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Coaching Missional Communities – The Gospel Foundation

I am in a series of posts on coaching, specifically as it applies to missional communities. The posts in this series are:

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The Gospel and Coaching

Practically speaking, we utilize two primary tools to guide our coaching time, but we are always driving towards the gospel and obedience to Jesus.

The first tool we equip our coaches with is the “Missional Community Roadmap”.

We remind them that issues of obedience are most often ultimately rooted much deeper in the heart, and therefore we need to understand how to approach those issues.  A problem with the implementation of our practices could be as simple as a failure of communication or lack of experience, but more often than not, those shortcomings contain a depth of complexity.

Therefore, when coaches here of problems within missional communities, we help them work through a process of identifying the problem in obedience, then asking questions about values, which flow from motivations, which are produced by the work of God through the gospel.

MC Roadmap

The chart above is the visual process that we provide for our coaches to help them understand how to go from a practical issue in missional community life back to the gospel foundation.

For example, if a leader is having trouble getting a group to practice a Third Place regularly, it’s likely that they do not value the declaration of the gospel, and are lacking motivation to love those outside the community of faith.

Rather than simply saying “try harder to engage Third Place”, we are able to help a leader or community repent of their lack of love for the lost, and rejoice in the good news of Jesus’ perfect work on their behalf.

Effective coaching keeps skills in view, but diagnoses problems and provides tangible steps that are sourced in the gospel.

By Todd Engstrom

Although I was raised in the church and had a knowledge of God, I didn’t embrace Jesus until I heard gospel preached and lived out by some Young Life leaders. God has proven faithful and good to me since that day, even in great suffering and loss. I have learned to treasure Romans 8:28 as a wellspring of hope and truth.

God has blessed me with an amazing wife (Olivia), three sons (Micah, Hudson and Owen) and a daughter (Emmaline). Growing up in the northwest, the thought never crossed my mind that I would have four children who are native Texans. Despite landing in the south, I still watch Notre Dame games with my children every Saturday in hopes they will land at my alma mater.

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