The Art of Mentoring: Knowing the Way Out
“This guy’s walking down a street, when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep. He can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up “Hey you! Can you help me out?”
The doctor writes him a prescription, throws it down the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?”
The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole! Our guy says “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here!” and the friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”
I love this analogy from the TV show The West Wing. It’s a perfect way to describe mentoring, guiding, and helping others: We know the way out.
Whether you are a parent, teacher, pastor, therapist, or anyone with influence over others, the way to help people is through our own experience, an awareness of ourselves, and the development of wisdom and understanding that comes from learning from the experience. We know the way out, and we can help others find the way out as well. We can tell people how to get out, we can give them directions, prayers, or help from a distance, or we can jump into the hole with them and teach them how to get out.
I started serving in ministerial roles when I was in my early twenties. Though I was always more mature in many ways than my young years, I was still young by way of experience. Always an observer, I had observed more than I experienced, and yet I did my best to help people who were going through difficulties that I had yet to experience. When students in my youth ministry lost loved ones, I was limited because I had yet to lose someone close to me. But when my Dad passed away, the experience of that loss helped me to care for others in a new way. I truly knew what grief felt like and knew the way through grief with God’s care and love.
Knowing the way out and helping others to find it involves:
Experience. They say that experience is the best teacher, but that is only true if we are willing to learn from it. Learning from experience requires an openness to learn and an awareness of ourselves and the experience of what we need to learn. It is possible to experience something and yet not learn and grow from it.
Awareness. It is also not completely true that the older we are, the wiser we are because though we have experienced a lot we may not have truly learned and been willing to apply what we have learned from our experiences. In order to grow ourselves, we must be open to what experiences will teach us. Allowing ourselves to grow in an awareness of who we are—our strengths, weaknesses, and struggles—and how experiences can help to shape who we are, is vital to growth.
Understanding. Knowledge of ideas, information, and facts are important, but true wisdom comes from understanding how to apply what we have learned to our lives. Knowledge and experience that doesn’t lead to understanding is useless. As the Apostle Paul has said, “But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know” (1 Cor. 8:1-2, NIV). Experience plus awareness can bring understanding, which can bring wisdom. In order to mentor others in a way that will help them, we need to learn from and apply our experiences to our lives.
Mentoring, guiding, and teaching others involves being present in their lives. We cannot lead, love, or guide people from an emotional or theological distance. Ministering to people on whatever level we are doing so involves being present in their lives and sometimes jumping into the hole with them to help lead them out.