Teleconference Transcript - 5/15/08

Jarvis Ward welcomed callers as they came on the line, and mentioned that we have this phone call the third Thursday of each month. If you are not on our email list (perhaps you heard about the call from a friend) please email info@cityreaching.com and ask to be put on the list to receive notices directly.

www.Cityreaching.com archives a large amount of information on our vision to see the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole city.

Montie Ralstin from Boise, ID laws asked to lead in prayer.

Last month Noel Castellanos joined us on our call with Dr. John Perkins. God has incredibly used Noel in CCDA, working with Dr. Perkins. Noel will be our guest June 19th. Glenn Barth will host this call, as Jarvis will be on a trip to Ghana and Liberia.

The Mission America Coalition (MAC) annual meeting will be in Minneapolis Oct. 7-9. Mission America is opening membership in the coalition to local leaders.

Introduction of Guest: Bill Zipp is an award-winning author and master business coach. As a committed evangelical, Bill has spent thousands of hours working directly with hundreds of executives in the United States and Canada, from Fortune 500^® The website is getting a facelift. Jarvis spent time this week with programmers in Austin. It’s looking great. companies like Automatic Data Processing and Cisco Systems to agricultural leader Agrium, Inc. His latest book from Wiley Publishers, The Business Coaching Toolkit, was released in the fall of 2007. It’s a neat book.

Bill is a professional member of the National Speakers Association and their Business Coaching Professional Experts Group. He is also a certified Franklin Covey Coach and a certified trainer with The Ken Blanchard Companies. As an honors graduate from Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, Bill takes a biblically-based approach to this topic, and, as an experienced pastor and committed church leader, he brings a breadth of wisdom and perspective to the table. We welcome Bill to the call.

Interview:

Jarvis: What exactly is coaching, how do you do it and how does it differ from counseling, mentoring, or discipling?
Bill: Everyone is calling themselves a coach these days. It’s on their business card. It’s important to have a simple definition. I summarize it as “a collaborative relationship focused on the future.”
If my car breaks down and I go to a mechanic, I don’t have a collaborative relationship with my mechanic. He doesn’t open the hood and say, “Bill, what do you think?” My mechanic, to me is an expert. I take in my car and he fixes it. No collaboration done. It isn’t like the relationship in mentoring and consulting and discipling, where the leader is an expert, trying to pass his expertise to us. That isn’t coaching. Coaching is not an expert coming in and giving a pep talk. A coach is truly collaborative with a master dialog, asking questions, getting people thinking, questioning things in a healthy way. So # 1 – it is collaborative, and #2 – where it differentiates from counseling is it’s about the future, working towards getting things done in the future. The expert model has legitimacy in its rightful place. There are right times to talk to a counselor or therapist and untangle threads of the past. Coaching in its pure sense is collaboration about the future, plans, goals, dreams about the future. So that’s a simple way of understanding it.

Coaching and discipling are synonymous – Jesus did it very collaboratively. You see him asking questions, like in the feeding of 5000 they asked what to do and he said, “You feed them.”: He created teaching moments through collaboration. The disciples were discussing on the road who would be greatest in the kingdom. Jesus asked what they were talking about on the road. He knew, but he was coaching his disciples, asking questions. Then later on he asked, “Who do people say I am? Who do you say …?” He was discipling by asking great questions, getting them to think. There are similarities between discipling and coaching. Jesus’ mentoring process was interactive and collaborative.

Jarvis: Is coaching a biblical approach to ministry?
Bill Zipp: It absolutely is. Right from the beginning of time, in Gen 3 after the fall, God came into garden. A question: Where are you? Fundamentally, coaching reaches out and asks questions so those who are in dark places can find their own answers. God knew exactly where Adam and Eve were. He didn’t ask because he needed information. He asked so they would think for themselves. Who told you that you were naked? God knew, but right there, you have God asking questions, in a sense coaching, getting people to think for themselves. Think about that from a theological perspective. We are made in the image of God. As believers, the Spirit of God lives in us. As believers, we have the word of God, and the Spirit illuminates. We believe in this great reformation truth, the priesthood of the believer, direct access to God. Sometimes we don’t lead people that way, and don’t honor what God is doing in their life. We walk over it. A coaching, collaborative approach honors what the Spirit of God is doing in their life, honors the priesthood of every believer, helps them walk with God not through an intermediary but through God.

Jarvis: Is there a set of coaching skills you can learn as a Christian leader to increase your impact with people?
Bill Zipp: The very first one is asking great questions. We referred to Gen. 3, and Jesus’ teaching. These are great questions because they are open-ended. neutral questions. Not questions like Perry Mason to trap people into saying something you want them to say. These are neutral questions. So the first skill is developing great questions. Then obviously you need to listen, really hear what the person is saying. Then, based on their answer, be able to plan things together, i.e. Now what are you going to do about that? What actions will you take now that you have answered this question? So being able to do collaborative action planning, holding the person accountable and totally affirming them. I summarize it with Five A’s . . .
Asking questions
Active listening
Action planning – (not telling what to do, but helping them plan)
Accountability
Affirmation – praise and support
If you learn to do those five, you will be effective.

