spiritual mentoring

Physical changes of the adolescent are more than matched by internal, emotional and psychological adjustments.

Adolescent's plighT?

Acknowledgement of critical period, yet little recognition for strong spiritual components
to this crisis.

They are on a spiritual quest

"Drill" beliefs of faith into their head, but miss their vital questions and circumstances

OR

Attempt to be relevant to all major issues, except for spiritual things.

Spiritual Mentoring...
The help we give the adolescent to enable her to become herself in faith.

We help them wrestle
with relevant spiritual quandaries.

Discern grace and movements of God.

Spiritual mentoring can bring a sense of God in their life and resolution to great spiritual crises.

They seek trustworthy answers as they desperately try
to make sense of their place in the world.

Average age of conversion

Search for meaning requires good guides to help direct them on their journey toward God.

Their self-image is
like reflected images
in a house of
distorting mirrors.

They need an organizing thread

The special thread

We make use of circumstances to
prepare a soil where grace may flourish.

We take their struggles seriously, entertain most basic questions about life and faith, and provide a model of spiritual groundedness.

Spiritual mentoring is not disciplines or techniques, but it is through relationship and example.

Through a compassionate, concerned presence in their life, we provide the model of what it might mean to find a practical, living relationship with God.

Conversion


Their hunger is for a God who knows, accepts, and confirms them deeply.

A special relationship facilitates conversion.

only in concrete human relationships

Our great problem

Religious knowledge and activities
are not consistently linked to the
day-to-day reality for the adolescent.

teen: seeking

Personal contact
teaches one how to be committed and faithful.

Spiritual Mentoring...


The relationship with the divine mediated through a human relationship.

From identity crisis to

Ongoing process of searching and self-discovery, to move outward to see their identity as being linked to God through the Church.

Qualities of Spiritual Mentor

• Warm, approachable
• Acceptance, available
• Patient, open
• Encouraging, deep
• Authentic

We leave the adolescent with the sense of what a Christian relationship
is all about.

our goal?

Spiritual Questions and needs

Integral Formation challenges
us to build a fundamentally spiritual structure into the education of youth.

Spiritual mentoring, as an integral mode of catechesis, provides a framework for an incarnating relationship.

It's not just
faith facts,
but presence.
The presence of one who seeks to understand, care, and guide.

This is a time when:

• His ideas about God become more personalized, interiorized
• One of life's greatest times of struggling
• Looks for some new life to be born out of personal confusion
• Confusion seems to engulf everything.

Patience, encouragement, guidance, and an implicit
trust in the Spirit.

They will discover who they are as both a unique person, and as a unique person before God.