What is coaching?

​Coaches are specially-trained partners who work with you to ask questions, make observations, help you prepare for next steps, name insights, and claim your truth. It’s not magic, but it can feel that way sometimes, when all of a sudden what seemed such a muddle is crystal-clear. 

Imagine yourself in a maze. To move through it you begin to ask questions and examining options, you identifying resources, you clarify what you already know, you remember where you have been, and identify the choices you have to move forward. With all this in hand and a partner at your side, you are able to journey through the maze much better than you would have been able to on your own.

​The Rev. Claire Bamberg

Photo credit: Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Coaching and Discernment

Coaching aims to deepen our self-awareness and self-reflection in discernment. It creates space for slowing down enough to really listen to yourself more clearly identify where you are going and where you have been. Relaxing into this partnership gives cognitive and emotional support for the journey.
 
As one past participant describes:

“A professional coach listens carefully as you express practical, daily concerns and growth goals, reflects back to you and helps you clarify what you're saying, then helps you self-identify concrete steps you can take to make progress, while also helping you to deepen your understanding of why these things are concerns and growth goals for you in the first place. Each session is self-contained, self-directed, and you come away with some very effective insights and plans of action to take between sessions. Then you review the learning that takes place as a result. It not only helps you to make concrete changes in how you live, but you also gain a much better understanding of your self and the deeper spiritual truths that lie beneath your path. It's an invaluable aid in keeping you on track to your own growth.”

​As you begin Loving the Questions, we will introduce you to coaching and pair you with a coach who will walk with you through the September, 2021 through and including August of 2022.  This will provide added personal support through your time in Loving the Questions and give you a continued support as you begin to journey beyond our time together. We are grateful to partner with Together We Thrive, a Lilly Foundation funded ecumenical program of the New England Synod (ELCA), Southern New England Conference and Episcopal Diocese of Western MA to make coaches available to participants.
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Here is what participants who have worked with their coaches through the recommended period of time have said about their coaching experience within Loving the Questions:

“I found that working with my coach helped me see the deeper spiritual issues underlying so-called practical daily challenges. For example, what I originally cast as a "discipline problem" I learned was in truth more related to challenges around having the faith and trust to rest in all moments in God's loving presence. In other words, on my own I thought I had to "try harder," but with the diligent and very detailed attention, and outstandingly sensitive questions, of my coach, I am finding much more sound, spiritual "solutions." Around discernment, the coaching is helping me understand it's not so much an issue of figuring out what to do and making myself do it, but rather of taking the risk to be who I am and trust that God is in that, can handle an course corrections that may be needed, and will continue to guide and reveal more. In essence, I think applying the coaching to perceived practical life issues was a very important complement to the inspiring learnings and more general reflection that took place in the LTQ meetings. I'm very grateful for this provision.”

“I highly recommend having a coach when you want to take discernment to the next level!  With my coach, my skills and gifts are drawn out and zoomed in on (not all at once!). My coach helps me navigate how to identify discernment answers in present, future or past time by using my own perspective. There's also figuring out what I am capable or not capable of in terms of discernment. My coach will rely on my response to help me distinguish hearing God practically through who I am.”