FAQs

Please check out our Quick Start page and enroll in our Canvas Orientation Course.

You may request any full-time Truett Faculty member (in Waco, Houston, or San Antonio) to serve as Professor of Record for your mentoring experience, regardless of their field.

Your Professor of Record will work with you in developing an approved reading list and finalizing approval of your Mentoring Syllabus before you register for MENT 7V00. During your mentoring semester, you will communicate regularly with your professor and submit all of your written work to the professor for evaluation.  You will meet with your professor at the end of the mentoring semester to debrief the experience. The Professor of Record will give you a grade for the course.

The Mentoring Office must approve your selection of a Professor of Record before you submit your application. This step is necessary to keep the workload balanced. To request a Professor of Record, email the Director of Mentoring (Lawrence_Parsley@baylor.edu) listing your first four choices. The earlier you request, the more likely you will be assigned to your preferred professor.

Before you complete the application process, you will enlist a Mentor to work with you during your Mentoring semester. Your Mentor is responsible for becoming familiar with the program requirements of the seminary and educating the church, ministry, agency, or institution about the significance of the opportunity.

The Mentor meets weekly with you during the mentoring experience and assists you in finding opportunities within the organization to learn and grow. The Mentor provides you and your Professor of Record with written evaluations of your progress at mid-term and after your mentoring experience.

Mentors should be selected using the following criteria as a guideline:

• Education. Most mentors will hold a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree from a seminary accredited by the American Association of Theological Schools or equivalent academic training in their field.
• Experience. The Mentor should have significant ministerial experience in the ministry field in which s/he is mentoring a Student.
• Competence. The Mentor must have displayed a ministry life of competence in the ministry field in which s/he is mentoring a Student.
• Compatibility. The Mentor must agree with the educational goals and doctrinal priorities of the George W. Truett Theological Seminary.
• Spirituality. The Mentor must have demonstrated a mature and spiritual ministerial life.
• Teaching. The Mentor must have both a desire and the ability to teach/mentor a Student in the blessings, rigors, knowledge, and experience of ministerial life. The Mentor must be willing to demonstrate personally how ministry is done and spend significant time with the Student for the sake of the Student’s education and future ministry.

If you have questions about a potential Mentor’s qualifications or need to locate a qualified Mentor, contact the Mentoring Office (Lawrence_Parsley@baylor.edu).

The “V” in the course number indicates that the hours are “variable.” Here is what you need to know in registering for the course:

• If you are an M.Div. only, M.Div./M.M., or M.Div./MBA student and have completed MENT 7300 (Introduction to Mentoring), you should register for nine credit hours.
• If you are an Advanced Standing M.Div./MSW student, you should register for nine credit hours in the Spring in connection with SWO 5790 (Advanced Internship III).
• If you are an M.Div./MSW student, who is not Advanced Standing, you should register for five credit hours in the Fall and four credit hours in the Spring semesters of your third year while enrolled in SWO 5491 (Foundation Internship I) and SWO 5492 (Foundation Internship II).
• If you are an MACM student or a student in the MA programs in Ecology, Theology, and Food Justice or Theology and Sports Ministry, you should register for six credit hours.
• You should register for nine credit hours if you are in the MA program in Contextual Witness and Innovation.
• MTS students are not required to take MENT 7V00.

Suppose you are still relatively new in pastoral ministry. In that case, you will find an experienced pastor in another congregation (or perhaps a retired pastor) qualified to serve as your mentor. You will do your work in your church as usual but will design some learning experiences that will allow you to observe how things are done in other, perhaps larger, congregations. You will engage in reflective conversations about your work and experiences with your Mentor each week.

Occasionally quite experienced pastors return to seminary to complete their education. When appropriate, their mentoring requirements are fulfilled by completing a congregational research project in their setting and working with a Mentor to reflect on the experience.

