Valor Mentoring Continues to Grow
Male mentors are changing society one youngster at a time.
E. Sven Anderson knows mentoring works because he’s seen it come to fruition in his own life. A co-founder of Valor Mentoring, the life insurance and investment agent has developed a close friendship with a mentee he took under his wing nine years ago. Today the young man is gainfully employed and leading home Bible studies.“It’s been quite a journey,” says Anderson, 62, a longtime member of Peoples Church in Salem, Oregon. “We believe it’s been God-directed. When we first discussed the idea, we knew we needed to do something to change the trajectory of the world, but we didn’t know what.”
“We will do just short of 100,000 hours of mentoring this year, but I envision doing one million hours by 2030,” adds CEO Tim A. Davis, 59, one of three co-founders who launched the ministry in 2014. “We want to eventually be in all 50 states through our software and video training.”
Formed as Brothers of Valor, the other key leader was Buddy Puckett, a mortgage broker who still serves on the board. In the beginning they and several other men brainstormed about various ideas, which led to its first group activity of quarterly luncheons. Their first speaker was one-time Olympic decathlete Dave Johnson.
Leaders also encouraged men to mentor younger males, get involved in community service projects, and help single mothers with automotive maintenance.
However, confusion over the group’s purpose and mission gradually led them to change the name to Valor Mentoring. Today the ministry has more than 150 matches between Christian adults and young men 11 and older. It also operates a multi-faceted recreation center that provides employment for about two dozen persons; a fourth of them are teenagers.
Ironically, the manager of the REC Center–formerly known as Town & Country Lanes—in suburban Keizer is a one-time mentee of Davis. The CEO helped the man clear up some past legal problems and expunge his criminal record.
“We wanted to focus on male mentoring,” Davis says of the name change. “We haven’t changed our vision; we just changed the emphasis. Most people understand what we do because mentoring is in the name.”
An elder at Church on the Hill in Keizer, Davis left his position as men’s ministry pastor at COTH in 2020 to become Valor’s CEO. He maintains AG ministerial credentials and sees his current mission as marketplace ministry.
That includes building relationships with county commissioners, police chiefs and other community leaders who gather at the REC Center for a monthly breakfast meeting called “Food for Thought.”
“We get 50 to 80 people to those meetings,” Davis says. “Someone from the community shares their testimony and how Jesus is still winning in their role as a police chief, a pastor, or in their business. It’s incredible when that many leaders get in a room and there’s that kind of sharing.”
While mentoring is their mainstay, the acquisition of a 24-lane bowling alley in 2020 from former owners Don and Ann Lebold has expanded Valor’s horizons.
The REC has hosted numerous community meetings and helped six other nonprofits raise $225,000 in funding. Students from more than 80 schools visit each year for bowling events, field trips, and graduation parties, with the REC seeing about 500 customers a day.
“The key is having safe spaces to gather,” Davis says. “You and I might have grown up with what I call ‘third spaces,’ like a roller rink or whatever, but most of those have been disappearing from our culture. We’re providing that third space again for young people.”
In February, Valor’s outreach expanded again when the ministry purchased the former Keizer Grange Hall, about 1.5 miles from the REC Center. The facility includes a 2,500-square-foot coffee shop and a large open space for video production, music lessons, and other after-school activities that will launch this fall.
Davis says the REC Grange will enable Valor Mentoring to serve 200 to 400 more kids each week.
Although its one-on-one mentoring remains exclusively male, the CEO says activities like music, audio-visual production, photography, and video game tournaments are suited for young women as well.
Becoming a mentor is fairly simple. It includes undergoing a background check, providing a spiritual reference, and attending a two-hour workshop that covers basic mentoring precepts. Candidates also complete a personality assessment and other information to facilitate better matches.
“What we learned over time is you can only force feed so much at once,” Davis explains. “It’s better to get someone on board and continue to give them tools.”
While data showing the results of Valor’s efforts won’t be available until mid-2025, the CEO says the damage fatherlessness has done in American society is obvious. It includes such U.S. Census Bureau statistics as 90% of runaways and 90% of prison inmates coming from fatherless homes, as well as 71% of high school dropouts.
Conversely, young people who are mentored are 55% more likely to enroll in college, 78% more likely to volunteer regularly, and 130% more likely to hold a leadership position.
Davis says Valor Mentoring is also of great benefit to churches of every denomination.
“Our ability to activate men in the church is unique,” Davis says. “We have lots of crazy stories about marriages getting saved and divorced couples getting remarried. We know we’ve seen youth homelessness reduced and attendance at school increased. We’re also having an impact on the foster care and juvenile system.”
“When you become a mentor it impacts you,” says Anderson, now chairman of the board. “Men who are mentoring don’t walk away without being transformed.”