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Sample Theological Blueprint for Ministry Remodeling
May 2, 2012
Dear C***,
Over the past two years I have grown in heart, mind, and soul as director of our SaLT mentoring program. As you have seen, our mentoring program has given birth to genuine Christian love, discipleship and accountability between the mentors and students. Our students have shown growth in self-confidence, maturity, and faith in Christ. Mentors also express a deep sense of appreciation for the program and the ways their relationship with their student has helped them grow in their faith as well as their understanding of urban culture.
However, I am concerned by an obvious disconnect occurring in our mentoring relationships. The students are failing to openly and honestly communicate with their mentors. There is a lack of trust and understanding between the mentors and students. The students often share and give answers according to what they know the mentors want to hear. They act in such a way that shows they believe their mentors have no idea what they are going through and have very little ability to connect with their everyday reality as urban high school students. Mentors also regularly seek my advice and come to me with questions about the culture and family background of their student.
The following practical analysis and proposed plan of action are my reflections and efforts intended to reconcile relationships within our SaLT mentoring, enabling us to more fully represent the kingdom of God on earth. Through more intentional recruiting, research, and equipping of mentors and students I believe our SaLT mentoring can reflect God’s ministry of reconciliation and in turn create space for participants to truly know each other, affirm each other’s humanity, and foster solidarity for the journey of faith together as mentor and student.
Thank you for your constant support and openness to change as executive director of PTM. I look forward to discussing these ideas with you soon.
Peace in Christ,
T***
SaLT Mentoring: Practical Analysis and Theological Reflection
What is Going On?
Research shows that youth who spend time with a caring adult mentor regularly for at least one year are five times more likely to graduate from high school, 46% less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs, and overall more trusting of their parents or guardians.[1] Sociologist Christian Smith and Kenda Creasy Dean have also found that the main predictor of the quality of faith in an adolescent is the quality of faith in the significant adults in their lives.[2] We began our SaLT (servant and leadership training) high school mentoring program for these very reasons. SaLT students come from single parent homes where the parent or guardian is caring but often absent due to their work schedule. The goal of the mentoring is to provide high school students living in or around the PTM community with another positive adult in their lives that will encourage them in their faith and walk alongside them as they grow closer to God and pursue their God-given dreams. Mentors and students meet together for Bible study, accountability, and prayer every Monday throughout the school year. Our hope for the program is that the relationships created between students and their mentors will provide visions of the reconciled kingdom of God.
Monday night mentoring has given birth to genuine Christian love, discipleship and accountability between the mentors and students. Students who have been a part of the mentoring program for a year or more have shown growth in self-confidence, maturity, and faith in Christ. Adult mentors also express a deep sense of appreciation for the program and the ways their relationships with their students have helped them grow in their faith as well as their understanding of urban culture. Students are committed to the program and are faithful to show up on Mondays to meet with their mentors.
On the other hand, the students are struggling to relate with, fully respect, and open up to their mentors. The students are not always honest with their mentors and often speak and give answers according to what they know the mentors want to hear instead of answering openly and honestly. They make comments and act in such a way that shows they believe their mentors have no idea what they are going through and have very little ability to connect with their everyday reality as urban high school students. I sense the students respond in this way because of three reasons: 1) they feel they are not good enough to share openly with their mentors, 2) they feel they have to give all of the right answers in order to meet the standards of the mentors, or 3) they couldn’t care less about being in a relationship with someone who does not understand who they are or what they have been through.
Why is it Going On?
SaLT students struggle to connect, respect, and open up to their mentors because of racial and economic barriers as well as a lack of cultural[3] understanding from their mentors. The Marxist lens of hegemony helps shed light on my observation of our high school students and their struggle to form lasting and meaningful relationships with their mentors. Hegemony suggests that despite oppression and racism in society, subordinate groups and classes appear to actively support and subscribe to values, ideals, and objectives which bind them to, and ‘incorporate’ them into, the prevailing structures of power.[4]
SaLT mentors are predominantly affluent and white while all of the students are African-American and come from low-income households. Even the one African-American mentor is affluent and lives outside the PTM neighborhood. In spite of my efforts to bring about reconciliation through our program, SaLT students continue to feel the pressure to incorporate into a more “white” culture in order to help them be the person God wants them to be. In a world where the process of hegemony is at work, young African Americans feel like they must conform to the forms of black expression that are acceptable to the hegemonic white culture. Therefore, they hide themselves. In Nashville especially, God is presented at every turn as the God of white, middle class culture. And so, the youth form their image of who God is, and how God wants them to live as "white and middle class" before our mentors show up to reconfirm it unknowingly.
The reality of the all “white” and/or “well-off” mentors perpetuates the cultural idea that there are few adult role models within communities of poverty while adding to the cultural stereotype that students must be Caucasian to have a successful career or be perceived as a mentor. While the love of Christ transcends culture and race, SaLT mentors and students still have a hard time living out the reality of their unity in Christ in relationship with one another.
