My coach recently paraphrased another leader when he told me that passion and focus are two key ingredients for success. If you put this in the context of applying our human abilities to something that God wants us to work on, then this becomes a powerful piece of advice.
My problem is that I can easily loose focus. There are always many forces at work to cause us to not stay the course on whatever task we are attempting. Even more likely is the emergence of a lot of other tasks that seem very important at the time and that quickly and easily drain energy from a leader and their team.
So what does this have to do with coaching? The most critical items for us to apply our focus and passion to are those that have the highest overall priority in our lives. A good coaching process will involve an individual spending significant time in prayer, Bible study, and meditation to discern what God wants their priorities in life to be. A coach should know and understand those key life priorities as well as the person being coached.
The more an individual is able to stay focused on these God-ordained priorities, the more fulfilled their life will be and the more likely they are to achieve their ministry goals. A coach’s unique understanding of someone’s life and ministry priorities allows them to be a significant contributing factor to helping someone stay focused on their Ephesians 2:10 works.
A coach should have permission to ask the hard questions and to challenge the person they are coaching on a regular basis. This constant involvement over a long period of time is where the real value of being coached pays off. We have all seen it. Someone does not have to vary from the original plan very early in the process for you to end up way off course several years down the road.
No one wants to wake up late in life and figure out that the things that really matter are possibly out of reach because of the normal drift that occurs when we loose focus on what really matters. This concern about maintaining focus is even more critical for a church planter. It does not take many missed opportunities for a church planter to find they are behind and that they don’t have enough resources to catch up.
Because a coach’s job is to make sure their client stays the course on all their self identified priorities, these priorities have a much higher likelihood of being accomplished than if life “just happens.” Few people can maintain the level of concentration that is needed to plant a church. It is not cheating to have help; it is essential.
