A seismic shift is coming in the way pastors lead congregations—toward a way of leading that is highly relational, deeply intentional, and always contextual. It is called the "coach approach" to ministry. Increasingly, effective pastors will draw on the skills of professional life coaching in working with lay persons in their congregations.
A coach is someone who helps a person move from where they are now to where they want to be. The term is rooted in the concept of transportation. Years ago a person relied on a "coach" to move from one place to another. The word evolved to describe the role of an athletic trainer who helps athletes advance to the level for which they are striving. Church members today are yearning for pastoral leaders willing to coach them into the fullness of lay ministry. As one active church leader put it, "I wish my pastor were more like my trainer at the gym who helps me set goals, encourages me, and keeps me moving forward. That is exactly what I need in my spiritual life—an actual plan for living out my faith and someone beside me to push me and cheer me on."
In our society today, professional life coaching has become an increasingly popular leadership development strategy, often replacing or supplementing more traditional methods of consulting. At one time coaching was viewed as a way to fix problematic behaviors, but increasingly organizations use coaching to develop the capabilities of high-potential leaders. Individuals who make use of professional life coaching consider a wider number of perspectives, develop larger goals, set clearer objectives, and stay focused on the big picture. They feel more empowered to make change and are held accountable for moving forward. They tend to be more productive and experience fulfillment in more aspects of their lives.
Imagine the benefits to a congregation when high-potential ministry leaders are developed in these ways. This can occur when pastors possess the skills to coach leaders into the completeness of their calling from God. Not every pastor needs to be an accredited professional life coach, but all pastors can be trained in basic coaching skills. Just as pastors receive seminary training in the basic skills of pastoral care, I am proposing that pastors receive training in the coach approach to ministry.
In the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church we are striving explicitly to create a "culture of coaching." As a conference staff member and a certified and endorsed professional life coach, one of my responsibilities is to guide the coaching skill development of 18 other pastors on our conference staff who employ coaching skills in their work with other clergy. In addition to ongoing training and monthly opportunities for peer learning, coaching allows us to contextualize learning in each pastor’s life and setting for ministry.
Now that we are using the coach approach to guide pastors into greater effectiveness and fulfillment, the next step is to make coaching skills available for pastors as they work with the laity in their churches. We also envision a time when pastors are teaching those coaching skills to laity.
What would it look like for a pastor to lead with a coach approach to ministry?
Pastors utilizing this approach would spend more time in one-on-one sessions with key church leaders and less time trying to shape ministries by exerting their influence in church committees. Lead pastors with a staff would invest significant time in regular one-on-one meetings with each staff member focusing on passions, objectives, and accountability.
This approach requires that a pastor come alongside other leaders rather than direct them. "Directive leadership" is reserved for use at the highest level to guide and lead the congregation forward. The role of the pastor becomes one of continually eliciting passion and initiative for ministry.
The pastor would help leaders set clear ministry or committee objectives, help them stay on track with their objectives, hold them accountable for progress toward their objectives, and celebrate their successes.
While this list does not exhaust the potential contribution of the coach approach to ministry, it does begin to point the way. At its heart, this approach embraces a deep appreciation for the ownership of ministry residing with the laity and respects their resourcefulness and giftedness. It places a higher value on serving an individual’s response to God’s call in their life than on serving the needs of the institution. It frees the pastor from the myth that he or she is the expert in all things. And it values the fact that accountability and follow through matter when it comes to the church’s work of transforming the world.
These are learned skills and attitudes that every pastor can employ to help lay persons identify their passions for serving God, commit to a plan of lay ministry, and follow through to make a difference in God’s transformation of the world. Today’s pastors must become more like trainers at the gym—highly relational, deeply intentional, and always contextual. They must embody a coach approach to ministry.
A relationship with Jesus Christ leads to a changed or transformed life. Coaching strives for an identical outcome. The end desire of the coaching relationship is a changed or transformed life which means that the work of coaching at the very root is holy work.
The focus of coaching is always the whole person. We coach the “being” of the person and not just their “doing”, in the same way that Jesus invites us not so much just to try to “do right things” as much as he invites us to a profound change in our “being”. The coaching relationship is that container in which the possibility of holy transformation gets sifted out stirred up and kneaded.
