Welcome to our mid-November coaching update. At this time of Thanksgiving, we wanted to be among some of the first to wish you well this holiday season and to let you know how grateful we are for each and every one of you. One of the ways we thought we could do this is by sharing a snapshot of some of the stats we've been collecting.

Right now we're happy to tell you that we have 730 coaches that have taken our basic skills training. We have 180 that have trained in a specialty area and 16 that are listed as certified professional grief coaches. In addition to this, we are proud to have 12 that have received their associate certified coach credential with the International Coaching Federation and six that have their professional coach credential with the ICF.

Many of you have faithfully supported our weekly Wednesday Courageous Leadership gatherings. So far. In 2022, we have had 2,372 leaders attend live or access our recordings. These numbers are just a glimpse of our story. Friends, we will soon be asking for the information from the data collection tool we sent out earlier this year, which will reflect additional details around the good work you've been doing over the past year.

All of this is being gathered in order for us to more effectively tell the story of the impact our ministry is having. I'll take a minute to share one short story of how coaching is changing, not only who and what we are as Church, but the lives of people in the communities where our congregations exist.

This past week I listened to the stories of 43 different congregations that are working with our coaches through an innovation project called “Congregations Lead.” One of the stories I heard comes from a church that decided to sell their building that was eating away their resources and instead begin worshiping at a community center.

Now they are using the finances they freed up to spin off several micro-churches that are built around specific needs in the community, one of which is partnering with a local school and reading to children that don't have the benefit of adults reading to them at home. This relationship is blossoming into other ways of loving on these kids, including feeding those that don't have access to food over the weekend.

As you can imagine, this journey has been complex and hard for the congregation, but their pastor told me they went from wondering if they could stay open to wondering how else they're being called to simply love the people around them. And he stated that without a doubt, these changes and engagement of the people in the church and the work of God would not have happened without the support of the coaching conversations that they've had.

Friends, your deep listening and powerful questions are helping people name out loud that they are beloved of God. You're helping them discover the gifts they've been given by God and through your coaching sessions, they're realizing how they are being invited by God into God's good work of loving and healing the world.

We are indeed so very grateful for you and my Thanksgiving prayer is that you would know that you are indeed changing the world one coaching conversation at a time.

Amen! Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

 

Helpful links to go with this video update:

1) Data Collection Tool (for the video introducing this tool: https://youtu.be/JdE-t6x7ZHk, and for an update: https://youtu.be/v7nS6tUm7VQ)

2) Data Collection Tool FAQs