Category: Coaching Page 4 of 5

As I have been saying, an essential component of SEND U’s training is providing coaching for those who are seeking to grow and develop in their ministry skills and leadership. Based on our own personal experience with coaching, and our understanding of the needs of our missionaries, our International Director and I are convinced that personal coaching is critical to the success of our training programs.

But what actually is coaching?  The word “coach” can conjure up in our minds an image of an angry, pot-bellied tyrant who yelled at you every time you touched the ball.   That is NOT what we are talking about.

The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”  Our SEND U website gives the following definition of Christian coaching: “Coaching is an ongoing conversation that empowers a person or team to fully live out God’s calling in their life and profession.”

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I frequently refer to SEND U as SEND’s training department, although I realize that training is also only part of what it means to “equip SEND missionaries and leaders to more effectively mobilize God’s people and engage the unreached in order to establish reproducing churches.”  The other half of what we do in SEND U, and a major focus of me personally is coaching.  The byline of our newsletter says “BY COACHING AND TRAINING, WE EQUIP MISSION LEADERS TO EFFECTIVELY MOBILIZE THEIR TEAMS TO ENGAGE THE UNREACHED AND ESTABLISH REPRODUCING CHURCHES.”  Are coaching and training two separate assignments or are they somehow related?  I see training and coaching as two complementary “hands,” both needed to develop our membership to accomplish our mission. 

In fact, training becomes much more effective when combined with coaching.  An article in Public Personal Management analyzes the impact of a managerial training program.  They found that the training itself improved the managers’ productivity by 22.4 percent.  But when the training was followed by 8 weeks of one-on-one coaching, the productivity of these managers increased by 88 percent.  The reason for this significant jump in training impact is not hard to understand.   The training course supplied the content, the information, the framework.   But the coaching helped each participant put that information into practice by giving encouragement, accountability and help with goal setting, problem-solving and evaluation.  That great material didn’t just stay in the binder and fill a spot on the managers’ bookshelf, but actually was translated into real life changes in the way he or she led.

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Why am I so convinced that coaching is valuable for missionaries? Primarily because of how much coaching helped me at a time in my life and ministry when I was frustrated and felt that I had plateaued and was no longer growing. Back in 2007, I contacted Dr. Keith Webb in Singapore about some questions I had about coaching missionaries.  I was trying to “coach” a church planting team in FER, but I had no real idea what that meant. Rather than just “tell” me what a coach does, Keith graciously offered to “show” me by coaching me for the next 6 months.

That coaching experience proved to be the most significant learning experience of my past 15 years of mission leadership. I believe that I learned more about leadership in those six months, than I had previously learned from any book, seminar or even the graduate classes on leadership that I completed in seminary. Furthermore, I see now that God had planned that during those six months, I would face a whole series of major ministry issues and opportunities, including the realization that visas were going to be a major problem for SEND FER and the invitation from our International Director to step into my current role as SEND U Director. As my coach, Keith walked me through the decisions I needed to make to respond to those issues and opportunities. He asked probing questions, challenged me to do necessary research, helped me to identify what God was doing in our lives at that point, and above all encouraged me to take initiative and step forward confidently. I am very thankful to the Lord for the help that Keith gave me during those months, enabling me to turn these very difficult and frustrating circumstances into excellent opportunities for personal growth and maturation (as God had intended).

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