Mentoring Younger Women in the Faith with Jen Wilkin and Melissa Kruger
We are so excited to share this episode with you on mentoring with Jen Wilkin and Melissa Kruger, which was recorded at The Gospel Coalition’s Women’s Conference in 2021. We pray this conversation encourages you to pursue discipleship relationships with women in your local context. Perhaps you could even grab a few women from your church and listen to this episode together!
Jen Wilkin is an author and Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. She is the author of many books and Bible studies, including Women of the Word, None Like Him, In His Image, and Ten Words to Live By. She is also a co-host of the Knowing Faith podcast. Melissa Kruger is a wife, mom, and the author of multiple books, including The Envy of Eve and Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood. She enjoys teaching women the Bible and serves as the director of women's initiatives for The Gospel Coalition.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
What is mentoring?
What impact has mentoring had on each of you in your own walks with the Lord?
What should be central in our mentoring relationships?
How does doing life together under the Word of God, centered around the gospel, really enable us to mentor one another in the context of the local church in a communal way?
How do we even find a mentor?
How do we find someone to mentor if nobody is asking us?
What are some of the pitfalls we should be wary of in mentoring relationships?
How do you foster a culture of mentoring and discipleship within a local church and women’s ministry?
If you could speak to yourself about mentoring when you were in your 20s and 30s, what would you say? What would you do differently?
What exhortation can you offer to your younger sisters?
What is the aim of our mentoring relationships?
How do you two (personally) protect your time in order to have margin to invest in those one-on-one relationships?
How do we get to the heart of the principles that inform our practice when it comes to looking at what our mentors are doing and hoping to implement those biblical principles in our own life?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“Mentoring is [from Ephesians 4] equipping the saints for the work of ministry. There are two parts to that. ‘Equipping the saints’—giving them something—but also ‘for the work of ministry’—so there's an expectation that we equip so we serve. It's not just pouring into someone for themselves, but it’s an equipping because I believe that’s how we actually build up Christ’s body. So equipping to bless.” - Melissa
“The impact that [mentoring] relationships can have on us is profound. My mentor helped me with everything—raising children, being married, being in ministry. She and her husband let my husband and me into their lives, which was so shaping for us.” - Jen
“[My mentor] met with me every week and we studied 1 Peter together or talked about ministry and life. She just invested in me, and it was such a kindness, and it really fueled my own heart for mentoring in the future.” - Melissa
“A critical, central factor to the mentorships that truly change us is friendship. It wasn’t just that I needed my mentor’s help, it was that we genuinely liked each other.” - Jen
“Don’t discount how much friendship plays into a successful mentoring relationship.” - Jen
“I’m not trying to mentor you to be another Melissa. As my life is increasingly abiding in Christ and abiding in him, what does that do? When I abide in Christ I’m now connected as a branch to all the other branches. So the more I’m abiding in Christ every day and in his Word, the more I actually have to share with others. Because my goal isn’t to share Melissa with others; I’m going to share the Melissa who is abiding in Christ with others.” - Melissa
“As we’re all abiding, we’re all connected to the same vine. So there's a sense that that same lifeblood is going to connect us and grow us, and we know it’s about him, not about us.” - Melissa
“This isn't to check off something on our list. These are the people you can look at and say, ‘I’m so excited about what I see God doing in your life that I want to help grow that in you. I want to help foster that. It’s an excitement about Jesus that binds us.” - Melissa
“Mentorship thrives in the local church because we’re the family of God and these are familial relationships within the household of God. That means—you know how family is—it’s messy. And your mentor needs to see you on your good days and your bad days. And your mentor will probably have additional reference points for you beyond just the two of you hanging out that will inform how they will be able to help you grow and mature.” - Jen
“There’s no substitute for life-on-life, in-person discipleship opportunities. This doesn’t mean that at-distance relationships aren’t valuable, but they cannot carry the same weight of accountability.” - Jen
“If you want to be mentored by an older woman… go where some of them are.” - Jen
