(615) 440-7585 |

Coaching for Church Leaders

Coaching for Church Leaders
Dr. Bob Harrington
Adapted from The Christian Standard, December 11, 2005

I am the founding minister/pastor of Harpeth Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee. We are a healthy church with about 550 in attendance, 50 baptisms a year, and a plan to move into our own building within the next 6-7 months (where we anticipate significant future growth). From the outside, things look very good. But there is an untold story behind the scenes from the earliest days of this church plant. The early story was of heartbreak and pain.

When my wife and I launched out with a small band of friends to start this church, we had lots of faith, but little idea of what we were doing. Then, just months after the launch, suddenly, and without notice, many of our closest friends and financial supporters left. We were in shock. We were out on a limb, with little support, and in a crisis of survival. But I had a coach and he guided me as I led our small and insecure new church . . . step by step . . . and we survived those early days. I could not have done it without my coach. He came alongside me, helped me to see God's leadership path and enabled the church to prevail.

Since those days, I have become a big supporter of coaching for church leaders. I believe in it so much, that I have coached many planters and have trained coaches for organizations like Stadia over the years (a national church planting organization) and I recently formed a team to start an organization to provide coaching for church leaders called Church Coaching Solutions.
What is a ministerial coach?

A coach is someone who comes along a minister/pastor as a special encourager. A biblical model of a coach is Barnabas, who was known both as an encourager (Acts 4:36) and a challenger (Acts 15:39). Like Barnabus, a coach helps you discover God's agenda for your life/ministry and then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, helps you turn that agenda into reality. The coach does not tell a leader what to do; instead, he/she helps and guides the leader to discover it for himself/herself and put it into practice.
What is a church planting coach?

A church planting coach is a man who has successfully planted a church and now acts as a coach to a new church planter. At Stadia, we send out every church planter with a coach. He is the most important support we provide for a church planter and a big part of the reason why 90% of the churches we plant are successful. A coach helps a planter to develop skills, make good decisions, and use his giftedness wisely. He has experienced the highs and lows; he knows what works and what doesn't, so he is able to coach the planter through the land mines of church planting.
What does a coach do for an existing church?

Ministers of existing congregations also find that coaching makes a big difference in their ability to lead. We all get into ruts and find ourselves limited by blind-spots. A coach will guide a minister by asking questions, exploring key issues, and pointing to helpful resources. Most ministers state that coaching is a life-changing experience.

Not too long ago, we hired a new children's minister at my home church. She came to us with a high level of talent, a great personality, and all the abilities necessary to make her a highly effective children's minister. But she had no ministry experience, so we hired a coach to walk with her. It was the best financial investment our church has made in children's ministry. Every week she talks to her coach, an experienced female children's minister and wise guide. Through coaching she has learned a great deal about herself as a minister, about people, and about what to do or not do with ministry difficulties. She is developing her leadership vision of children's ministry into something more advanced and refined than she could ever have developed on her own.
What does a coach do for the leader?

A good coach brings out the best in a leader. He/she helps the minister to see his/her situation realistically and what leadership actions need to be taken (or not taken). Coaching is a respectful process, where a coach brings out that higher vision which already exists in the heart of a leader. In some circumstances, coaches may provide advice and guidance, but they are careful to only do so in ways that respect the beliefs, hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the person they are coaching. In the end, a coach uses his experience to help a leader achieve his highest leadership potential.
How does someone secure a coach?

Coaching is a common business practice, but is unfortunately rare within our churches. Experienced ministers, elders, counselors, and others can make good coaches. But because coaching is a unique process, it is wise to receive training. Our natural tendency is to guide another person into our beliefs, commitments, and practices. But those trained in the art of coaching explicitly reject this approach. More and more of our ministers, elders, and leaders will benefit from coach training as we seek to raise the level of leadership in our churches. Up until recently, it was hard to find a ministerial coach and the best place to find one was by asking friends, elders, church leaders, Bible Colleges, and seminaries for recommendations. Now groups like Church Coaching Solutions are being formed to help our churches.
What is Church Coaching Solutions?

Church Coaching Solutions was formed for the purpose of providing training and high quality coaches for churches, ministers, and pastors. Dave Smith and Ted Cornelius have joined me in creating this organization. We have trained a significant number of coaches for church planters in the early stages and now we are seeking to provide other types of church ministry positions (from children's ministry, to praise and worship ministry, to senior pastor ministry). I have years of experience personally in coaching and training coaches. Dave is an experienced church planter, experienced coach (with ministry positions at East 91st Christian Church and the Orchard Group), and College professor (Ozark Christian College). Ted Cornelius is a national secular trainer who makes his living providing training in coaching for a national non-profit organization. We plan to train and certify an increasing number of church leaders in the art of coaching so that leaders will have a greater abundance of coaches . . . that will help us develop a greater abundance of effective leaders.
How are coaches trained and certified?

There are lots of secular training courses for coaches, but there have been few uniquely Christian resources. That is, until now. Church Growth experts Bob Logan and Gary Reinecke (with the help of Chuck Ridley) recently completed a qualitative research project on four continents which defined the specific profile of high impact Christian coaches. Logan was able to take the results of his research and create a training program which equips Christians in the skills of highly effective coaching. Church Coaching Solutions has formed a strategic alliance with Logan's CoachNet International Ministries (www.CoachNet.org) to bring his model to more and more church leaders and churches. We now offer a 7 to 9 month course, where our trainers use this material to train and certify ministerial coaches. We hope that our training program will set the bar with objective and international standards on effective Christian coaching.
What will coaching do for our churches and movement?

I was at the Catalyst Conference for young Christian leaders leaders recently and ran into a significant number of church planters and young church leaders. They are young, committed, idealistic, and full of vision for the future of the church. Some will make a big difference for Christ in the world - and some will not. Some have coaches and some do not, but I wish that they all did. I spent extra time with one dedicated, young church planter who launched a new church six months ago. He described the value of the coaching he has received with these words: "I do not know how I would have made it without him," "his personal care and guidance has made all the difference in the world," and "he has helped me and the church more than he will ever know."

That is what coaching can do for a leader and a church - may God us with lots of them!