Coaching Clergy
Pastors, priests, rabbis and imams are searching out coaches to help them strengthen their leadership, balance their lives and lead congregational transformation. As the discipline of coaching gains credibility among clergy, there is a growing opportunity for coaches to meet the emerging need.
For coaches who are contemplating offering their services to this community, here are some things to consider:
Critical Needs
Each clergy client will bring his or her own, unique goals to the coaching engagement. However, there are three critical needs that frequently emerge: the need for coaching around leadership, for coaching toward work/ life balance and for coaching through organizational change.
Coaching Around Leadership
More than consulting, mentoring and counseling, coaching for clergy is the modality that is proving to be the most helpful for affecting adaptive change in congregations. Coaches help clergy clients trust their deep inner wisdom and knowledge of the context in which they are serving and set clear and accountable outcomes, while encouraging them along the way. Essentially, these coaches are helping clergy stay focused on God-sized goals and lead with courage and resilience.
Coaching Toward Work/Life Balance
For clergy, ministry is not a job or even a profession. It is a “calling” God has placed on their life. By necessity, clergy work every weekend and most weekdays. Most clergy struggle to maintain boundaries around their work which means family time, vacation weeks and days off are frequently slighted. This is because clergy feel they are never able to meet all of the needs of their congregation.
When coaching clergy, it is important not to limit the focus to congregational goals and outcomes, but to offer to coach the whole person in all aspects of their lives. That might mean supporting clergy as they design actions to maximize their time (scheduling several meetings on the same night instead of a different one every night, doing sermon preparation from home one day a week), establish boundaries (reserving Saturday as a family day unless there are weddings or funerals scheduled, limiting email engagement after 7 p.m.) or establish healthy habits (getting up early enough in the morning to go to the gym or take a walk).
Ironically, another area that many clergy have a hard time valuing with consistency is some form of personal spiritual discipline, such as daily devotions or time for study and prayer. These disciplines keep religious leaders rooted in their relationship to God and grounded in ministry. In coaching sessions with clergy, we’ve brainstormed ideas such as praying for their congregation during morning walks, uploading a good sermon to listen to while driving, sitting in total silence with God for half an hour, and even dancing to praise music while fixing dinner.
Coaching Through Organizational Change
In increasing numbers, clergy find themselves feeling the pinch between shrinking memberships with diminishing resources and the expectation that their congregations grow. In order to grow, those congregations need to change.
Most seminary-trained clergy were not taught how to successfully lead a volunteer organization through major transformation and to influence lasting shifts in underlying organizational culture. Yet that is exactly what is now necessary for faith communities to stay relevant to new generations, adapt worship styles to varied participants and connect meaningfully with the surrounding community. Over a nine-month period I coach groups of pastors using content-rich material applicable to their leadership with themes such as increasing vitality in worship, developing lay leadership and enhancing small-group ministry. In these group-coaching sessions, they watch a professionally produced video on the theme, are coached as a group for 1 ½ hours and are then coached individually on applying each theme in the context of their ministry.
The Emergence of Peer Coaching Networks
Increasingly, clergy peer coaching networks are emerging within Christian denominations. The networks are comprised of selected pastors who have completed coach-specific training. Often, their coach training is paid for or subsidized by the denomination, and the coaching is provided at little or no cost. These networks are creating a culture of peer coaching among United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and the Church of Scotland, to name a few.
Experienced coaches can support the coaches in these networks by providing coaching supervision, mentor coaching or ongoing skill development.
Significance of Faith Tradition
As with many other realms of coaching, occupational affinity and familiarity with context can be influential factors in selecting a coach. However, clergy most often engage a particular coach because they already know the coach or they have been given a positive referral from others. That coach might be a member of their faith community, a neighbor, or a friend of a friend.
A person eager to coach clergy should not apply self-imposed limits on the clergy they coach. The preexisting relationship is the driver as much as whether the coach happens to also be a clergy person or from the same faith tradition.
Adjusting Expectations
Like coaching provided in other sectors of the nonprofit world, clergy coaching often comes at a bargain. Limited budgets mean hourly rates that are $75 to $100 less than comparable Leadership or Executive Coaching engagements in the for-profit sector.
Most coaches who focus their practice on clergy do so as an extension of their own faith practice, and their primary motivator is making meaningful impact rather than making a great deal of money. As a coach who principally works with faith-based leaders, I’ve found this work to be enormously satisfying. It is not just the work of “doing,” and accomplishing goals, but also about “being”—deep life fulfillment. To coach from this perspective makes coaching not just sacred work; for me it is, in fact, a holy vocation.
Clergy need excellent coaches who are well trained and willing to bring a commanding impact. Perhaps you will be one of them.
Chris Holmes, PCC
Chris Holmes, PCC, is a full-time Leadership Coach working with laity, clergy, denominational leaders and bishops. He is a founding member and past president of the ICF Maryland Chapter, leader of The Holmes Coaching Group, Founder and Director of The Academy of Artful Leadership, and co-owner of an ICF-approved 60-hour coach training program, Coach Approach Skill Training (CAST). His book, The Art of Coaching Clergy: A Handbook for Church Leaders, Clergy and Coaches, was published in June 2018. Chris is also an accomplished watercolor artist.
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Thank you so much for this article! I have been in ministry for about 15 years and have a counselling and management background. Neither of these areas of expertise have been significantly helpful in supporting congregations and clergy to discern and implement positive change. Through work in Appreciative Inquiry, I came upon the modality of coaching and have been delighted to see how effective it can be.