The Northeastern Iowa Synod’s Coaching Ministry helps ministers, lay leaders and congregations unlock their potential for growth and transformation.
Certified coaches use deep listening, powerful questions and intentional exploration to help congregations and leaders discover their strengths and where God is leading them. Coaches give guidance to help clients discern how they might best use their gifts, resources and energy to address challenges, set goals and achieve transformation.
Coaching can be used for a myriad of opportunities:
- Personal leadership growth.
- Growing as a head of staff or lay leader.
- Skillful handling of congregational conflict.
- Strategic planning and building ministry teams.
- Dealing with grief
— such as loss of a loved one, loss of a relationship, loss of health or congregational closure.
Coaches help us see the gifts and resources we already have and inspire us to work toward mastering skills and abilities to use them.
— Bishop Kevin Jones
For Ministers
- Coaching is a confidential process that can help ministers with problem solving to manage their stress and prevent burn out.
- Coaching can help ministers with discernment of a call, leaving a congregation or other transition.
- Coaching sessions can focus on the personal part of a minister’s life or issues within their congregations, and help the minister develop a plan to move forward.
- Coaches can serve as a sounding board to help ministers clarify their thinking as they prepare to work with a congregation.
Coaching gives valuable support in this time when congregations and ministry leaders are dealing with declining attendance and challenges that they never faced before.
— Pastor Kristen Rod, DEM
For Congregations and Lay Leaders
- Congregational councils, committees and leadership teams seeking to form a new vision or accomplish a change together can benefit from a formal relationship with a team coach.
- Team coaches can help congregations and synod networks move forward in mission development, congregational vitality, race relations and more.
- Lay leaders may want to connect with a coach when beginning the call process, forming a new outreach program, discerning closing a congregation or entering a shared ministry partnership.
- The synod offers a pilot program for coaches to help congregations in the closing process.
It is incredibly powerful for a team to work together with a coach to gain clarity, direction and consensus on the next steps to take as they live into the future into which God is calling them.
— Pastor Sarah Nye, Synod Coach Coordinator
How to Get Started
FREE TRIAL SESSION
One of the best ways to find out how coaching works and how it might be beneficial is to sign up for a free online mini coaching session. People can bring a specific question or decision they are wrestling with to discuss in a half-hour conversation.
CLIENT-DRIVEN SESSIONS
Since coaching is client-led, the client decides how many sessions and how often they want them—usually four to six hour-long sessions weekly or monthly. Coaching sessions take place over Zoom with coaches from throughout the ELCA. In-person sessions may be an option when working with one of the 10 coaches from the Northeastern Iowa Synod.
AFFORDABLE RATES
Fees can range from free for coaches in training to $25 to $150 per session. The Northeastern Iowa Synod has designated some synodical funding that may be able to cover most or all the cost for first-time coaching clients and those wanting to be trained as coaches.
CONTACT US
Rostered ministers, lay members and congregations from the Northeastern Iowa Synod interested in coaching and supplemental funding should email Pastor Kristen Rod or call 319-352-1414.
People can also connect with an ELCA coach and learn about coach training through the ELCA Coaching website.
ELCA COACHING
We empower leaders who power ministries.