“The nature of the relationship might be organic, but it doesn’t mean that your times together have to be organic. Structure is the friend of relationship, so you might try to come with a purpose of why you want to meet with her.” - Jen
“Don’t be creepy about it.” - Jen
“Work together… It’s really nice to have a shared task.” - Jen
“The game teaches too. So when you're mentoring you need to bring them into ministry. You're pouring into them, and then you’re saying, ‘Now you stand up, you teach this and I'm going to watch and give you feedback.’ That's where the growth happens. If you just put someone in and say ‘teach’ without ever equipping them, it’s like trying to play a soccer game when you’re out of practice. You need both. You need the equipping and helping, and also the opportunities.” - Melissa
“One of the best ways we grow is by having the opportunity to do ministry… and then being there to help and encourage them.” - Melissa
“You have to have an end date on that initial commitment, even if you really like that person. Have clear expectations of what you’re going to do when you start.” - Jen
“Give time for trust to build on both sides; let it take the normal arc of relationship.” - Jen
“When we over-spiritualize or over-glorify mentoring to be a special category, we can sometimes get into some unhealthy arrangements in the way mentorship functions.” - Jen
“One of the pitfalls is thinking, ‘I am responsible to make her grow.’” - Melissa
“One of the best things the older mentor is doing is praying for the younger one and committing to do that. She is standing beside saying, ‘I’ve weathered a lot of storms, so this old oak has learned how to stand in them, and I’m offering those years to stand beside you. But I can’t solve you, I can’t change you, I can't make you grow.’” - Melissa
“Some people are going to need more than you can give. You can encourage them to go to counseling. Your role in their life might be to direct them to someone else other than you.” - Melissa
“There might be stages in your life where you don’t have the margin for this, and that’s okay too. You don’t have to feel like you’re a failure if you’re not “checking the box” of mentoring or having a mentor.” - Jen
“What a mentor in a local church needs to be is a church mother, a spiritual mother in the household of God.” - Jen
“If the women in your church are predominately mentored by a head on a screen… then what happens if the head on the screen says something cuckoo? These women don’t know what to do, they're going to follow the head on the screen.” - Jen
“I am not a mother to the women in your local church, YOU are.” - Jen
“It is critical to the health of your church that there be visible mothers in your church who younger women know they can come to and seek counsel from if someone they’ve learned from at a distance is saying something that is not in alignment.” - Jen
“Our younger brothers need mothers too—they need women who can see things and say things to them in love.” - Melissa
“The church is a family.” - Melissa
“If you want to grow spiritually, the Spirit is always available to you.” - Melissa
“Do not leave your spiritual growth up to finding a mentor.” - Melissa
“Spiritual growth is available to you. The Word is powerful. It is what will change you. Yes, you want to see it with flesh on it. It’s a beautiful thing to have people in your life. But pursue God and he is going to put people in your life who will give you those words of encouragement you need.” - Melissa
“Don’t wait for a mentor to start drawing near to God. He is the one you want to know, and he has offered you everything you need in his Word.” - Melissa
“Sometimes we think of the Great Commission only in terms of evangelism, but it's so much bigger than that. We’ve been called to go out into all the world, making disciples, and teaching them to observe all he has commanded.” - Melissa
“Ultimately this is how the kingdom comes; by people going out and proclaiming the Good News.” - Melissa
“The goal isn’t that you need to have had the same life experience, but you’re pursuing the same source—Jesus—to help you be more patient, be more kind, be more loving, to bear good fruit.” - Melissa
RESOURCES
Growing Together by Melissa Kruger
Journeywomen’s Discipleship Guide
Deep Discipleship, by J.T. English
Spiritual Mothering, by Susan Hunt
Journeywomen’s Discipleship series
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What impact has mentoring had on your own walk with the Lord?
How can you lean into your local church and pursue deeper relationships with the women there?
What areas of spiritual life are you seeking to grow in? Who in your local church might you look to or ask for help in that area?
How might you seek to abide more deeply in Christ, that you might know him more?
How are you currently looking to the Spirit of God to actively grow you in your faith?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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