| |
Introducing a Coaching Culture at Grace Chapel
By Tony Stoltzfus 4/2003
Gary Reinecke had been coaching pastors for over a decade when he and his family came to
Grace Chapel. As a large and active congregation, Grace Chapel is a key Four Square Gospel
church. Besides planting 10 other churches in the past decade, the congregation’s senior pastor
also functions as a supervisor for 40 other Four Square churches in their district. The 500-member
church is multi-ethnic (they are currently planting a Spanish-speaking church) with strong
worship, an excellent children’s program and a new sanctuary.
Gaining Entry
“I wasn’t particularly looking for new ministry opportunities at the time,” Gary recalls. His
job at Strategic Ministries involves coaching pastors through the NCD church assessment and
functioning as a coach and consultant to help them make changes to increase church health and
foster growth. He also trains coaches and teaches part-time at Fuller seminary in evangelism.
One concern for Gary as a coach was how someone who works with pastors for a living
relates to his own pastor. “I tried too hard to make things happen in the past,” Gary remembers.
“As I’ve matured I’ve gotten more comfortable with allowing God to open and shut the doors
instead of having to push things through.” This time he choose to “understate who I am and what
I do” in order to allow things to develop naturally. “When we joined, I took a low profile at first
and just observed what was going on. I wanted to get to know the pastor, so we went out to lunch
as couples together once a month for several months.” Strategic Ministries had worked with the
Four Square denomination (which does a lot with mentoring and coaching), so the pastor had
some understanding of who Gary was and what he did.
Gary offers three suggestions to mature coaches going to a new church:
Take it slow.
In one of their monthly lunches, the senior pastor began to describe what he felt the church
needed to move forward: someone who could take an honest look at their church and give
objective feedback on where they could improve and what steps they needed to take next. The
pastor also began to share his desire for a personal coach. He coached the pastors of new church
plants (every church planter in Four Square is supposed to have a coach), and he felt that one of
the main reasons he had never had a really successful coaching relationship with a church planter
was that he had never been coached himself.
“My wife and I looked at each other,” Gary laughs, “and we thought, ‘That’s me!’ What the
pastor was describing was exactly what I do.” Gary took the opportunity to explain more in-depth
what he did as a coach, and he and the pastor began talking about the possibility of Gary working
with Grace on an assessment process. Gary put together a proposal to do a preliminary
assessment of the church so he could write a consultation proposal: essentially ‘here’s what you
need help with and here’s what I’d do to help you.’
Program
After doing the preliminary assessment, Gary made three basic recommendations to Grace
Chapel:
1) Don’t plant any more churches for awhile – “you’ve given away all your leaders.”
2) Take the NCD assessment process (which the church had done twice in the last few
years) and become more intentional and systematic about applying the results.
3) Introduce coaching as a way to change the culture at Grace Chapel
The senior pastor was excited about the possibilities of using coaching at Grace Chapel, so
after he’d gotten his team on board with the proposal they began to work to bring coaching to the
staff. First, Gary took him through a personal coaching assessment, and they set up year-long
coaching contract to begin working at some of the challenges that were identified through the
assessment. The coaching relationship with the senior pastor focused around need-oriented
evangelism (the ‘minimum factor’ or lowest score the church had gotten in the NCD survey),
personal disciplines, and redefining the pastoral and staff roles in the church, and the senior
pastor’s role in his district.
Gary began working with the staff by selecting the three members he felt were most drawn
to coaching and were most motivated to learn to do it. Finding the early adopters who are ready to
embrace something new can make a big difference in working at cultural change at this level.
They started out with a three-day coach training workshop, where Gary oriented the three
staff members to the comprehensive coaching process and then gave them plenty of time to
practice, reflect and apply those ideas to their own ministry areas.
The long-term goal of the coaching program (a three to five year plan) was to bring coaching
to every level of the organization. Short-term goals were for this first group of three to turn
around and train the rest of the staff as coaches five months later, and for each of the staff to
develop one intentional coaching relationship that year.