Some coaching is geared toward helping the client achieve measurable results and organizational outcomes. However, we know that improvement in those measurable outcomes is almost always tied to issues of life fulfillment. Executive coaching may be aimed pointedly at improved job efficiency or greater work capacity, but the thing that may affect that outcome the most could be taking steps to improve the marital relationship at home, or helping that person develop plans for debt relief, or coaching them into an exercise routine for greater health. In my work coaching newly appointed District Superintendents the focus of the coaching very often moves from challenges of effectiveness in their new role to self care related commitments and making time for their families, and their own spiritual nourishment. Coaching takes into account the whole person.
In instances where the person we are coaching is also a person of faith, we may ask for their permission to include features of our tradition such as praying with the person, pausing in the coaching to allow for holy silence, or even make biblical connections as called for in the coaching. However, coaching from this perspective needs to be broached with great caution and sensitivity to avoid corrupting the bedrock of the coaching relationship. Agenda-driven Christian coaching ironically may undermine the very life transformation that is possible for the person being coached, by restrictively shaping the container for that transformation to occur. What a great opportunity we have through agenda-free coaching to engage with persons who are church-adverse and skeptical of all things religious in a coaching process that leads toward transformation.
One of the realities we hold as true from the perspective of the Christian faith is that where two or more are gathered there is also a third. We attempt to describe that third presence in many ways–Holy Spirit, the Presence of Jesus, the Spirit of God, the Holy Other. All are ultimately inadequate, however they point to a divine presence which is always the context for human interaction.
As a Christian coach, what I must trust is that the transformation occurring in a person’s life is the transformation God would have for them. Because I trust that God is ostensibly present in the transformative work of coaching, and that my coaching is spiritual work, and that God is always present in our human interactions -I trust God with the process and outcome of the coaching. This elemental belief keeps me from the temptation to bend the coaching to make it more outwardly religious or to feel the need to use the language of faith and the familiar context of my tradition as the portal for change.
Because I trust the open container of the coaching relationship and the work of the ever present Holy Spirit as a powerful means for life transformation, coaching is spiritual work every bit as much as other forms of ministry.This work is never just about organization results but always includes deep life fulfillment; it is the work of “being” and not just “doing”. To coach from this perspective makes coaching not just spiritual work, it is in fact, holy vocation.
Creating a Culture of Coaching By Chris Holmes
At the heart, coaching is coming along beside another person in a way that is highly relational, deeply intentional, and always contextual to lead toward transformation. That is what Jesus did. That is what ministry is. That is what the skills of coaching can help all of us do.
The BWC is following this conviction: every denominational leader, pastor, and lay person in leadership in the local church will benefit greatly by learning and using the basic skills of coaching in ministry. In this Conference we are beginning to change the contour of ministry through teaching the elemental skills of coaching to our pastors and lay persons.
That intrepid endeavor began this fall when the first round of 80 pastors and key lay persons from across the conference attended one day regional training seminars, followed by four follow-up phone group coaching sessions. The participants are learning the eight primary skills of coaching: power questions, curiosity, deep listening, challenging, intruding, getting the essence, acknowledgement and accountability. Each of these skills is demonstrated and described by the trainer and participants then practice using the skills with one another.
Our efforts are not to actually create certified coaches, but to teach basic coaching skills for use in general ministry. Applying the skills of coaching to the realm of everyday ministry in the life of the local church creates a potent combination with remarkable potential. The most important part of this training is for each pastor and lay person trained in coaching skills to develop a ministry plan for how to use these skills in their work in the church.
Most congregations have not developed a means for committed congregational leaders to set crisp goals that have to do with the “God-sized” business of the church. So we pretty much muddle along in an unquestioning way doing what we have always done year after year, even though we have a daunting collective realization that what we have always done is no longer bearing fruit.
Imagine pastors who take a “coach approach” by meeting quarterly with individual church leader to review the goals each leader has for their area of ministry, to celebrate what has been accomplished, and work on overcoming the obstacles to areas that are not moving forward. Imagine lay leadership in congregations having “coach-like” conversations with other church members helping them find fulfilling ways to live out their faithfulness and then commit to taking action. Imagine church committee chairpersons leading with focus and holding their team members accountable to following through with commitments made.
One of the primary contributions of employing these coach-like conversations at all levels of the church is that it provides a framework for honest conversations like -what is working well/what is not working, what is moving the church forward/what is not moving the church forward. We seem to struggle in finding a safe means to have the hard conversations which are so critical to churches that are becoming world transforming disciple-growing outposts.
Coaching is about change and movement forward toward life transformation. Does that not also perfectly describe the ministry of clergy and laity? Ministry is about change and movement toward life transformation –transformation through Jesus Christ.
