Different Branches, Entwining Roots: A Reflection on the First Year of Clergy Coaching
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash
Church Anew has been piloting its first year of Renewing Reformation, a clergy coaching program designed to assist congregations and leaders in discerning the roots of their identity, belonging, and purpose to build out systems of support for the sake of the whole ecosystem. Our lead coach, Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson, reflects on the possibilities and growing edges within this coaching program in her interactions with one pastor, Sandy.
We were ten months into the coaching relationship when Sandy admitted she thought it would be different. “I was thinking back to the launch event and all the big dreams I was sharing this time last year. Maybe my expectations were off, but I think I hoped this project would change everything about my ministry.”
I know Sandy well enough at this point to hear the vulnerability in that statement. An eternal optimist and a big visionary, she has celebrated some big milestones in the life of her congregation and in the life of her own ministry lately. This year has been a season of, “Now what?”, the less glamorous transition time, the quiet renewal of strength, the restless discernment and recalibration for the sake of what’s next.
And so I ask her if I have her permission to reflect back what I’ve noticed while walking alongside her this year. And she grants that permission.
I leaned into Sandy’s courageous admission by asking open and curious questions about what that disappointment might mean. Again, she was brave and went there, taking up space and speaking aloud what is hard about not knowing and why leading when you don’t know what’s next can feel like floundering and grief.
My job is to hold space for all of this, and whatever else Sandy brings, during our monthly coaching sessions. Since I am also a parish pastor myself, I have the shared vantage as a peer and colleague who really gets it. I have felt like this in my own ministry, too! But when I’m coaching, it’s not about me or my ministry. And since I’ve been bearing witness to Sandy’s ministry all year, through these sessions, site visits and engagement with her congregational leaders, I have a robust sense of why her ministry is fantastic. I could ask, “Why did you want everything about your ministry to change?” But I don’t. Instead, I just listen because coaching might be the only place Sandy gets to name these things aloud so she can hear them, share them, and loosen some of their power.
There is a point in the session when Sandy acknowledges that her ministry has in fact changed this year, but she can’t quite put words to it and thinks it might be too subtle to identify. And so I ask her if I have her permission to reflect back what I’ve noticed while walking alongside her this year. And she grants that permission.
I start by recalling the very first time we met on Zoom at the behest of her bishop and recall the goals she shared for her pastoral ministry then, her affability and giftedness the first time we were together in person, my observations during site visits, her growing prioritization of spiritual practices, and how easy it is to delight in her ministry because she is so good at delighting in everyone else around her.
I named the ways I heard her ask for help this year, the big projects I watched her tackle, the leadership she delegated, the grace with which she took sabbatical, the tension she has been holding in a season she does not like but knows does not define her value: The “Now what?”
Sandy can be disappointed that this year of coaching didn’t dramatically transform everything about her ministry. And these things can also be true.
I watched her shoulders relax as her body and spirit received my witness of her ministry. These are things I’ve been saying all year, but when she heard them listed together like that, she said the truest thing of all:
“I am more resilient. Yeah. I am. I am so much more resilient than I was a year ago.”
It’s not grandiose or revolutionary or eyepopping, but if you’re Sandy or a member of her congregational leadership or her coach who has been bearing witness to her ministry all year long, it is transformational. Sandy is significantly more resilient than she was a year ago thanks to an ecosystem of resources and relationships, spiritual practices that have become habits, and the experience of being delighted in by a peer who gets it. There might be thousands of miles between Anchorage and Minneapolis, but our root systems are tangled up together thanks to Renewing Reformation. Both of our ministries became stronger and more resilient, because we are living proof: we don’t have to do this alone and there’s enough for everyone to have enough.
