The role of the pastor is complicated, the hours long, the expectations high. And when the rewards are equally high, pastors remain in their calling for years, shepherding, teaching and leading with all their heart.

And mentoring.

Some pastors view the word mentoring with suspicion, leery of escalating expectations. Others are a bit confused, unsure what mentoring even means. Besides, can a pastor really afford to invest the time that mentoring demands?

Numerous EFCA pastors are equally quick to ask: Can we afford not to?

One possible misconception to dispel: Mentoring doesn’t have to mean that a pastor schedules an individual, hands-on meeting with every staff member every week.

Consider Dale Hummel, pastor of EFC of Naperville (Ill.)—a 2,500-member church with 26 staff members and nine pastors/directors, three of whom are direct-reports. “I believe that the senior pastor should be mentoring his direct report(s),” Dale explains, “and then see to it that a system is in place for all the others.

“I do skill mentoring with our staff at a general level, but one of the things I ask all of them to do is find a pace-setter in their field of primary responsibility. People who seriously run marathons will train with a pace-setter who runs just a bit faster than they do.

“I ask my staff to network at conferences, reach out to larger churches, read books and discover who’s out there doing what they do but in a larger context that is not too foreign to our experience. Once they identify a few potential pace-setters, I encourage them to make contact and pursue these mentors.”

Mentoring also looks different depending upon the context and the people. For example, what if you’re serving in an economically depressed urban community, with barely a paid staff member to call your own?

“One of the biggest mistakes I made earlier was to look for people who had the sophistication to lead programs and organizations,” says Dennis Hesselbarth, pastor of Hilltop Urban Church in Wichita, Kan., which has only two paid staff members.

“I’ve learned to assess people’s gifts and capacities and help them develop accordingly. We do very little one-to-one mentoring; we find that small-group/peer-group contexts help the most. We do more coaching—asking questions, helping someone discover their passion and supporting them as they do their own thinking/acting/working.”

And does mentoring look different to different age groups? “I’m from a generation that’s more formulaic in the way we’ve done church or discipleship,” says James Mendoza, 39, pastor of Vista Community Church in San Antonio, Texas.

“The generation following me doesn’t want that formal training. They do respect their elders, but it’s a peer relationship versus a clear leader-follower.”

Take John Barba, 23, a ministerial intern at James’ church who had asked James to mentor him. “We want life-on-life mentoring straight up without any beating around the bush,” John says. “It’s on a more relational level, as opposed to sitting in a room of three to five guys and going through a book on mentorship.”

Fortunately for John, his pastor regards mentoring as just a natural part of who he is. “I’m always learning—being around people who are one or two steps ahead of me,” James Mendoza says. “As I’m learning, my heart is to share with others who are wanting to grow, too, who might be two steps behind me.”

Regardless of the context and the limitations, the encouragement is to start first with those who report to you and then get involved, encouraging them to grow into their God-given giftings.

The obvious next question is: Who is mentoring the senior pastor?

Good question indeed.

“We all still need to be mentored, no matter what age or stage of life,” says Eric Tober, who serves as associate pastor at Calvary Bible Church in Bourbonnais, Ill., after seven years pastoring at State College (Pa.) EFC.

“Whatever you do, don’t go solo,” he continues. “Ask God about the needs you see in your own life. You have to have somebody—if not many different kinds of people—whom you’re learning from.

“Howard Hendricks is famous for saying that we all need a Paul, a Barnabas and a Timothy—someone who is pouring into us (a mentor), someone who is an equal (peer) and someone we are pouring our lives into (protégé).”

Pastors turn to other seasoned leaders to sharpen their skills in speaking, leading, administrating and understanding principles of church growth.

“Work on building a relationship with someone who does what you do but does it better,” agrees Dale Hummel. “Take the initiative and be persistent in pursuing the relationship. Sometimes these folks aren’t other pastors but successful and godly business leaders.

“The best advice I received as a young man was: Find someone who does what you do and get close to them, even if you have to pay to clean their toilets!” The day any pastor “outgrows” the need to be mentored, he adds, “that’s the day you stop growing spiritually and as a leader.”

True, the expectations associated with being a pastor are high. So if you think of mentoring as just one more thing, you’ll be overwhelmed. Your plate is already full. But when you think of mentoring as life-on-life learning—learning from others and gifting your learning to others—it’s as natural to pastors as breathing.