Too busy.

It describes many of our lifestyles — and many of our students’ lifestyles as well.

And sadly, we more often wear this characteristic as a badge of honor, rather than an indictment on our collective misuse of time.

Our culture has come to equate an overly full schedule and unhealthy pace of life with importance, significance, and they way of success.

But among the many issues I have with living a “too busy” kind of life — chief among them is that we too often fail to make room for the things that are most important.

Schedules are full — yet somehow we leave out some of the most important things we could be involved in.

I’ve talked before about some of the challenges facing mentoring relationships — post-modernity, prolonged adolescence, and a cultural call to tolerance.

But would you believe me if I told you that the #1 reason I hear — from both faculty/staff and students — regarding why they’re not in a mentoring relationship has to do with being too busy.

And it’s not that they themselves are too busy — but rather that the person they’ve identified as a potential mentor (or mentoree) seems to live such a busy life that they could not imagine them having the time or inclination to participate in this kind of relationship.

I hear it from both sides — from students and mentor-types.

So here’s what I’m suggesting to us mentor-types in particular:

1. Create more space in your schedule.

It is my belief that there are far fewer things in our schedule that are absolute “musts” than we think. Much of our calendar is ours to fill — and protect. And we need to be good stewards of our time.

We also need to model to others what it means to live life more intentionally — including essential elements and living at a healthy pace.

2. Be willing to invite students into this kind of relationship.

There will be some students that we need to invest in ourselves — we do for some that which we wish we could do for all.

But since we cannot be a mentor for every student we encounter, we’ll need to play the role of spiritual matchmaker. We’ll need to help facilitate this kind of relationship between students and well-suited mentor-types.

Too busy is too weak an excuse to not pursue this kind of relationship.

——————————

If you like the kinds of conversations you’ve found here at FaithONCampus.com, then I highly encourage you to check out The 2013 Faith ON Campus Summer Institute — happening June 4th & 5th in Nashville, TN! This year I will be joined by author and leadership guru Tim Elmore for a two-day conversation about the unique challenges and opportunities that exist in mentoring this generation of college students! Find out more here. And find out how to win your ticket to the conference here.