The Tools of Pastoral Coaching
Journey Pastoral Coaching is celebrating its 10th year of helping young ministers build strong for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. We thank God for His faithfulness. These ten years have served to reinforce a principle on which we began: coaching (and ministry in general) is all about relationships. God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit, each person of the Trinity in perfect relationship with each other. Because God is Trinity, He has formed us to live in relationship, first with Him, and then with others. It is as we focus first on our relationship with God that we have much of value to add to others’ lives and ministries: the strength, hope, wisdom, encouragement, comfort, faith – the life – of that relationship will flow through us the ones we coach. It’s all about relationship.
While pastoral coaching is first and foremost a relationship, it does make use of carefully selected tools, not tools that serve the convenience of the coach, but the well being of the one being coached.
While these tools are many, there are three that set in first position on the coach’s tool belt.
Before we look at those three tools, let us first examine why these tools are so important.
In pastoral coaching our constant focus is on being. We help ministers understand, celebrate and grow in their individual Jeremiah 1.4-5 creation:
The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you . . .”
As pastors of pastors, this is our first ministry: helping every individual with whom we walk understand these four truths about themselves: their value is real and it is real because it is in God, his Designer, Creator, Consecrator, and Appointer:
“God knows you because He is your Designer:
You are the idea of God – Before you even existed, God knew you because it was He who thought of you and designed you. You are the dream of God come true.
God is your Creator:
You are the handiwork, the art, of God – Once God dreamed of you as you are, He then formed you just as you are and breathed into you the breath of life.
God is your Consecrator:
You walk with His hand on you – consecrated, set apart from and set apart to: from the common to His special in which He knows you and for which He formed you
God is your Appointer:
Your life has purpose not only in knowing God, your Creator, but in making Him known to those whom He has created with the same love and intention, but who do not know it. He has appointed you as His agent to people, to affect people not just for a lifetime, but for eternity.
What a powerful and precious truth: God has formed us – our being – for Himself, and He has sent us in His authority to make Him known to those who are yet far from Him.
And the way we are to live out our creation and call couldn’t be simpler: by being who God designed, created, consecrated and appointed us to be. It is in being who God designed and created us to be that we do what God has consecrated and appointed us to do. Doing flows from being.
Who we are is the heartbeat of our ministry: the minister is the ministry. Therefore, as we build the minister, we build the ministry, and we do so for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry.
Enter pastoral coaching.
THE THREE PRIMARY TOOLS
Like any builder, the pastoral coach uses appropriate tools. In helping to build the minister, the pastoral coach emphasizes these three:
Tool #1: The Coaching Relationship
At Journey Pastoral Coaching (JPC) we engage in regular, frequent phone conversations with our members. Every member has a set appointment (day and time). In the overwhelming majority of cases, we speak with members every two weeks. Some prefer to speak on a monthly basis.
While this conversation deals with the ministry of the individual, its focus is on the minister themself: ministry activities, relationships, and challenges serve as opportunities to focus on personal growth and development, always in the context of our life and service in Christ.
The pastoral coach is not a teacher, counselor, or advisor per se, but more a guide, one who joins the journey of the other, helping them learn for themselves, grow in wisdom, and properly “file” the events of life. Think of an alpine hiker, one who has studied and been trained in all the necessary skills of hiking in high places, one who may even have hiking experience. But as this hiker walks and climbs in new places, wouldn’t it be helpful to have a second and more experienced hiker by their side? Not someone who takes over the trek, telling the hiker where to go and what to do, but an experienced and caring guide who helps develop his decision making and hiking skills – their own design, creation, consecration and appointment? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have someone join his journey with wisdom, challenge, and correction?
Pastoral coaching calls are limited to one hour in length to give focus (and to help the coach steward his energy and voice!). While each member has a standing bi-weekly or monthly appointment, he or she can request an additional appointment.
While the coaching relationship forms the nuclear core of the pastoral coaching ministry, it is not the only core or essential tool in our tool box . .
