A Modest Plea for Coaches to Stay Pastors (by Geoff Holsclaw)

Geoff Holsclaw is my colleague at Northern Seminary, a fine young pastor and professor, and this post gets right to the heart of what I have myself been observing about too many young pastors — leaving pastoring to become “coaches.” Read and drop a comment.

By Geoff Holsclaw, A Modest Plea for Coaches to Stay Pastors

This post is by Geoff Holsclaw

When God called me to be a pastor I resolved I would never view the pastorate as a career ladder to be climbed.

Growing up I had seen and heard people talk about how some youth pastor had now become an associate pastor, with the implication being that someday he would be a senior pastor.  Or the similar idea was to move from a smaller to a larger church, and the really successful would become mega-church pastors, or at least staff pastors at a mega-church.

But with many in my generation of a pastors and ministers (I’m 36), dissatisfied with the church growth movement and its lack of growing mature disciples, I didn’t want to think of pastoral success in terms of butts (in seats), bucks, and buildings. I wanted to think in terms of faithfulness and longevity wherever God called me to serve.

And so I, like many others, had given up on worldly dreams of influence and success, and settled into a “long obedience in the same direction.”

Or have we?

While it is true that in the circles I’ve been part of there is little ambition to be a mega-church pastor, I’ve begun to see something that might be analogous: the desire to be a church consultant/coach.

Over the last 10 years I have seen an increasing trend of those who talk about and then implement a “side business” of church consulting and coaching.  I saw this initially with those connected to mainline churches (probably because they have an established infrastructure for such things), but now more so within evangelical circles.

Certainly there are a variety of reasons one would become a coach: because you were asked, because you feel you have something to offer, you need a little extra income.

But I think there is also a more subtle ambition at work here.  It is sometimes expresses in words like “I feel God is calling me to lead leaders…” “I think God is calling me to greater influence…to influence the influencers…” “I want to pastor the pastors…”.  I have heard these and similar sentiments as justifications for becoming a church coach, which often entails an exiting of local pastoral ministry.

The trouble is, this is exactly how mega-church pastors talk about leading their churches, and how they justify the conferences they speak at.  Have we really come so far from climbing the pastoral “career ladder” when we sound like those whom we criticize for building their own kingdoms under the banner of building God’s church?

I Worry

I worry about this trend toward consulting/coach for two reasons.  First it is taking good pastors out of the pastorate, out of leading the regular life of the regular churches.  “But,” you might ask, “why is this bad if good coaches are making other into better pastors? Doesn’t a rising tide of pastoral maturity lift all churches up?”

Well, maybe. And this leads me to the second problem.  Often these coaches and consultants have been leading church for less than 10 years (if not less than 5 years).  Of course leading a church for any amount of time is a good and difficult thing to do.  But a 5-year pool of experience is pretty small.  What if the pastor being coached needs help with a problem that can only truly be known from a “10+ year” perspective on ministry?  Because we so often map our experience on to the experiences of others and then advise from that place, if we are only pulling from 5 years of pastoral experience we are apt, in the role of a coach, to misunderstand the true needs and opportunities of the church being worked with.  And if one is no longer pastoring a local community (and no, “pastoring pastors” does not increase your pastoral experience base), then that coach is never growing beyond those 5 years of experience (even if they coach for the next 20 years).

Personally, I have learned so much about myself and ministry in the last 3 years of ministry that I didn’t (that I wasn’t even ready to learn) in my first 7 years. Anyone else?  Please leave a comment.

(Caveat: I know the true definition of “coaching” is not to consult and advise, but rather to ask good questions to help clarify the resources within a person and organization and help them see their own way forward.  But only the best and most circumspect of coaches don’t slid into consulting through leading questions and suggested answers, if not outright problems solving on behalf of the one being coached. In fact, woman are usually far out in front of men in the ability to listen and perceive properly in coaching situations, so everything I’m saying here might not apply to women as much, certainly not the ambition.)

It’s Complicated!

Of course it is complicated.  This is complicated and confusing because there are many valid reasons to offer and receive coaching.  But that is exactly why I’m calling attention to this topic so that we can be more careful about what we are doing, so that we can probe and check our motivations and ambitions.

What about Being Bi-vocational?

I have often advocated for Bi-Vocational Ministry, and so a natural question could be, “Isn’t this a valid form of bi-vocational ministry?”  Well, yes it could.  Just like becoming a spiritual director, or a seminary professor, among many others, could be a valid second vocation.  But the real question for me is whether these second vocations are pulling us out of our primary calling as pastors.

Many students have asked (and several church members have worried) that now that I have finished my doctorate whether I will pursue a full-time job as a professor to teach and write (to “raise up the next generation of pastoral leaders” as I could tell myself).  My answer has been and continues to be, “God has clearly and compelling called me to be a pastor, and no matter has much I much love teaching and how much I might be frustrated with pastoring, I can’t do something else until God releases me from pastoring.”

And so my question is for all would-be coach, “Has God clearly and definitely released you from local church ministry to be come a coach? Is the calling as strong as your first call to the pastorate?” If not perhaps we are listening to the lesser spirits of worldly ambition and influence.

Not against Coaching

I’m writing this not because I am against coaching, but because I want to begin more testing and discernment about the increasing number of church coaches and those who do it and for what reasons.  I want all of us who are thinking about becoming a coach to really remember our calling to the pastorate and to trust God in that calling until clearly released from local, pastoral ministry.

And so my modest plea is this: if you are a pastor, stay a pastor, and if you are a coach, then still stay a pastor.

Perhaps it all comes down to this (even if this is a change of topic): you cannot coach character until your own character has been tested and refined, and that process is just beginning in the first 5 years of ministry.  If we aren’t coaching character, then we have just regressed to coaching technique, and if so, how far from “church growth” practice and ambition have we really come?