Jarvis: Why is coaching an important tool for Christians to have in city/community transformation?
Bill Zipp: That’s a great question. I’ve prayed over this answer, because I wanted a word from the Lord for you all today. So I will preamble this with I love the church. I love what God is doing in His church. So none of these answers are any attempt to throw stones at people who are serving the Lord. My suggestion is simply this: we have embraced an unbiblical model of ministry, a celebrity model of ministry. We have built ministry around bigger and better, strong powerful personalities who can build bigger and better churches and events. When Christ started becoming a celebrity, He withdrew. He didn’t stop ministering to them, but purposefully and intentionally went a different direction and started building into a few. My answer is “Let’s stop being bigger and better, but be smaller and deeper. When Christ couldn’t go into an area without crowds, he stepped into smaller and deeper, a handful, going deep with them. They multiplied, and they multiplied, and they multiplied … We have birthed a celebrity culture and consumer Christians, people who come to church as passive consumers, watching the bigger and better show, never changing their lives. The coaching model says we are going to find a handful, a few, go smaller and deeper, and see lives transformed by power of Christ, thinking for themselves, accepting responsibility for themselves, and change the world the way Jesus did through this methodology of collaborative walking together by faith.

Jarvis: You cover a lot in a short period of time. You are very clear. One more question.
What reliable resources are available for a Christian leader to learn more about coaching?
Bill Zipp: There are 3 books I recommend: Bill Hull’s book, The Disciple Making Pastor. He wrote it 20 years ago. Because we no longer live in am agrarian society, the concept of pastor is almost foreign to us. Bill suggested this 20 years ago before the coaching craze. The best role for a pastor is coach, Eph. 4:11-12. The coach doesn’t play in the game. He mobilizes and motivates the players in the game. So that’s a great resource.

The second book, self published, by Tony Stoltz (see www.Coach22.com) Leadership Coaching. The Disciplines, Skills and Heart of a Christian Coach, I think it’s the single best volume giving simple, achievable ways to learn the 5 skills of coaching. Between those 2 books, you get a discipleship pastor and theological framework. Tony is a committed evangelical. (There is a lot of junk out there in coaching; goofy stuff.)

A book I wrote: when you get basic system down, here’s the software you can use. It has a worksheet on building team, other worksheets. It’s titled The Business Toolkit. It has a whole bunch of tools you can use as you work with people. My creative genius is creating helpful tools and worksheets. Forget the business part of the name. These are tools that help you get collaborative interaction. www.BillZipp.com We have an affiliation with Amazon.com. They can sell it cheaper there than I can send it to you.

Questions & Answers:

Paul Hoy, Columbus, OH: One of the things we are developing here is tools to help people in mid-life to become agents of transformation in their work context. Our model calls for training and development of life coaches. We believe the baby boomers will need coaching to get through that halftime space, Is certification important? What training would you recommend to raise up a community of life coaches across the spectrum of the church in the city?

Bill Zipp: I was born in Columbus. Thanks for that great question. Let me address certification. I chose a rigorous certification process with the Franklin Covey organization because I was led by God to work in the marketplace. In the marketplace you need to pay the price to get the certification you need to do this. I’ve documented over 1500 hours of coaching, and have these certifications to prove it. To help someone collaboratively midway in life, do you need that? I don’t think so. However, people need to be taught in the basic 5 things. So I think if you teach people how to do that and you model it, and they learn how to do it on a specific issue like career change at halftime, I think you’re good. Some of them want to go on vocationally and become coaches; then they need to pay the price and get the certification. There is a fantastic tool for that. It’s called IDAK . I don’t coach around career change, but whenever one of my clients is thinking through that, I send them to this company. It’s a Christian man who did this. It’s online for a $27 assessment. It’s fantastic.
Paul Hoy: We are working with John Bradley at IDAK.
Bill Zipp: That’s a great tool.

Scott Neuman, Flagstaff, AZ: I’m involved with the Micah Collaborative, a small group of churches trying to bless the community, and basic business empowerment to encourage micro-business. We have a great poverty rate here. This is trying to help people who don’t have business background, using Kaufman materials, but I don’t have a business background. I was in community development overseas. I’m more social based - helping folks to benefit their communities, growing holistically. Could you comment on the importance of having business background, or can you be effective without it?
Bill Zipp: The answer is yes and no. If you have started ministry from scratch, have donors who have contributed, you’ve kept in touch, grown the ministry, you have basically started a business. So, no, you don’t need to start a business, but there are some significant differences. You need to be much more rigorous in managing cash because you can’t ask donors (customers) for cash. You need to be careful about hiring because of the way laws are written. My recommendation: don’t feel shy or embarrassed to speak into this, but ask God to bring you a partner who has business savvy who can help you so you can work together with some of the raw business realities that aren’t necessarily found in ministry. My work primarily is with business owners who have 200 or less employees. I really prefer that. There are free resources at my website. www.Billzipp.com