The failure of the students and mentors to form close and open relationships also comes from our failure to adequately train mentors from outside the community about the culture and community in which the students live and to train mentors from within the community (of which we have had very few) about today’s youth culture in general. I also believe part of the lack of training also comes from their lack of relationship with their student’s parents/guardians. Our mentors only receive one half-day of training at the beginning of each school year and receive weekly emails from myself with updates about our program and reminders about our lesson for the week. They need to be better equipped as students of a new culture.
What Should be Happening?
Our mentoring program, as well as the entirety of the youth ministry, should reflect the equality of all people as well as God’s ministry of reconciliation through Jesus Christ. The distance separating our SaLT students from their mentors is a blend of racial, socio-economic, and cultural differentiation. Our mentoring program, as well as the entirety of the youth ministry, should reflect the uniqueness, equality, and solidarity of all people to each other. For this reason, our mentoring program needs God’s ministry of reconciliation to create space for participants to truly know each other, affirm each other’s humanity, and foster solidarity for the journey of faith together as mentor and student.
The form and practice of knowing someone changes from one context to another. In the urban low-income context, youth are known through ways unconventional to the majority of our mentors. For example, the partitions of family, work, school, play, and service are much less distinguishable; activities often fall into two or more categories at a time. When mentors sit down with their students to “get to know them,” this dynamic is already operating within the life and community rhythm of the students. For our students, relationship is built through tightly woven strands of mutual support, meals, ad hoc work, and recreational activity. A ministry of reconciliation between our mentors and students might involve our mentors migrating to other forms of living, fellowship, or community that lead them to deeper knowledge of their students. Like God’s reconciling work through Jesus, the ministry of reconciliation involves movement from one’s home to the home of the other in order for relationship to take place. As our mentors engage more appropriate ways of knowing their students they will come to see students’ humanity needing to be affirmed.
Truly knowing each other will then reveal the sin that has led to our estranged human community and allow mentors and students to acknowledge their common humanity. Mentors must name these sins, whether systemic, generational, or individual, and acknowledge their need for grace. Mentors and students should both confess their common need for God’s grace in order to live in solidarity together. They will then be able to affirm their common humanity, as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, created in the image of God (imago dei).[5]
Mentor and student, knowing each other more fully and affirming their shared humanity (imago dei), should now more fully be reconciled to live in solidarity despite the race, economic status, social status, and even age that should separate them. This is the meaning of ambassadorship Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5:20 – They (mentor and student) become advocates for each other! Whereas they were once separated by these barriers they are now reconciled to live in solidarity and therefore go out into the world representing one another in the grace that unifies them.
Through God’s ministry of reconciliation the mentors should ultimately earn the respect and trust of the students. As they listen to their stories and discover their hopes and concerns for the future, they can begin to identify their deepest felt-needs; those hurts and longings that allow them opportunities to connect with their student on a deeper level. The power of authentic reconciliation between us and God, and between people of every culture and race is necessary for effective ministry in the midst of the pain and suffering of the world in which our youth live.
What Needs to Happen?
In order to get rid of the hegemonic forces between our mentors and students and create authentic reconciliation there are a few changes we can make to our mentoring program. First, we need to be more intentional about recruiting more mentors across racial and economic lines. Though recruiting mentors from the PTM community and finding mentors of various race and background may be difficult the extra time and effort will be worth the end result of students having tangible examples of Christian role models within their community. I do not think it is necessary to recruit all of our mentors from the African-American or local community but the students need to see more mentors who have similar backgrounds of their own. They will fall away from hegemony as they see they do not have to incorporate themselves into the dominant “white” culture to be successful and more importantly, to be an important part of the body of Christ.
Secondly, we need to encourage mentors to have an incarnational presence in the lives of their students by spending more time in the PTM community. In 1 Thessalonians 2:8 Paul says “Because we loved you, we were happy to share not only God's Good News with you, but even our own lives.” Mentors should sit at the feet of the culture of our students in order to build reciprocal relationships and understand the issues of the community. They can spend more time getting to know the parents and families of the students which will show the students that the mentors respect and value their families. Mentors can also spend more time getting to know the culture of the neighbourhood by eating at local restaurants and attending community events. Another great way to sit at the feet of the culture of the youth would be for the mentors to pursue cross-cultural mentors themselves.
Finally, we need to provide more thorough training for mentors and students to help them cultivate deeper relationships. This type of training for mentors would involve teaching mentors about cultural and local issues our students encounter and would include materials on reconciliation. We would also have a regular book study and support group for mentors to meet together with me as the director to discuss their experiences and receive encouragement on ways to earn the respect and trust of their students. For the students, we can be more upfront about the purpose of the mentoring relationship and engage them in discussions and lessons on reconciliation. Issues such as difference in race and economic status need to be discussed and prayed over as a part of our times together.