Getting started

Mentor-led study begins with an active pairing. Once connected, use the mentorship hub to manage each mentee and the invitations page to send or respond to invites.

Who can mentor

Requirement	Detail
Spiritual phase	Meat or higher
Account	Both you and your mentee need Garrison accounts
Cardinality	One active mentor per mentee; you may mentor many mentees

Milk-phase learners need a mentor before they can start mentored book studies. Transition and meat learners may study solo or with a mentor depending on the template.

Mentorship hub

Open Mentorship from the app shell (/mentorship) or the Your mentees widget on the dashboard.

Area	Purpose
Your mentees	Active pairings — choose Manage to open a mentee’s detail page
Pending invitations	Invites waiting for accept or decline
Invite someone	Jump to the invitations flow
Past mentorships	Ended, declined, or revoked pairings (toggle to show)
Chat	Message your mentor when you are a mentee; mentees message you from their hub

The mentee detail page (/mentorship/[id]) is where you assign intro studies, tracks, and ad-hoc studies. Only the mentor on an active pairing can open this page.

Inviting a mentee

Go to Mentorship → Invite someone (/mentorship/invite).
Under Invite a mentee, enter their email address.
Submit — they receive a pending invitation in their hub.

They must accept before the pairing becomes active. You can also accept an invitation when a Milk-phase learner invites you as their mentor.

Gender pairing rules

Mentorship in Garrison is one-on-one discipleship: your mentee reads and reflects in their lane, you guide and review in the mentor lane, and you may meet or message through the pairing. That relationship carries teaching and spiritual authority, so Garrison applies gender pairing rules drawn from Scripture and practical wisdom.

Rules use each person’s gender from onboarding (Male / Female). Both you and your mentee must have gender set before any invite can complete.

Pairing	Rule
Female mentor + male mentee	Blocked — cannot be invited or accepted
Male mentor + female mentee	Allowed only after both parties acknowledge a cross-gender warning on invite or accept
Same gender	No extra gate

Female mentor with a male mentee

Garrison does not allow a woman to mentor a man in this one-on-one format. The app blocks the invitation entirely.

This reflects the apostle Paul’s instruction that a woman is not to teach or exercise authority over a man in the gathered church context, and his pattern for older women to teach and train younger women:

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man… — 1 Timothy 2:12 (KJV)

The aged women… teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children… — Titus 2:3–5 (KJV)

A woman discipling men is not forbidden in every setting (for example, group Bible study or a mother teaching her own children), but Garrison’s v1 mentorship model is paired 1:1, so this combination is not offered. If you are a woman called to disciple men, consider mentoring in a church small group or other accountable group context outside this pairing type.

Male mentor with a female mentee

This pairing is permitted when both mentor and mentee understand the risks and confirm on the invite or accept screen. Garrison shows a cross-gender warning because private, ongoing 1:1 discipleship between a man and a woman who are not spouse, parent/child, or in a group can create compromising situations.

The warning recommends same-gender mentorship or family/group contexts when possible. Before you acknowledge:

Consider whether a same-gender mentor is available and a better fit.
Be transparent with your spouse, elders, or accountability partners if you proceed.
Keep communication on-platform and focused on study; avoid unnecessary private contact.

Both the mentor and the mentee must check the acknowledgment box — sending an invite is not enough on its own; the other party must also confirm when they accept (or you must confirm when you accept their invite).

Same-gender pairings

When mentor and mentee share the same gender, no extra acknowledgment step is required. Ordinary pastoral wisdom still applies: maintain appropriate boundaries, involve your church leadership when needed, and end the pairing from the hub if the relationship is no longer healthy.

Household and group exceptions (not yet in the app)

Product planning includes future exceptions — for example, a husband mentoring his wife without the cross-gender warning, a mother mentoring a young son past the female-mentor block, or group-based discipleship. v1 does not apply these automatically; all pairings follow the table above until household and group flows ship. See Mentorship for the technical plan.

Responding to invitations

Pending invites appear at the top of /mentorship/invite:

Accept — pairing becomes active; Milk mentees can start mentored studies.
Decline — invitation closes with no pairing.

Ending a mentorship

Either party can end an active pairing from the mentorship hub (End mentorship). Ended pairings move to history. You can still read past chat messages but cannot send new ones.

Ending a mentorship does not delete the mentee’s studies or notes. It removes your access to their mentored content going forward.

Chat

Each active pairing includes a chat panel on the hub (for mentees viewing their mentor) and on the mentee detail page (for mentors).

Messages may pass through content moderation before send. If moderation is unavailable, you can still send at your discretion.

Full threaded messaging outside mentorship context is planned for a later release — chat in v1 is scoped to the active pairing.

Route	Page
`/mentorship`	Mentorship hub
`/mentorship/invite`	Send or respond to invitations
`/mentorship/[id]`	Manage a specific mentee (mentor only)
`/mentor/[mentee]/studyPlans/[study]`	Mentor view of a mentee’s study

Next: Tracks and assignment when you are ready to pick a discipleship path for a new mentee.