The Special Role of Coaching

Coaching isn’t the only good thing. I think we all need every kind of conversation we can have, especially when we’re on the field.

Coaching is all about encouraging, supporting, and sparing people on. Celebrating wins. Spotting what’s there to be celebrated and cheered on.

Often, we start by asking, “What’s going well? What are you celebrating? What has God been doing?”

Who Needs Coaching?

Whether you’re a leader or a team member, just by yourself or part of the group, I think it could be useful to figure out what I am doing. What does success look like for me? What’s my unique shape, and how does that play out here?

If you’re leading a team or you’re pioneering in the work you’re doing yourself, having someone to journey alongside you, a thinking partner, I think it would be really useful and helpful.

Because coaching is nonjudgmental and confidential, I think it can be such a godsend when you just need to process some of the stuff that’s happening and some of the dynamics that are going on. Having a safe space to do that, especially when things can be quite chaotic, is really really valuable.

What Makes A Good Coaching Session?

It’s helpful to take a moment before you come into a session to think about where you want to see some change, movement, growth, or clarity in your life, your role, or your team in the next six months to a year. What is it that you’re hoping for?

Coaching and the coaching conversation is about looking forward with Hope and with a sense of, Hey,  it’s possible to move forward, and it’s possible to get unstuck. It’s possible to lean into your potential in your growth.

Come with your hope in your dream, and then work together to see how that can come together one step at a time. But I wouldn’t disqualify yourself if you think, “I don’t have a clue!” because your first few sessions could be about figuring out together who you are and what you might start to dream about.

A Theology of Suffering

I’m talking about having hope in a dream. There’s also space and honesty to be real about where it’s not working out.

This was really hard and disappointing, but I want to regain that glimmer of hope.

A good understanding of spiritual warfare is absolutely essential for cross-cultural ministry of any sort. But it also requires a strong theology of suffering and what it means to hold onto faith in the midst of really tough times and to be able to sit with others in that moment.

So much of scripture has been written to groups of people who are going through persecution, saying, Keep going. Keep moving. Look to the Lamb. Look to Jesus.

Having a theology of suffering is absolutely essential.

Growing is painful, but its fruit is sweet.

In the theology of suffering, we want to have a very strong picture of what we promised that will absolutely come about and will be fulfilled. It’s kind of both. God really does and can’t step in right now and do amazing things. It’s not one or the other; it’s both.

Spiritual Warfare

When we moved to the Middle East, I recognized that I wanted to control the situation by being very well trained and making sure I got the language down well. I love language learning. And all of that was really great. And then we hit this thing where we would experience attacks.

I felt like there was something there that shouldn’t be.

The former fortune teller said, “This is the power I’ve been looking for my whole life, but it doesn’t come from me. It comes from God.”

The Dangers of Neglecting Spiritual Warfare

I think sometimes we approach situations without a kind of fourth angle. We can go about it very logically or emotionally or think we need some medical advice. Actually, coming from the spiritual angle as well can sometimes bring about the shift. Often, it’s a combination of all four.

I imagined them as this big lion, which was scary, and I was this little mouse. And that’s how I felt. Every time they came, they roared, and I just wanted to run away and be like a mouse. And I was praying my little mouse prayer.

It wasn’t about me feeling unsafe any more.

If God is really here with me, what could change? What could be different? And how can we bless others?

Learning to Ministry in a New Land

Lots of trial and error.

It’s like you’re a seed, and you have to replant yourself in a new place. All of the core of who you are and who you’ve been made to be is the same in that seat of who God made you to be. But the way you grow up, the shape you take in a different place, is totally different.

A lot of it becomes a lot more simply about being close to God each day, asking him what to do, and doing it.

Who we are is just as much a part of the message as what we do.

The relationship is the task.

Being with people in the highs and the lows, being a friend, being faithful, and modeling who we are in our relationship with God is ministry.

Transitioning off the Field

The government started clamping down on foreigners like us.

Islands of stability in the sea of change. We often need things that are the unchangeable’s. But for me, it felt like everything had ended. Like I had been put out to pasture.

I wasn’t being put out to pasture. I was being led into green pastures.

It felt like reconstructing a whole life.

God doesn’t waste things. It definitely felt like a lot of things were being thrown away back then.

Eleven years later, as we were coming back to our home country, there was the sense of counting the cost again of having given up the career route, which would’ve looked so nice on the CV.

When we went out to the field, we found out that we couldn’t have kids. So, for myself, the hardest part was negotiating that whole journey and the bigger story of being on mission together.  I had always assumed that being a mom would be part of my calling.

If my calling isn’t this shape, then what is it going to be?

Transitioning off the Field

Have people who can walk with you in this in various different ways.

Speaking grace over yourself in this time is first priority.

Remember the big picture first. Stay in a relationship with God take care of yourself. If you have a family or those around you, take care of them as well.

There are three phases of transition:

Ending well. What would it look like to end? To finish in a wholesome healthy way? Where would you need to say goodbye to? Who would you need to say goodbye to? What reconciliation could happen? What kind of traditions or rituals would you want to do as a celebration of what’s been good? What things might need to be processed? Checking the dust off your feet before you move.

The middle phase. I like to think of this as the faith space. The space before you jump into what is next, where you have a moment to think about who you’ve become in the previous season. How have you changed? What has been God been speaking to you about? How are you different now as a result of what’s happened compared to when you first started the previous chapter? What’s changed with you? What are some of the things that you stand for or believe in that you didn’t before? Listening to what’s tagging in your heart. Before leaping, take that time to think, feel, and process.

New beginnings take time. Just be OK, but in the beginning, it’s going to be hard and slow. It’ll take a while to make friends and get connected. Choose a couple of things and walk in those. Believe in a good new beginning.

Emotions are like snails; they come out when they are safe.