What is Coaching?
According to the International Coaching Federation, Coaching is a transformative journey where you discover your true potential.
What is coaching all about?
Imagine driving on a road you’ve never traveled before. You’re in the driver’s seat, in control of the destination, but beside you is a trusted navigator — your coach — helping you see new possibilities, find alternate routes, and ensure you don’t lose focus. This partnership empowers you to unlock answers you already have within, while also challenging you to go further than you imagined.
At its heart, coaching is about exploration. It’s a process that stirs up creativity, fuels personal growth, and maximizes both professional and personal potential. Through powerful questioning and insightful dialogue, coaches support you in discovering your own solutions, whether for life decisions, career shifts, or business challenges. Coaching goes beyond surface-level improvements; it cultivates deep, lasting change.
What’s the Difference Between Coaching and Consulting?
In Disciple Development Coaching, Mark Tidsworth and Ircel Harrison define the foci of these two people development practices in this way:
Consulting deals with “problem solving, action plans, specific problems.”
Coaching is “developing people through learning by doing, partnering between self-discovery and sustainable action.”
Consultants are generally seen as persons with expertise in a particular area of content whereas coaches are process experts who work in many different contexts. A coach does not have to know about education to coach an educator or be an expert in the law to coach a lawyer. Coaches are hired to promote clarity rather than inform their clients. Consultants are generally seen as resource people and teachers.
As a Consultant, I can take your natural understanding of what should be happening in your congregation and help make these expectations a reality. When trying to determine best overall courses of action, or how to respond effectively to change, congregations find that an impartial but interested perspective can provide important direction and encouragement.
Through consultation, I help churches face a variety of challenges from both inside and outside the congregation. I’m trained in helping staffs, deacons, boards, councils, or other leadership groups during these challenges. I can also assist your congregation in considering an approach to Interim Ministry that will help you use the critical transition period between pastors in a more effective manner.
Consultants assist congregations in developing a process that engages many people in the discovery of solutions. If your church feels uncertain or conflicted, we can help you with these core services:
Strategic Planning
Chart a purposeful direction for your future.
Team Building
Get people involved in and excited about ministries.
Staff Development
Increase confidence and maximize productivity during interims between a departing and new pastor.
Decision Making and Governance Restructuring
Find the best organizational formation for your congregation.
Conflict Reconciliation
Deal with tension or disagreement between members.
Information above derived from the Center for Congregational Health.