After the workshop, Gary began meeting regularly with the three staff members in a
“coaching triad.” Each pastor would be coached by the other two for half an hour, they’d stop to
debrief, and then begin coaching the next person. This arrangement allowed each of the three
pastors a chance to coach, be coached, and watch and evaluate the coaching of others. After five
months of meeting as a triad, these staffers repeated the 3-day coaching workshop for the rest of
the staff, and got them started in their own coaching triads. In result, all the staff have received
some coach training and experience, and some of the staffers have reached the place of being able
to offer coach training to others.
Obstacles & Learnings
Gary notes several obstacles that had to be overcome to launch the coaching initiative.
While mentoring and coaching are fairly well known within the Four Square denomination,
younger staff have embraced it more rapidly that those over 40. Part of this Gary attributes to the
eagerness of younger, emerging leaders have to receive coaching for themselves, but part of it
seems to have to do with generational differences. “Leaders in their 50’s and 60’s tend to see the
coach as a mentor or authority figure, and it is a big paradigm shift” to think of the coach as a
more of a partner or a facilitator. Years ago pastors were often taught not to open up to others in
their congregation, and sometimes leaders of that generation also struggle with the authenticity
dynamic in coaching.
The acceptance of coaching has varied somewhat from department to department in the
church. This is to be expected to a certain degree, given that the church is only one year into a
three to five year change program. Gary found that leaders who feel a personal call or gifting to
coach implemented the program much more rapidly than those that didn’t, which tends to validate
his decision to select and train those who were most drawn to coaching first.
A third obstacle was “helping people see how this relates to their day to day job.” It was
only after the training event, when the staffers got into their coaching triads, that the light really
came on as to how they could use coaching in their work roles. During the initial training event
they had had a hard time making the connection.
Gary names the selection process as his biggest learning from the Grace Chapel experience.
“The least progress has been in developing a coach assessor. The person that was chosen was too
busy – I wasn’t sure he was the right person for that role from the beginning.” This year, instead
of allowing others to choose a candidate, Gary is going to form a team, and select and train the
person himself. “Being more selective in who I train” was the most important lesson from the
project so far.
Results
When asked about results, Gary confidently states that for the senior pastor, “This has
transformed his ministry. I talked to a church planting couple he is coaching – they had done two
plants before under him that didn’t succeed, and this is their third – and they said, ‘His coaching
has changed like night and day, and it has completely changed the way we are going about our
church plant.’” Others have also commented on a new sense of focus about the senior pastor.
With the staff, Gary cites the case of the Adult Ministries pastor, a young man of 28. “He
integrates coaching into everything he does, and his training events have become much more
energized and effective.” His gift type is naturally reserved, and “This is the first time the senior
pastor has seen him get excited and passionate about something.” They like it!
While several factors play into this, the church has also grown by 100 people in the past
year, pushing them through a “glass ceiling” of 400 they had been stuck at for some time. Part of
this can be attributed to the beginning of a second service, which arose out of the NCD portion of
Gary’s work with the church.
Next year, Gary plans to work with Grace Chapel to develop a coaching certification process
for them which would include a coaching assessment and 360 degree feedback. He also plans to
assess the individual coaches and design training events to help them develop their weak areas, as
well as continuing to work with the coaching triads.
Changing the Culture
From his extensive experience in working with congregations, Gary offers several
recommendations about introducing a coaching culture into an organization:
-
Get buy-in from multiple key leaders. The senior pastor is crucial, but it isn’t enough for
that one person alone to be on board. The larger the organization, the more key people
have to buy in to a new initiative for it to succeed.
-
Wait for God’s moment. Don’t try to make something happen in your church if the
pieces aren’t in place.
-
Work out coaching agreements in advance, with the organization as well as with the
individuals you are coaching. This is especially important if you are working with
multiple people at different levels in the organization.
-
If you are starting out as a coach, be willing to give your services away to get
established.
While much remains to be done to integrate coaching at all levels of the organization, Grace
Chapel is off to a great start. The staff is on board, the senior pastor is being transformed, and the
church is healthy and growing. A lot can happen in one year!
©Tony Stoltzfus 2004 Tony@TLCCoach.net All Rights Reserved
|
