I help them find their identity, how God sees them!
Over the years, one can see the fruits of the people that I have mentored. And more people are approaching me this year for mentorship, and I think they see the fruit of my mentor in my life, and they see the fruit of my mentees and that encourages people to engage in mentorship. It’s like a supply chain; you impact a person, that person impacts another person and so the cycles goes.
The people that I mentor can actually see that they are growing, and that is because someone is investing in their life.
Does every believer need a mentor?
If you think you don’t need a mentor that means you have “arrived” and your life is perfect.
If we look at the life of Jesus, He had a mentor, God. In John 5:19, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. That means He didn’t have it all figured out, even though He was Son of God, God still had to impart life and guidance in Him.
We need mentors, we need people that will help us grow, we need people that will see our potential, we need people that won’t give up on us, we need people that care. Everyone needs a mentor it doesn’t matter the sphere of influence that you are in, you need a mentor. You need someone that will mentor you in your career, finance, and even marriage. You need someone that is honest, real, and transparent.
Mentors are like the Fathers arms in flash right here right with us. Mentors reaffirm you in your identity according to how God sees you!
Mentors ask your the hard questions: what do you want to accomplish, what are your goals, what do you want for your life? And these questions seem easy to read until you have to sit and ask yourself these questions. Yet at the same time mentors impart love on you.
Mentors make you see your potential. Diamonds usually lay deep under ground and they have to be dug out, same with humans, you need someone else to help identify and draw out the value God has placed in you and that’s exactly what a mentor does.
Mentors encourages you and exhort you. They love to see you grow and they challenge you to be the best version of yourself.
So yes, everyone needs a mentor!
The Christians Post 