WMUV – Woman's Missionary Union of Virginia

Mentoring Future Leaders
Just as Jesus discipled others, we must help others to grow in their spiritual lives and in their service to Christ and others. Through the Ruth & Naomi Project we can encourage young women and girls to become all that God has created them to be. We must equip them to take up the cause of Christ’s mission, to reach out to a lost and hurting world and minister in His name. As our foremothers in Virginia accepted the challenge, “The World for Christ…Hallelujah!” we must also accept the challenge to do what Christ calls us to do in this century!

Why Should I Be Involved?
The Ruth and Naomi Project is both a structure and process intended to create one-to-one relationships between experienced missions leaders and young potential leaders within a church.

These relationships have two complementary purposes. They will provide older, more experienced leaders an opportunity to pass on to the next generation their love for missions, experience through Woman’s Missionary Union, leadership skills and abilities developed and honed over the years plus their joyful commitment as obedient Christ-Followers. At the same time, young potential leaders will have an opportunity to develop systematically the skills and leadership abilities, commitment to missions and dedication to God toward a missions lifestyle.

This project offers young potential leaders the opportunity to reflect on how leadership has developed in individuals, providing a missions portfolio for the future. Personal growth and “who am I?” processes such as assessment inventories (spiritual gifts, leadership style, personality style, and work world skills and leisure pursuits/ hobbies) will help them discern their calling. They will also be able to communicate their personal mission statement. The Ruth and Naomi Project completes the circle as mentoring leaders share what they have learned with the next generation and young potential leaders share their dreams and visions for the future.

Characteristics of a Young Potential Leader

• Someone who has potential for growth as a leader, with natural leadership traits and abilities and is teachable, willing to listen, learn and grow in Christ
• Young women and girls who are searching and seeking to be used by God, with a readiness or calling to serve
• Women and girls looking for ways to be involved and wanting to develop the inner resources so they will not experience burnout
• Young potential leaders wanting to achieve balance and wholeness as well as fulfill the mission God has for their lives

Characteristics of a Mentoring Leader

• Someone with strong interpersonal skills who is caring, genuine, spiritually growing, sensitive to others and has a heart for missions
• A person with knowledge of the organization and its aims
• Someone with supervisory skills (planning, appraising, giving feedback, coaching, modeling, delegating)
• Women with technical competence about how the missions programs and projects are implemented
• Someone with personal power and charisma who seeks opinions from and regards others
• Women with status and prestige who are natural influencers
• Persons willing to be responsible for the growth of someone else, willing to invest herself in the life of another, without guarantee
• Someone with the ability to share credit and empower others
• Persons will to be transparent, practice patience and have the capacity to take risks
• Women who are the type of women found throughout the Bible, the kind of woman Naomi was to Ruth

Why Focus on Mentoring?

The story of Ruth and Naomi in the Bible is an excellent example of mentoring. Think about Naomi, the older, more experienced woman. Naomi was uprooted from her native home when she married and had suffered the loss of her husband and two sons. Old and helpless and in a foreign land, she was left with her daughters-in-law to shelter. She became one of the three widows whom Paul describes as being “desolate.” Naomi felt she must somehow retrieve the past. If she could go back home to the Bethlehem soil, maybe there she could find favor with God and meaning in her life.

Think about Ruth, the young daughter-in-law, who had been robbed by the death of her husband. Naomi did not want her daughter-in-law to face uncertainty in a strange land. But Ruth was bound to her mother-in-law by cords of love and friendship. She no doubt also wanted to move forward. Ruth still believed in the future, could dream about tomorrow and exude hope to Naomi. Both women benefited from the covenant relationship expressed in Ruth 1:16 and throughout the story.

Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee:
for wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
(Ruth 1:16)

In an age like ours with its ever growing number of strained relationships and surface friendships, establishing a mentoring connection with a loyal confidant can provide a safe place for spiritual development and the emergence of leadership potential.

Steps to Designing Your Church Project

• Selection of a Church Project Coordinator
• Identification and selection of potential leaders
• Identification and selection of mentoring leaders and matching potential and mentoring leaders
• Design of the Leadership Development Plan
• Orientation of mentoring leaders and potential leaders and launch of the cycle
• Negotiating the Covenant Relationship
• Implementation of the Leadership Development Plan
• Closure and celebration
• Evaluation of the project

Resources

• Ruth & Naomi Training Consultants. Available from WMUV.
• Ruth & Naomi Project Guide with suggestions for youth and children adaptations. Available from WMUV.
• A Garden Path to Mentoring: Planting Your life in Another and Releasing the Fragrance of Christ, by Esther Burroughs, New   Hope Publishers,   1997
• Woman to Woman: Preparing Yourself to Mentor, by Edna Ellison and Tricia Scribner, New Hope Publishers, 1999
• Gifted by God: Leading, Loving and Teaching with Your Life, audiocassette, Andrea Mullins, Margaret Perkins, Laura Savage,   New Hope   Publishers, 1997