George Ordway, Fresno, CA: You talked about a celebrity model of the church. Have you had experience coming alongside pastors or cityreachers who want to move a city toward a common vision?
Bill Zipp: I have done that. About year and a half ago a friend’s son started a church of the emerging church model, had 200-300 kids meeting in a bar. I started going. I was the oldest person in the room. But for me it’s been going, being faithful in going, keeping my mouth shut, being helpful and supportive. Then the pastor gave me an opening: Can we talk? I didn’t blast him. I listened, prayed, gave him a thought. I think it means coming alongside, building trust, so now I sit on the board and have helped guide some of the maturity of this outreach. This church could have gone into the celebrity model, with a 20-something hotshot kid, then 5 years later it’s gone. Its building relationships, going smaller and deeper, challenging people to do something different, to build disciples like Christ did.
George: I think we’re working in multiple church settings, and that gets a little challenging. Back to the book you said, I think part of the celebrity issue is we don’t have a lot of pastors in the pulpit who have been discipled.
Bill: Yes, they are often trained in just the one-directional model, not coaching. In monthly pastors meetings, don’t bring in a speaker. Don’t be one-directional. Model how to have good conversations, have good dialog. Model collaboration. Have an exercise everyone can do right there. Have a listening or collaborative planning exercise.

Charles Daugherty, Cedar Rapids, IA: What is the name of that book?
Bill: The name of the book is The Disciple Making Pastor by Bill Hull. I believe he had a new edition in honor of the 20th year. The name of my book is The Business Coaching Toolkit. 10 tools to use in team building, communicating, managing time, priorities, delegating. Forget the word Business – I’ve had many people in ministry use this tool.

Paul Bothwell, Boston, MA: An assumption under what you are saying there has been an agreement somewhere along the line that someone is interested in being coached. It’s hard when you haven’t asked to be coached. What is the nature of the relationship setup that needs to precede ongoing coaching?
Bill: I had my teenage daughter snap, “Dad, stop coaching me.” A. You get people’s permission to coach. You don’t randomly start doing collaboration. It can be very invasive. Jesus did that in a sense in his disciple selection. It needs to be talked about. A person needs to say, “Will you do that for me?” Then I continue to get their permission. In enthusiasm they respond with excitement but 4 weeks later it can fall apart – they don’t show up, or go the other way when they see you. So I say, “Help me understand. I thought this was something you wanted to work on. Do you want to stay in this process? “ I find this even with top executives – we re-establish permission. Then I ask permission to hold them accountable. I think that’s a needed skill, to continue to get this permission.

Susan Brill, Eau Claire, WI: I’m wondering how many people a person can coach at one time to be effective.
Bill: The national answer is 24-25. I can’t coach that many people at one time. I take on 10-15. I’m not doing cookie cutter coaching. However, I know fulltime coaches who have a client load of 25-30. But for me, half of the time I’m speaking around the country. I can’t do more than a dozen or so and keep things straight and customize things for them.

Sherry Lorentzen, Gig Harbor, WA: My background is in ministry, but I started a coaching practice
2 ½ years ago. 25 clients has worked well for me.

Gary Schwerin, Rockford, IL: I’m thinking about our round table, leaders from many venues in our community. I’m wondering from your perspective what would be a good first step?
Bill: The greatest pushback will be, Is this biblical? Rightly so. How many fads have we seen go through the church. So many leaders won’t embrace anything new. Is this collaboration biblical? If you list all the questions Jesus asked his disciples, and then talk about priesthood of believer - this is the place to start – a biblical basis, then training skills. Then active listening skills. Then collaborative planning and accountability. Pick through these skills one by one. When my daughter got her license, I didn’t throw her the keys. I went with her on safe short trips. So collaboration is a skill. You can train them, but build the biblical foundation so they feel this is not the flavor of the month going through the church.

Peter Carlson, Corvallis, OR: Can we use the coaching skills for ourselves?
Bill: Here’s the beautiful thing about coaching. It gives you that third-party perspective. All of us have blind spots we can’t see. If you and I went out together for bagels and coffee and there was a piece of cream cheese left on my mustache, you would tell me to wipe it off. That’s fundamentally what coaching is. I can’t see the cream cheese, but you can. That’s coaching. You could answer some of these questions, but so much of Christlikeness occurs in community as we grow together.

Bill: If you have businessmen or women in your church with 200 or less employees, and they want help from someone who is a committed Christian, this is what I do. If you go to my website, you’ll say “there’s nothing about ministry here.” But what I do is help Christians build their businesses in a healthy, biblical way. www.BillZipp.com

Jarvis: Let me remind you: On June 19th our conference call guest will be Noel Castellanos, Executive Director of Christian Community Development Assn. CCDA is a key ministry association God has been using across the country.

www.cityreaching.com will have the transcript of this call.

Jarvis thanked everyone for being on the call, and Bill Zipp for being on the call. Dallas Anderson was asked to close in prayer.