Tool #2: Peer Mentorship
A pastoral coaching ministry can not be defined as a “quality” ministry simply because it has a “quality” coach or coaches. Equally, if not more, important are the quality members who bring outstanding character, strengths, gifts, abilities, etc to the table, as well as a willingness and desire for self-examination, challenge, correction, and encouragement.
Rather than setting quality ministers on the shelf and pulling them out for a bi-weekly or monthly phone call with a coach, a quality coaching ministry pulls its full treasure trove off the shelves and places them “on the table” together where their individual qualities can be brought to bear upon one another.
James Emery White, in his book, Serious Times, writes:
“One of the more unsettling revelations to most Christ followers, particularly in light of our fierce individualism, is how many of the marks of a Christian involve other people . . . Following Him is tied to the ‘one anothers.’”
Tool #3: Life Long Learning (Resourcing)
John Milton wrote,
“The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.”
Milton reminds us that we can never stop learning. To stop learning is to start dying.
In his book, “On Pastoring,” H.B. Charles writes,
“I have learned a lot about pastoral ministry over these (25) years.
Of course, I still have quite a bit to learn. I hope to be a lifelong learner.”
Charles reminds us that even though we may have learned a lot about something – and over many, many years – we still have a lot to learn.
Our resources in lifelong learning are two: our own research and profiting from the research of others. And here’s the secret weapon: these two resources multiply the value of each other.
The minister must bring the heart and mind of a learner to the process. He or she must be a voracious learner: all aspects of personal discipleship, theology, church ministry, world missions, preaching, teaching, counseling, evangelism, relational skills, finance, marriage, current events, culture, technology, etc, etc. The list goes on an on.
As a lifelong learner, the minister will do well to build and use a quality library of books, articles, and other resources. He will do well to find and follow a select group of writers and speakers, a core group of “print or preaching mentors” who resource his ministry and life.
A quality pastoral coach ministry resources its members and helps its members develop as lifelong learners.
Why These Three Tools?
We at Journey emphasize these three tools for three reasons:
The Wisdom of Christian Leaders Over the Centuries
For centuries, wise Christian leaders have extolled the virtues of these three tools as essentials in the life of every minister who is serious about building for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry.
Their Essential Value
While these three tools are not the only ones each of us needs to survive and thrive in ministry, they are absolute essentials for every disciple of Jesus Christ.
God built you and me with a strength-need for walking with experienced mentors, for sharing life with peer mentors, and for lifelong learning. These tools are not applied to address weakness-needs that requires remedial intervention, but, more importantly, they address our strength-needs, igniting, multiplying, and maximizing our giftings, to the glory of God and the growth of the Gospel in everyone we meet. With these tools, we grow strong; without them, . . .
The Full Potential Benefit of Pastoral Coaching to the Person Being Coached
These three tools are the universal tools of pastoral coaching, natural triplets in the pastoral coaching toolbox: each one complements the presence of the other two. While each one is significant by itself, its positive impact is maximized by the use of the others along with it.
Final Thought
Jesus said that before a person undertakes the dream of building a tower, he considers the cost of actually building it – land, materials, labor. This challenge to consider well the project before building naturally calls us next to consider well the actual building – material, labor, organization, etc. And tools: do we have the necessary tools? Do we know how to use those tools? Will we actually use those tools?
Engrave this in stone: as your use of all three of these tools goes down, your probability of surviving and thriving in ministry goes down; as your use of these tools goes up, your probability of surviving and thriving in ministry goes up. Let those who have ears to hear, hear. And build well.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first published here on January 15, 2017. We are publishing it again as a part of our 10th Anniversary celebration.
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Saddled with large student debt, just beginning to set up homes and start families, and serving in low paying first and second positions, Millennials are those who most desire but can least afford to pay for pastoral coaching.
We are able to do so thanks to the faithful and generous support of individuals and churches like yours who want to see young leaders not only enter the ministry, but remain in the ministry.
Now, more than ever, we need your help.
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