A Triad Approach to Health
"What is a coaching triad? It’s a way to be held accountable to an area(s) of ministry that you otherwise wouldn’t be. In the ministry there are certain things with built-in accountability - e.g., Sunday’s a comin’… the sermon will be delivered. But there are some very significant ministries or projects that come up, where I am greatly benefitted by the extra encouragement and accountability of our coaching triad. There are things outside of my normal ministry tasks and obligations that are very important, and yet unless I am extremely self-disciplined, they will not get the attention they need, or they won’t be as well done as they could be, without specific "iron-sharpening-iron." The fact that three of us are helping each other out, experiencing the same support in this process, is a great blessing to our respective ministries." –Pa. Mike Sager-Faith EFC, Austin, MN
Initiating a triad coaching relationship targeting individual focus and accountability has significantly helped us make progress on key initiatives and projects-much more than we would have made approaching the needs alone.
In 2007, Mike Sager, Rick Ensrud and I decided to enter into a triad coaching relationship. We defined a coach as "someone who comes alongside someone else to help him hear what the Holy Spirit is saying and act on the Spirit’s leading." Primarily meeting on a conference call, once a month for 90 minutes, we each had the opportunity to be coached for 30 minutes on issues we were trying to work on in our lives and ministries. We took turns being coached, coaching or being a third party giving feedback. Every month we switched who coached whom. It worked very well.
Our target was to do this for one year and then evaluate whether it was worth trying to multiply for our district. At the end of the year we decided it was valuable to both our individual and church health. To multiply this intentional focus on health, we have each agreed to provide point leadership for a new triad. Each one of us found two new pastors to be in the triad we oversee. In addition, my executive pastor, Bill Miller found two other executive pastors to be in a triad with him. We recently invited everyone to attend a one-day training (one day of training) that prepared each person to have a successful start to their triad experience, (which was well received!).
We’ve grown from 3 pastors in one triad to 15 pastors in 5 triads. The goal is to continue multiplying this concept every year. Ultimately we hope to have enough pastors with triad training and experience that any pastor in the district who would like to participate in a triad would have the opportunity to do so. We believe this initiative will improve the overall effectiveness of the pastors who participate in our district. Coaching isn’t for everyone. But for those who want it, the coaching triad is a creative, highly reproducible, low cost, time efficient method of delivery.
The beautiful thing about this, from my perspective, is that it can be done long-distance over the phone or computers. You don’t have to travel for it to work. That means, if God wanted to expand it beyond our district-that could happen as well! But for now, we simply want to have a high quality start to coaching triads in our district. Bottom line it’s all about offering one more resource to the pastors to help them be more productive and effective leaders in God’s kingdom. –Pa. Glen Stevens, Crossroads Church, Albert Lea, MN