Some students chose to take a leave of absence from their congregation during their mentoring experience to take advantage of particular opportunities. Others choose to mentor “in place.” This will look a bit different in each case. Some who are serving as a minister to students, for example, and following a call into that same ministry beyond seminary, might find a more experienced student minister in another congregation to serve as their Mentor and will continue their work with their own students while meeting regularly with their Mentor for reflection on their work and experiences. They will also design learning experiences that will take them out of their congregation to see that work done elsewhere.

Others, although serving in a staff position, are following a call into pastoral ministry. These students will work with their own pastor to see if it is possible to engage in some ministry experiences during that semester that take them beyond their everyday staff responsibilities. However, we discourage you asking your pastor or supervisor to serve as your mentor since this can become a conflict of interest. The Mentor should be concerned about you, not about your performance. Consequently, an experienced pastor outside your congregation would be sought to serve as Mentor.

You must ask, “What is my specific vocational calling?” If that is something other than congregational ministry, we want you to design a ministry experience as close to that calling as possible. The Director of Mentoring will think this through with you. Students often design creative responses to integrate their calling and their mentoring experience.

You will take 9 hours of MENT 7V00. You do not need to develop a Mentoring Syllabus. Complete the online application process to obtain a permit to register for MENT 7V00.

If you are an Advanced Standing student, you will register for MENT 7V00 in connection with your Advanced Internship III (SWO 5790). Others, not Advanced Standing, will take MENT 7V00 in connection with their Foundation Internship I (SWO 5491) in the Fall and Foundation Internship II (SWO 5492) in the Spring.

At the end of SWO 5491, you will submit your Field Supervisor’s final evaluation to the Director of Mentoring in Ministry. At the end of SWO 5492, you will turn in to the Director of Mentoring in Ministry your portfolio, including all materials submitted for SWO 5491 and 5492. Advanced Standing students will include in the portfolio all materials submitted for SWO 5790. In addition, your mentoring portfolio will contain other items outlined in Appendix I of the Mentoring Handbook.

Yes. Students interested in pastoral care or hospital chaplaincy often fulfill their mentoring requirements in this way. You must first apply and be accepted into a qualified CPE program. Then complete the online mentoring application to receive a permit to register for MENT 7V00. You do not need to submit a Mentoring Syllabus.

In addition to doing all the work required in the CPE program, you will submit to the Director of Mentoring a portfolio of your program requirements while also producing a Theological Reflection Case Study.

(Army, Navy, Air Force in opportunities page hyperlink) like www.goarmy.com/chaplain; navy.com/careers-benefits/careers/religious-services/navy-chaplain; www.airforce.com/chaplain

Indeed, you may fulfill your MENT 7V00 requirement by being in a Military Chaplaincy Training Program. You need not submit a Mentoring Syllabus. Once the training course is scheduled, complete the online mentoring application to receive a permit to register for MENT 7V00. In addition to completing all the work required by the training program, you will present to the Director of Mentoring in Ministry a portfolio including various items outlined in Appendix J of the Mentoring Handbook. You will ask the Director of your training program to email a grade recommendation to the Director of Mentoring at the end of your training.

If you want to mentor internationally, you must begin the placement process with a lead time of at least 90 days to complete the necessary arrangements and paperwork.  Go to Baylor University’s Center for Global Engagement website (https://globalengagement.web.baylor.edu/) and follow the instructions provided for Student Only Travel (https://globalengagement.web.baylor.edu/register-travel/student-only-travel).

Your Mentoring Portfolio is the accumulation in digital form of all your assignments from your mentoring experience. You will receive a set of Box folders at the beginning of the Semester to house all of your written assignments. This will also be shared with your Professor of Record and the Director of Mentoring. Your portfolio will include the following items:

• The approved syllabus
• Spiritual Formation documents, including your spiritual autobiography, rule of life, and sense of vocational calling
• A theological reflection and analysis of the ministry context
• The fulfillment of all items in the appropriate Ministry Competency Checklist
• The Theological Case Study reflection
• Critical reviews of books or articles included in the required reading approved by the Professor of Record
• The mid-term and final evaluations of the Student’s mentoring experience submitted by the Mentor
• The weekly ministry journal
• Other items the Student or Professor of Record decide to include in the portfolio to document the experience.