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Mentorship and personal formation

Discipleship supports two different kinds of formation records:

• Shared ministry records help a mentor and mentee remember what they agreed to discuss or do together.
• Member-private records help a person reflect, set goals, and discern without creating a staff surveillance tool.

Keep that distinction clear when you train staff and members.

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Create a mentorship program

Open Discipleship → Mentorship → New program. Customize:

• Program name and description.
• Draft, active, or archived status.
• Expected duration.
• Weekly, every-two-weeks, monthly, or flexible meeting rhythm.
• The shared check-in prompt.
• Whether the member may add shared check-ins.

Activate the program when it is ready. A teacher can edit a program they created; a Discipleship manager can manage every program.

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Write a safe check-in prompt

A good prompt prepares both people for a shared record:

What did we agree to practice or revisit before our next conversation?

Avoid prompts that invite confidential disclosures into a shared field. For example, do not ask for a full pastoral counseling note or a private confession.

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Pair a mentor and member

Discipleship managers select Pair mentor, then choose:

1. An active mentorship program.
2. An eligible mentor.
3. A member.
4. A start date.

In the current release, eligible mentors are existing staff who already have the Discipleship management or teaching permission. This keeps the initial workflow inside the church’s staff authorization boundary. An assigned mentor sees their own pairings. Managers can see all pairings. Authorized staff can pause, resume, or complete a pairing without deleting its history.

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Keep shared check-ins

Open a pairing and select Add check-in. Record a shared conversation summary and optional next steps. Check-ins are append-only and encrypted when stored. Every check-in is visible to both the mentor and mentee. Treat the saved text as a shared agreement, not a private staff note. Correct a mistake with a new check-in rather than silently rewriting the history.

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Offer private goal starting points

Open Discipleship → Formation Tools → New goal template. A template can suggest:

• A name and description.
• Prayer, Scripture, community, service, rest, generosity, or another formation area.
• A number of days.
• A private progress prompt.
• Draft, active, or archived availability.

An active template appears in the member app as an optional starting point. Members may rename it, change its wording, or create a goal from scratch. The admin dashboard shows the template—not who chose it, the member’s goal wording, progress, or private reflections.

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Private journal and class reflections

Members can open Personal formation → Private journal and create:

• A general reflection.
• A reflection linked to one of their own pathway enrollment cycles.

Entries are encrypted when stored. Only the member may read, edit, or permanently delete them. Linking an entry to a class helps the member organize their own history; it does not expose the journal to a teacher.

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Build a gifts and serving instrument

Open Discipleship → Gifts & Serving → New instrument. Start with the church-editable example or write your own. Customize:

• Introduction and low/high response labels.
• Gift or temperament areas and descriptions.
• Reflection questions and the area each answer contributes to.
• Question weights.
• Serving skills connected to each area.
• The delay before an unused strong gift is gently resurfaced.

In Volunteers → Opportunities, connect active opportunities to their serving skills. Published results can then recommend open opportunities with a plain-language reason for the match.

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Publish without changing old results

Publishing creates an immutable instrument version. Later question or scoring changes do not alter an earlier member result. That preserves the meaning of what the member originally completed. Answers and results are encrypted and private. Instrument authors do not get an answer or result dashboard. A member with an active staff mentorship pairing may deliberately share one result with their assigned mentor. Only that mentor can open it, add an affirmation, and see it while access remains shared. The member can revoke access at any time.

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Build a seasonal Rule of Life

Open Discipleship → Rule of Life → New season. Customize:

• Church-season name, dates, and invitation.
• Opening covenant and closing reflection prompts.
• Practice titles, guidance, and example rhythms.
• Required and optional practices.
• Draft, active, or archived availability.

Every template keeps prayer, rest, work, and generosity represented, while your church owns the language and may add other practices. Members create a fresh private draft for each season, personalize its practices, covenant the rule, revise it during the season, and close it with a private reflection.

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A simple staff training script

Use this explanation before launching personal formation:

The church creates invitations and starting points. Your personal goals, journal, gifts result, and Rule of Life remain yours. A mentorship check-in is different: it is a shared record that both mentor and mentee can read.

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Privacy summary

For the full boundary, read Privacy, safety, and current scope.

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Common problems