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Portraits Magazine
New coaches trained and in the field
By Kay Harms
Thirty-seven pastors attended the first-ever training event for the Arizona Coaching Network at the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention offices Feb. 21-22. The training was conducted by Keith Henry, ASBC church ministries-leadership facilitator, and Bob Shelton, associate national ministry leader for the Canadian National Baptist Convention.
"Because North American Mission Board-funded church planters have signed covenants stating they will have a coach, we needed to provide training for prospective pastor coaches," said Henry. "So we focused on pastors for this training and only opened it up to them."
In the future, though, he said, "we hope to offer similar training for other church leaders, such as staff members, women's ministry leaders and small group facilitators."
The participants were asked to think of two Arizona pastors they might consider having a coaching relationship with, and to participate in the training with those relationships in mind.
After the training, they were encouraged to establish such relationships with those fellow pastors. Ideally, each of the 37 attendees will coach two pastors for a six-month period, whether that individual is a church planter or the pastor of an established congregation in Arizona.
Utilizing a curriculum called Coaching 101: Discover the Power of Coaching by Logan, Carlton, and Miller, the training did not certify the participants as coaches, but taught them the basic and necessary skills in five hours of sessions.
The training included hands-on practice as pastors assembled in groups of three and practiced using skills, such as posing open-ended questions, refraining from giving too much advice, and resisting the urge to express opinions too early in the conversation. Two pastors would role play the coaching relationship while the third member of the triad watched, listened and evaluated their interaction.
Henry said that some of the most rewarding feedback he has received thus far is the report that the training is affecting the participants in multiple relationships, not just coaching relationships. For instance, Mark Pitts, pastor of Village Meadows Baptist Church, Sierra Vista, reported that he has tried to use the dialoguing skills he learned at the training when relating to his staff members.
"Coaching is about asking questions, listening and then asking more questions," said Pitts. "It's not about giving answers, but more about leading them to formulate their own answers."
Pitts remarked that, for him, the process has been one of teaching an old dog new tricks, but he is trying to put the tools into place as much as he can. He has not begun his coaching relationships with the two pastors he selected yet, but plans to in the near future.
Still, Henry hopes the training will result in multiple pastor coaching relationships throughout the state. Six of the 37 attendees will function as coach mentors. These men had all had previous training in coaching and will each mentor several of the other 31 men as they begin coaching. The mentors will meet with their assigned coaches monthly, help them with problems they may encounter and encourage them in their newly established coaching relationships.
Henry, who consistently participates in several coaching relationships at a time and praises the method highly, believes coaching is a vital tool in ministry because it is mutually beneficial to both participants.
He explained that coaching is not a professor/student encounter, but a peer relationship. There is no supposition that the coach is at some sort of higher level than the coached, but that he is simply coming alongside the other for a period of time in a position of service. While a mentor's goal is to "speak into" the other person, a coach attempts to "bring out of" the other.
"Most men don't reach out for relationships with other men until they are forced to, either by some outside requirement or a negative circumstance," said Henry. "The best time to begin a relationship, however, is when you're in a good place in your life. That's why we want to encourage these church leaders to establish such relationships now -- relationships that are not distasteful, but mutually beneficial."
Henry believes many of the pastors who received the training will also carry the principles they learned back to their churches, using the coaching paradigm as they develop leaders in their congregations.