Coaching seminar

We're hearing great feedback and testimonies from our KKI conference in Barcelona last week: children who heard God's voice for the first time, pastors who went home energised with new vision to make changes in their church youth programmes, leaders who determined to "clear the temple of business" and return to simple worship and obedience as the centrepiece of their leadership....

In the meantime, we gathered a smaller group in Malaga over this past week for a workshop about the heart and skills of Christian leadership coaching. You may already be familiar with the concept of executive coaching or transformational life coaching. The coaching paradigm uses questions and reflection to help leaders set goals, explore options and decide on action steps that they want to implement in their business or ministry.

This seminar was part of a year-long intensive training programme in leadership coaching for ministry and missions. After a week of learning and practising these coaching skills, our next step is to begin putting them into practice by actually coaching other leaders over the months that lie ahead. For me personally, this involves connecting by skype with former LDC and PCYM students - coaching and supporting them in different areas of their ministry leadership and personal development.

November weather can be changeable in Spain, but we were blessed to have a beautiful sunny week that allowed us to eat our meals and hold some of our practice sessions outdoors (see photos.)

As one group of people leaves us this weekend, another group will be arriving for the next event in the diary: a meeting of the steering group that will be planning a Europe-wide training event in Austria next summer. So today we'll be doing a lot of airport drop-offs, and tomorrow we'll begin with airport pick-ups again. The planning meetings begin on Monday afternoon.