Sue Edwards - Organic Mentoring: A Mentors Guide to Relationships with Next Generation Women

Young women are desperate for mentors to guide them in thriving mentoring relationships that help heal their brokenness. Organic Mentoring sheds light on why traditional methods flounder and offers fresh, insightful, and useful suggestions to meet the challenges of mentoring next generation women. This book shows us how to pass on our faith while moving from print to technology in relationships and life.

Elisa Morgan, speaker, author, The Beauty of Broken, publisher, FullFill, and president emerita of MOPS International

When Ive asked Christian women what they feel they need most of all to thrive as a Christian and survive as a leader, one of the most common answers is a mentor. Without mentors, women constantly have to recreate the wheel because they dont have the benefit of hearing the wise counsel of one who has tread their path before. The trouble is that the generational differences between older and younger women are vast and they prohibit these types of relationships from developing. In their book, Organic Mentoring, Sue Edwards and Barbara Neumann address these differences and build a bridge across that generational divide. If youre an older woman who has longed to impart the wisdom youve gleaned from the years but werent sure how to go about it, get this book! Sue and Barbara have provided a guide that will help you navigate the mentoring relationship with aplomb.

Halee Gray Scott, author of Dare Mighty Things: Mapping the Challenges of Leadership for Christian Women

I love this book! I will definitely incorporate it into several contexts, including my seminary classroom teaching as well as personal relationships. Generational differences have clearly stalled the mentoring advantage. Organic Mentoring gets us moving again in a world that desperately needs the benefit of intergenerational mentoring. The text provides valuable understanding, plus practical tips and tools offered to leaders, mentors, and mentees. This useful resource will inevitably stimulate healthy, organic relationships with next generation women!

Bev Hislop, Professor of Pastoral Care, Western Seminary, and author of Shepherding a Womans Heart and Shepherding Women in Pain

I am a product of mentoring. It changed my life, my family, and my future. The spiritual investment other women made in my life changed the course of history. In Gods Word there are only a few times where the Lord asks women to do a specific thing for him and mentoring is one of them. He doesnt say how exactly, but the command is clear, not optional. Thankfully, Sue Edwards and Barbara Neumann tell us how, and outline some specifics for successfully mentoring the next generation. They provide a new mentoring mind-set with a fresh approach that feels natural and meaningful, and results in something supernatural. Speaking truth into the life of a younger woman doesnt require a program, it requires authenticity, connection, and understanding the needs of the younger woman. Organic Mentoring is the resource every woman needs to accomplish the assignment the Lord has given us. As a former director of womens ministry for twenty years, I have seen and experienced the struggles with trying to make a mentoring ministry work, and I am so excited about this resource that explains, instructs, and encourages organic mentoring.

Debbie Stuart, Church and Leadership Development Director for Women of Faith, and former director of womens ministry at Prestonwood Baptist Church

Organic Mentoring offers crucial insights toward the relational work of the Great Commission in our current generationsmentoring, discipling, teaching, and training. By thoughtfully and practically describing both the disconnects and the common desires between modern and postmodern generations, this book gives us needed clarity to restore vital guiding relationships in this age of technology. The authors ignite our hope to recapture the vanishing blessing of the transforming relationships that help us connect life and truth!

Wendy Wilson, Consultant for Ministry Development of Women, Missio NexusProfessional Services Group

Sue Edwards and Barbara Neumann have given evangelical women an extraordinary gift in their new book, Organic Mentoring. With accurate data, keen cultural insights, and a solid biblical foundation, they give us a fresh understanding of how to effectively mentor the next generation. The section on training will help sharpen leaders skills and rekindle their vision for developing meaningful relationships among women. Timely and practical, this book will encourage you to take mentoring to the next level and beyond!

Susie Hawkins, Bible teacher and author of From One Ministry Wife to Another

We live in a world of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where the goal of a conversation is to pass along information in as little time, with as little small talk, as possible. Yet the heart cry is still the samewalk with me through this complicated journey called life. Sue and Barbara unwrap and untangle the differing aspects of our generations, help us to understand and respect each other, and thus awaken a desire to pass truth along to the next generation. But they dont stop with understanding and respect, Organic Mentoring sets forth the how-to and the whythe practical tools needed to embark on, and enjoy, this journey with one another. Organic Mentoring will take a prominent place on my bookshelf and in my ministry as I, and others, strive to transform lives and grow his kingdom.

Cynthia Fantasia, Pastor, Service and Women, Grace Chapel

As a ministry leader, I will be recommending this well-written and engaging book frequently. In fact, Im just going to keep it in stock. Questions about mentoring come up all the time. And every woman who desires to be in a mentoring relationship needs to read this book! It is long overdue. Sue and Barbara have expressed what my heart knew to be true about mentoring. You see, I am a postmodern woman and a casualty of formal mentoring programs. But Im not ready to give up on mentoring; its biblical, its necessary, and women desire it. This book is the tool I have been looking for. It corrects mistaken thinking and encourages modern women to move toward a way of mentorship that postmodern women long for. I cant wait to get this into the hands of my leadership team!

Jodie Niznik, Pastor to Women, Irving Bible Church

Organic Mentoring: A Mentors Guide to Relationships with Next Generation Women

2014 by Sue Edwards and Barbara Neumann

Published by Kregel Publications, a division of Kregel, Inc., 2450 Oak Industrial Dr. NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49505-6020.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews.

Scriptures quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

ISBN 978-0-8254-4333-6

Printed in the United States of America

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To our mentors:

You poured into two lonely, misguided young women with little to offer, and God used you to completely change the direction of our lives.

To our mentees: