Stephen NicholsI found the following scholarly article about how Jonathan Edwards viewed mentoring. The following link points the article:
While invitations to ordination services flooded his [Jonathan Edwards] Northampton home, candidates for the ministry lined up outside his door. Ministerial preparation in those days consisted of both a college education and an apprenticeship. During the 1730s and 1740s Jonathan and Sarah's home was full not only of children, but also of ministerial candidates drawn by Edwards's preaching and writing. Among them were Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Buell, and Samuel Hopkins, all of whom became influential figures in New England. (p. 59, Jonathan Edwards: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought)
“SINGLY, PARTICULARLY, CLOSELY”: EDWARDS AS MENTOR.
I found the following quotes interesting. The article, except for the strange ending, was very good.
More concretely, mentoring can be defined as that intentional activity between two people which seeks to empower for spiritual development, often with the result of enhancing skills and attitudes for leadership.
Tennent combined divinity and piety as twin goals of learning, but did so in the context of family life, farming, common worship, practical ministry exposure, and generous personal investment in the next generation of leadership, enabling a mentoring dynamic of significant pedagogical value.
Rural men, without significant financial means, would appreciate not just cheap tuition, but would be able to contribute their own skills and labour to the life of the training community. Edwards received many such ministry aspirants, two of the most notable being Dr Joseph Bellamy and Dr Samuel Hopkins who each later established a school of the prophets to great effect.
Edwards’s home was a magnet for those looking to be trained. Hopkins had originally intended to move away from New England and his home in Waterbury in western Connecticut to study under Tennent in Pennsylvania, but decided in the end to complete his training in Northampton, after hearing Edwards preach on the validity of the revival at the Yale commencement of 1741. Hopkins used Edwards’s library, filled the pulpit in his absence, and fortuitously benefited greatly from the stimulating spiritual conversation of Sarah Edwards. Joseph Bellamy resided in Edwards’s home too, where he enjoyed the stability of family life, which he himself had missed growing up.
Edwards’s mentoring was not born out of a therapeutic modernism, which sought to promote self-expression or self-realisation, nor did he want others to ape him. Independence of mind does not necessarily require narcissistic individualism. He was part of a more substantial Christian narrative of faith transmission and ministerial formation, mediated to him through the urgency and intimacy of Puritan preaching schools, and sustained in the social and theological structures of the New Divinity. The mentor-protégé relationship was not unique to Edwards, but nevertheless proved to be a significant and pastorally effective feature of his ministry.
Edwards was an accomplished preacher, but his enjoyment of dialogue and commitment to Socratic method were no less significant features of his ministry. He wrote to the Trustees of Princeton describing his commitment to dialogical learning if he were to be appointed as President, and when he arrived there he encouraged his students to prepare an answer for class which could be discussed when they came together. Frequently he would debate with ministry aspirants while walking or riding. Evidently, the reason why he gave to Hopkins or Bellamy copies of his own recently composed discourses was to give them opportunity to learn while giving feedback.
Edwards’s openness to new methods of engagement in teaching is in particular evidence when he takes over responsibility for the mission schools in Stockbridge. In a letter to Sir William Pepperrell, advocate for the mission and a hero of the Louisbourg campaign of 1745, he draws attention to the value of a teacher who ‘should enter into conversation with the child,’ and desires that “the child should be encouraged, and drawn on, to speak freely, and in his turn also to ask questions, for the resolution of his own doubts.” Such reciprocity helps pupils not just to understand words but to comprehend ideas. Music could also be a pedagogical strategy, to join hearts and minds in “a relish for objects of a superior character.” On another occasion, Edwards gave advice about how to resist Satan, which evidenced a nuanced case-by-case pastoral strategy. His attention to detail in interactions with those for whom he was responsible is important to note.
In our day, ministry has been professionalised. We adopt a model of church life from the corporate sector, we create distinct spheres of work, family and leisure, and we create a cadre of leadership distant from the congregation. Our leaders are visionaries and public speakers, perhaps imitating stand-up comedians or talk-show hosts, with lives opaque to pastoral accountability. Edwards may well have maintained some of the social decorum attributed to his ministerial responsibilities in a deferential world, but alongside this he gave himself generously to those whom he was training. He wrote to Bellamy disclosing details of the settlement of his salary, speaks of Bellamy as being ‘one of the most intimate friends that I have in the world,’ and frequently invites him to come and stay at their home. In observing Edwards’s life, his mentorees learnt not only the art of theological discourse, but self-sacrifice and self-denial as well, in contrast to the “complacency and worldliness” of many other clergy of their day. In making reference to 1 Thessalonians 2, Edwards describes the church as “our mother.” He comments that “[t]his is also a lively image of the care that the church, especially the ministers of the gospel, should have of the interest of Christ committed to their care.” Edwards broadens our expectation of pastoral leadership, and encourages us to share our lives with those we train.
Edwards draws attention to the nature of Christ’s mentoring as an intentional programme of training individuals for the ministry, which Edwards as clergy from time to time fulfils, and the importance of discipling, teaching believers the necessary attitudes and skills to learn from and follow Christ, which he exemplifies. He achieves both, given that Edwards’s mentorees excelled in their ability to sustain both organisationally and pastorally the movement which he began. His strategic foresight is set before us as a noble aspiration.
