Congregational leadership continues to grow in complexity, both in terms of mission as well as operations. Potentials coaches work with clergy to help navigate these challenging times, providing insight, challenge, and support as leaders craft new ways of being faithful guides with their communities. We work to understand your context, diving deeply into internal and external community dynamics. We help you to identify your role within the system, and how you can most effectively lead. While our focus will be with you as an ecclesial leader, we can also develop strategies for leadership committees, congregational engagement, and judicatory facilitation.

At our core, Potentials coaches are committed to supporting you in ways that lead to innovative solutions and greater satisfaction in your ministry. Most clergy choose to meet once a month, though we are available to meet more frequently.

Potentials sees our work as congregational coaches as unique within the larger field of congregational engagement. Distinct from consulting, we engage in this work through developing collective goals and asking powerful questions towards achieving these goals. We deepen working relationships, improve communications, and celebrate the diversities of communities in their efforts to advance organizational missions. At times, congregational coaching may involve any of the following activities: community identity clarification; conflict transformation; operational restructuring; and strategic engagement/planning.

While we work to anticipate a wide variety of coaching needs and contexts, we know that unique situations arise that may benefit from our services. In a customized package, we tailor what we offer and how we offer it best suit the needs of the client(s).

For example, a team may need to connect episodically as they work to implement a new strategic plan. A couple may seek relational coaching. A teenager may seek coaching as they work to discern a career path to explore, or what college they will attend. Leaders of two different congregations may seek coaching as their communities explore consolidation.

These examples are meant to stir your imagination: what kind of coaching makes sense to you, and how can Potentials support you towards discerning where you are headed and what it might take to get there?