That verse talks about reading the Bible AND preaching, implying they’re two separate things we should work on. We’ve all heard people do a terrible job of reading the Bible aloud. It’s boring, ill-prepared and worse. It misses a huge opportunity to see God’s Word come alive. (more…)
We talk alot about leadership development in the local church. As I think back on my seminary education, it was discussed often there as well. Yet, when I look through my notes and the seminars that I have attended I noticed that almost all the training that I recieved was on teaching theology and developing leadership skills. For many years, this is what I implemented in my ministry. Certainly knowing God’s Word is important and how can we diminish the importance of leadership skills? However, there was an important piece that was being missed in the process. It is obvious to me now, but I was blind to it in the past. I wish someone would have helped me earlier in my ministry to understand what I was missing. (more…)
Follow my thought for a few moments as I share with you what I am discovering about coaching. First of all, Jesus did not call us to coach. He called us to make disciples. We are to make a particular type of disciple – one that reproduces himself. Matthew 28:19-20 makes it clear that the key quality of a disciple is obedience to Christ. This is our goal in the discipleship process. It has become more transparent that the goal of obedience has not been achieved as illustrated by the statistics reported in the book Unchristian. (more…)
I have been writing exclusively on the topic of coaching and what I am learning about this process of building leadership excellence, but I want to take a short break and discuss the opportunity we have as leaders in the area of stewardship. Natural Church Development teaches us that every situation we confront in ministry can be an opportunity. Our country and the world is in economic fear and collapse. The topic of conversation at the gym every morning is about job loss or financial pain. Several of our churches are facing difficult decisions as a result of the downturn in the economy and the downturn of giving. At the same time that we are experiencing these negative forces, we have an opportunity. (more…)
Is coaching worth of the investment of time? That is a critical question to consider. After I had been coached for six months, I asked myself that question. The actual coaching appointments weren’t taking that much each month, only two half hour appointments. But there was time in preparing for the appointments and also following through on the action plans that took effort and energy. I came to the conclusion that the investment of time and energy was worth it. Why? Because I was achieving my goals and was becoming more effective as a leader. (more…)
A goal of mine is to become a better coach. I’ve been reading many books on coaching. I’ve been through two coaching training programs which offered different skill sets. Not to long ago, I went through a 360 evaluation of my skills which involved self-testing, interviews of some people I was coaching, and having my coaching sessions evaluated by a professional coach. All these were invaluable in my learning process. (more…)
This past week I had a great coaching appointment where we were discussing the task of casting vision as a leader. As a veteran pastor I thought I really have nailed this piece and had a grasp of all of its implications. Vision drives ministry. If you are like me, you could come up with 100 ways to cast vision. We’ve done it before. My thoughts went immediately to verbal communication in a large group setting (for me this is conference and pulpit supply). I also think of print communication such as newsletters and the website. (more…)
Before we could roll out coaching to District pastors, there were some things that needed to be done. First, we needed to develop excellent coaches. In order for that to happen, we believed that potential coaches needed to experience coaching themselves and recieve training. We have been actively doing this since District conference in October. Six coaches have been recieving… (more…)
After two disappointing appointments with my coach, I was beginning to wonder if my time investment in meeting with my coach every other week was beginning to wane. I brought this up with my coach with some fear of offending him. After all…no one likes to here that their interaction as a coach is not producing what was expected! I was surprised at his response. He was very open and wanted to explore the potential reasons for the discouragement. (more…)
My coach hit me between the eyes this past month. I told him that I didn’t get my assignments done because I was overwhelmed with commitments that I had made earlier in the year that now seem impossible to achieve. He then gave me an assignment that seemed at the time easy, but ended up being very difficult to carry out. He asked me to make a list of demands that I have said “no”. More… He also asked me not to commit to anything additional in my schedule until I spoke with my wife first! (not something that I am accustom to doing). After two weeks I still have nothing on my “no” list! (more…)
