Finding a Coach
Surrendering your whole life to Jesus is the greatest adventure life has to offer. You may have already read about the other elements of living missionally, but nothing can pull them all together like someone who’s been there before you.
Author Mike Breen says the biggest reason missional living fails is because of lack of mentorship. A coach can help you stay on course with your two jobs as a follower of Jesus:
- Love God and your neighbors (Matthew 22:37-39)
- Tell people about Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20)
Finding a Coach: The best coach is someone who is about God’s kingdom rather than their own and has already been where you want to go. You’re probably going to have multiple coaches, one for each vision or area in which you want to grow (such as in parenting, serving the poor, etc).
Start with your network of relationships (your church leaders and friends) and keep asking questions, “who do you know who knows about [your vision]?” The mentor you find may be 5 or 6 degrees removed from the first person you asked, but “who do you know” questions will lead you to him or her.
Ask yourself, “Do I like this person? Do I respect them? Is this a person of integrity who walks with the Lord? Would I like to emulate my life after his?”
If it’s clear this person would make a good coach for you, ask them to have coffee sometime (nothing official or high-pressure) to tell you about what God has done through them. If it goes well, perhaps you can meet on a more regular basis.
The idea of asking someone to coach you may sound scary. It does require courage to overcome American ideals of not needing anyone or being a burden, but we are commanded in the Bible both to be discipled and to disciple others.
It may seem like a lot to ask of someone, but it is a benefit to them as well. Not only does being asked to coach give them the chance to follow God’s command, but it is the highest compliment you can give. It is asking them to sacrifice their time, but most coaches will tell you how the process grows them even more than those they mentor.
If you’re having a hard time finding a coach, or you’d like to coach someone else, taking this survey will help us find the right match for you.
Learning from a Coach: Most coaches won’t teach you from a curriculum. It’s up to you to ask questions, to say “show me” or “tell me a story of when this happened in your life. How did you do that?”
When we become like children, asking questions like they would, suddenly we get to the crux of the matter. You can also ask them to help you keep the components of missional living [5T00-Intro] active in your life.
Show someone today how you admire them and have seen God act in and through their lives.
You can learn a lot more about mentoring from the book As Iron Sharpens Iron by Howard and William Hendricks.
Check out what it means to live missionally and how to go about it.
I hope you’ve benefited from this series (originally developed for graduating college students by the 100% Sent team) and I would love to see how you hear God wanting to use you in the comments below. It is our mission to come alongside the body of Christ as we offer our lives as living sacrifices to bring the hope and love of Jesus to every corner of His world.
