QUALITY COACHING WANTED!

Hi All,

Hey it is tough to develop a high-quality coaching experience on the church-wide level. It takes a lot of advance planning, excellent coordination between ministries, and a system to monitor and continuously develop existing coaches, as well as find new ones. We are making great progress in our church, but it is taking a lot of work.

Here is what we have done & are doing:
1. We received a year's worth of training in coaching from Bob Logan's coaching organization through Coachnet. This included a 3-day seminar in Hollywood, focusing on basic coaching skills, followed by a 3-day seminar in Chicago, focusing on making a movement in our organization, and developing excellence.

2. We spent one year developing our coaching curriculum. We took the things which we learned in Logan's two seminars, and then, under the supervision of one of Logan's Coachnet mentors, we developed an 8-week coaching seminar for our church.

3. Then the three of us each selected two coachees, whom we would train to be coach mentors. We signed them up on Coachnet too. We had them sign up for a two year commitment!

4. We took these trainees through our coach training small group for eight weeks.

5. Meanwhile, they each began finding two coachees, whom they would each work with for six months. These coachees were there to help our Coach Mentors have someone to practice on with their newly developing coaching skills. These Mentors in training, then signed each of their trainees up with Coachnet. (It was free for them as part of the training.)

6. We three pastors who began this process, after having received our own certification as Coach Mentors, continue to meet with each of our Mentors in training, once a month. They in turn, continue meeting with each of their two coachees once a month.

7. We three who are the current coach mentors, meet regularly to monitor the progress of our Mentors in training.

8. We are developing the final half-day seminar, called "Coaching for Excellence" (using Logan's teachings from his seminars). This we will administer this May, as an important part of the Mentors in Training experience.

9. Then each of the Mentors in Training will have to be qualified by the Coachnet organization through use of an on-line evaluation tool, which is completed by their two coachees each.

Then, and only then, we will have our first batch of Coach Mentors successfully trained!
And all of this is under the watchful eye of Logan's organization, Coachnet.
We are extremely lucky and grateful as a church to have them experimenting with the delivery of quality coaching through the local church, so we are being careful to do it right.

Look at how the number grow, and you will begin to see why it is difficult to keep the coaching quality up nice and high:
First, we started with 3 pastors, who all received Coaching Certification.
Second, each pastor found 2 coach mentors, who are in process of being certified.
Third, each Mentor in training, found 2 trainees to practice on.
So, we moved from 3 to 9 to 15 people going through coaching in just a matter of months.
Next year, when we have a total of 6 Coach Mentors, it is going to really start to get tricky to maintain quality.

And Maintaining Quality is the key goal here.
It is relatively easy to get a lot of people into coaching; many churches have tried it. But many have also failed as they let the movement grow faster than their ability to maintain quality. So we are being slow and methodical, and so far are pleased with the results. But we can see that we need to maintain constant communication and set standards continuously in order to continue with an excellent coaching process.

Just thought I would share our progress so far, in case your church is thinking about developing a coaching program.

In Christ, for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

HI All,

One of the challenges faced by many churches is how to raise up leaders from within one's own congregation. Most churches have no effective, or intentional means to raise up and develop new leaders. Since they have no means to add new leaders, they either need to wait until a new leader comes wandering into their church (not likely, since leaders don't wander), or they will have to settle for sub-par leadership. Therefore their church never achieves the potential it could have, because it doesn't have the leadership horse power to move it forward into effective ministry.

How to deal with this?
There are a couple of factors to consider. The first is a philosophy of ministry issue - do you believe that leadership is a spiritual gift? If you don't, then you are already headed for problems. The Bible teaches us in Romans 12:8 that leadership is a spiritual gift. Many churches say that they believe this, but then have no effective means to place people with that spiritual gift into positions of leadership within the church so that they can exercise their God-given gift.

Here's a test for your church: Once a person becomes a member of your congregation, what is to prevent them from immediately being eligible to be nominated to a leadership position? In most churches, if you are a member, you are automatically eligible to be elected to the highest positions of leadership in the church. If that is your situation, then even though you SAY you believe in the gift of leadership, YOU REALLY DON'T, because you don't practice it.

There needs to be a second stage process for separating out those with the gift of leadership from those who do not have the gift. Find a way to find them and get them together. Do a spiritual gifts inventory, or watch them in action, and then invite them to a separate group just designated for leaders - by invitation only. Watch them, pray with them, work with them and get to know them. Get a farm system in place in your congregation for training and developing leaders.

Then once you have a means to identify those with the gift of leadership, then work that into your church's system of leadership selection. Make some changes so that the only people eligible to be elected to leadership are those who have already been developed. This creates a two-stage development process then: first they must become a member, and then they can become a leader.

Now if you believe that such a system is not fair, because 'everybody's equal in the Body of Christ', then you are more American than Biblical. Because Americans believe in democracy, but Christians believe in the Bible, which states that some have the gift of leadership, and some do not.

Here is what we are currently developing at our church:
1) We have developed a spiritual gifts discovery system so that we can identify and record the spiritual gifts of everybody in the church. From this we can get an initial indication of who may have the gift of leadership.
2) We have developed a leadership 'testdrive' small group for just potential leaders. We invite 8 people to meet with us for 9 months, of Bible studies, meals, videos, coach training, and prayer. By the end of that time, they have grown and developed much in their spiritual life, and we have a much better idea of whom God may be calling into leadership. (If you want to see a copy of the 9-month curriculum, we have developed, feel free to contact me.)

Pastor's of growing churches are actually concerned about two harvests: the evangelistic harvest, and the leadership harvest. We need to keep our eyes on both of them, for the sake of the kingdom, and the church of Jesus Christ.

In Christ's service,
Dr. Bill