Seven benefits of Christian coaching

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Product Description

Centering totally on the nature and ministry of Christian coaching, Miller and Hall provide an overview of the growth and development of coaching and its application to Christian ministry. They show core coaching skills and essential and supporting coaching skills. The core skills of focused listening and asking powerful questions reappear throughout the book as the authors demonstrate in real life situations how to use them.

Miller and Hall draw on the experiences and writings of other authors to share the most important models a new coach can use while emphasizing the ways to create a relationship with a client and the absolute importance of doing everything to maintain that relationship in trust and integrity.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187289 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 148 pages

From the Publisher
This book is part of The Columbia Partnership Leadership Series. The TCP Leadership Series is an inspiration- and wisdom-sharing vehicle of The Columbia Partnership, a community of Christian leaders seeking to transform the capacity of the North American Protestant church to pursue and sustain vital Christ-centered ministry.

From the Back Cover
"Coaching is a powerful tool that can be used to serve the greater good. After all, Jesus was one of the greatest coaches the world has ever seen. Linda Miller and Chad Hall have written a practical guide to coaching that can really help people of faith expand and improve their ministries. Use it as you serve others." --Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Lead Like Jesus


"Linda Miller and Chad Hall show us the benefits of having someone who asks the right questions, focusing on taking the right next steps. And that's good coaching." --Marshall Shelley, editor, Leadership


"Offering plentiful examples of coaching skills in action and being solidly grounded in Scriptural truths, this book is a must-read for anyone serious about distinctly Christian coaching." --Christopher W. McCluskey, president, Coaching for Christian Living and director of the Christian track at the Institute for Life Coach Training

About the Author
Linda Miller is a pioneer in both coaching and Christian coaching. Since her introduction to coaching in 1995, she has focused on organizations, including executive coaching, leadership development with high potentials, team dynamics, and succession planning. She played a key role in the launch of coach training, working with Corporate Coach U to launch its first training programs and more recently serving with The Ken Blanchard Companies as Global Liaison for Coaching. Linda is a frequent conference and retreat speaker and guest writer in numerous publications

Chad Hall is an ordained minister and has served as a church planter, pastor, denominational consultant, and trainer. He has been coaching and training others to coach since 2001. He has published articles related to coaching, leadership, theology, and church history in a variety of print and digital resources, including Leadership Journal and Christianity Today.

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Customer Reviews

Introduction to Coaching For Christian Leaders
Linda Miller and Chad Hall have produced a helpful introduction to Christian coaching. The strength of the book lies in its balance of explaining coaching skills, benefits, and uses of coaching in Christian ministry.

The "how to" section is roughly half the book (70 pages). These chapters introduce 8 basic coaching skills, with Listening and Asking Precise Questions getting the most coverage. The teaching is correct, helpful, and up to professional standards (Miller is an ICF Master Certified Coach working for The Ken Blanchard Companies). However, the book suffers the same fate as so many introductions: There's not enough "how to" for someone to pick up the book and significantly improved their ability to coach. (The best Christian "how to" coaching book is Leadership Coaching: The Disciplines, Skills, and Heart of a Christian Coach.)

Practical examples throughout the book demonstrate the benefits of coaching in a wide variety of settings and from a variety of helping roles. In fact, the unique contribution that Coaching For Christian Leaders makes is the summary of how to use a coaching approach in different leadership roles (leading, visioning, managing, and shepherding), and in church ministry.

Many authors and readers have trouble translating the formal coach-coachee relationship to a more spontaneous, informal relationship of using coaching skills in everyday interactions. Here Miller and Hall excel. They take the longest chapter (26 pages) to outline coaching in the church. They give a page or two to a coaching approach to:
+ Preaching
+ Sacraments
+ Prayer
+ Building Community with One Another
+ Spiritual Growth
+ Spiritual Friendships
+ Ministry Teams
+ Service to Those in Need
+ Evangelism
The cumulative effect is a beautiful picture of how coaching skills can be used in everyday interactions in the church to empower and draw out the potential of people.

Currently, Coaching For Christian Leaders the best introduction to coaching from a Christian perspective, although the subtitle, "A Practical Guide," is a bit of a stretch.

If you're looking for a well-rounded book to introduce Christian coaching, this is it.

Great book that delivers what it promises!
This practical guide is just that! Linda and Chad provide great background for Christian coaching as well as practical examples to help bring the concepts to life.

The Emerging Wave of Leadership
Linda Miller and Chad Hall are incredible coaches. They are also incredible coach trainers. I am extremely pleased they have written this book on Coaching for Christian Leaders. Coaching is part of the emerging wave of leadership in congregational life.

In this book they offer many definitions for coaching. My favorite is on page 37: "Coaching is a collaborative journey toward the goals of the person being coached." Christian leadership coaching involves coming alongside a person and joining them in their life and ministry journey, and helping them live into the goals and actions they feel spiritually led to fulfill.

This book, in my opinion, offers several benefits to the reader: [1] It equips them to play a supporting role in the lives of others by helping others reach their full kingdom potential. [2] It helps prepare a person who is seeking to develop as a coach to develop the coaching practices that will enable them to focus on the core competencies required for International Coach Federation certification. [3] It helps coaches to focus on the Christ-centered relationships a person needs to be an excellent Christian coach.

[4] It supports coaching as a helping role for people who desire to have a Christian stewardship approach to their lives. [5] It helps to focus on what I consider to be two great characteristics of coaches/coaching, that they call "wise coaching"--listening and asking precise questions. [6] It provides multiple models for coaching that are sure to be helpful to a developing coach. [7] It focuses on various spiritual aspects of coaching, including discernment as a key characteristic.

This really is a practical guide for those who desire to be coaches or to benefit from a coaching relationship.

In addition, it supports the approach I urge congregational leaders and congregational coaches to take in my book, Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation. Pursuing your full kingdom potential is also part of the emerging wave of leadership in congregational life. It goes beyond being missional to discover your full kingdom potential.