Mentoring a Student at Denver Seminary
So You’ve Been Asked to Be a Mentor
What an honor to be asked to serve as a mentor! It’s humbling and challenging. Regardless of previous mentoring experience, the request can make you keenly aware of your own growth needs. However, to be asked to serve as a mentor generally indicates that another person has seen something of value in your life. As you consider the request, we thought you might be helped by a brief overview of the Denver Seminary mentoring process and what it would involve for you.
Denver Seminary’s Vision:
Denver Seminary seeks to glorify God by equipping leaders to think biblically, live faithfully and lead wisely for a lifetime.
We take your ministry as a mentor very seriously and
want to keep you well-equipped and well-supported.
It is required that all mentors of Denver Seminary students will attend an initial, one-time mentor orientation module. This takes less than three hours, and we offer these modules at a variety of days and times. Mentors must also be in agreement with the National Association of evangelicals statement of faith and agree to abide by the Code of Ethics and Policies and Procedures of the mentoring program. These documents are available upon request and at the mentor orientation module.
We also offer several “mentor appreciation benefits” such as a hefty discount at the Seminary Bookstore, a free Seminary library card, and the opportunity to audit a limited number of master’s level courses for free. We hope that these will provide valuable resources for your life and ministry, as well as communicate our gratitude for your ministry with us. If you have further questions about the mentoring process at Denver Seminary, please feel free to contact one of our staff. We are passionate about mentoring and want to do everything possible to facilitate God-honoring relationships.
We would be arrogant to think that as a Seminary, we alone could effectively train people for ministry. Most seminaries require some type of ministry involvement. This, however, has not been sufficient to prepare people for the wide range of personal and professional demands that ministry makes on them. Tragically, attrition and struggle in ministry have often been related to issues other than those addressed in the academic curriculum. Effective ministry training always involves a rigorous and thorough-going approach to biblical and theological disciplines, but it is much more. It must also provide tools and create environments in which God can develop vital areas of character and skill. It must teach people how to be lifelong learners.
All Denver Seminary degree programs involve an intentional mentoring component alongside the traditional classroom-based courses.
For students, the mentoring experience involves custom-designed, self-directed learning contracts that focus on key areas of character, spiritual maturity and ministry skill. Students meet with their mentor(s) for approximately one hour per week during the school term. The learning contracts provide focus and content for discussion, but the mentoring conversations normally touch on a wide array of topics that are relevant to life and ministry. A mentor comes alongside a student for encouragement, reflection, challenge and prayer. Every other semester the student is responsible to schedule a one-hour "mentor team meeting" in which the mentor(s) come together with the student and one or two faculty members involved in the student's mentoring process. At the end of each semester, the student writes a brief reflection on that semester's learning contract and mentoring experience, then gives copies to mentors along with a brief evaluation form. Mentors are asked to read these summaries and offer written comments that will help the student continue growing. Students in M.A. programs participate in the mentoring sequence for three consecutive semesters (one and a half years, excluding breaks). The M.Div. degree program involves five consecutive semesters of mentoring (two and a half years, excluding breaks).
