Every December I offer a “round up” special to former, current, and potential clergy coachees: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. This is my way of helping you make sure you don’t leave any of your hard-earned money on the table at the end of the calendar year. Here’s what you need to know to access this special:

• If you are a prospective coachee, I welcome you to schedule a discovery call so that you can ask any questions you might have about coaching or the way I approach it.

• Contact me about your desire to use the special by noon your time on Friday, December 30.

• There is no minimum number of sessions you must purchase.

• If you are a current coachee, the session(s) you purchase using the offer will be added on to the end of your coaching package.

• You can use this special to pay now for sessions that start at your convenience, whether that’s immediately or after the busyness of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Those are the nuts and bolts. Let’s get to the good stuff, which is why you might want to explore coaching. The Church and world are in major transition, which means many ministers want to discern what this means for them and their congregations, re-think and re-tool their leadership, and take good care of themselves and the people they love in sustainable ways. Coaching can help you move ahead in all of these open questions. In fact, coaching is one of the best uses of your professional development funds because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your particular situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

Invest in your 2023 with 2022 money. Contact me or schedule a discovery call to activate the round-up special by December 30.

Pastors, you rock.

You really do. As unbelievable as it sounds, I think 2021 has been an even harder year to be in ministry than 2021. There has been so much more ambiguity. Some people are vaccinated yet others are not, whether by choice or circumstances such as age. What does that mean for what we can safely do? There has been more unpredictability. The Covid numbers were good in many places in May and June, then Delta brought us to our knees starting in late July. Statistics have improved in some locations since then, but many experts predict upticks as the weather turns colder. How will that impact Advent and Christmas observances? There has been more fatigue. Yours, for sure. But your church folks are also weary of hearing about Covid, living with Covid, and changing precautions at Covid’s whims. How will you persist in keeping people safe, and where will needed rest come from? There has been grief. Some of the people we had hoped to see back in the pews by now are not and might not ever be. The shape of the church we’ve known and loved is being fundamentally altered. What will it ultimately look like?

Despite all these trials and more, you have hung in there. Thank you for your faithfulness and hard work! AND, make sure you have the support you need as you continue to lead through ongoing challenge. Every December I offer a “round up” special: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. My intent has always been to keep you from leaving any of your hard-earned benefits on the table and to encourage you to invest in your leadership growth for the coming year. I can’t imagine a better time to hit both of these marks. While it’s important to steward your church’s money well in these uncertain times, it’s also essential to use your available resources to prepare to pastor in a rapidly-changing world. Coaching is a great way to do that, because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

If you are looking to make progress in such areas as

• finding a good oscillation between caring for others and caring for yourself,

• developing and grounding yourself in your pastoral identity when others are projecting their anxieties about the state of the world on you,

• searching for a new call and/or leaving your current one,

• helping your church members engage well among themselves when some are in person, others are online, and a few have disappeared into the ether,

• addressing conflict that has been exacerbated by the troubles of the past 18 months,

• dreaming about what is now possible that wasn’t before change was thrust upon us,

coaching can help.

The round-up special is valid in December only. Contact me or schedule a free exploratory call by December 30 to take advantage of this offer.

Last year I wrote an e-book about visioning in the small church. It details a process for dreaming, listening for God, and planning out of a sense of gratitude for what your congregation has. Some of these gifts are individual while others are collective. There are both tangible and intangible blessings available for your use. They include money and facilities, but they encompass so much more than that. Together, they point your church toward God’s invitations to all kinds of ministry.

The book was written for a pre-pandemic church, but just like you’ve done with so many other aspects of your congregation’s life, you can adapt the outlines to online or hybrid formats.

It seems fitting to me during this week that I give thanks to you for all that you do by helping you learn how to celebrate and operate out of all that your congregation has to offer. So for today only, you can download my book for free. Feel free to share this link far and wide. We will all benefit from a church and a world infused with gratitude!

Whew! You’ve almost made it through 2020. It has been a year of unexpected challenges, hasn’t it? This has manifested in a number of ways, with just one of them being the inability to go to in-person denominational meetings, conferences, trainings, and retreats. This means that you might have a good bit of money remaining in your professional expense fund, even after you’ve attended all the virtual events and bought all the books.

Every December I offer a “round up” special: I will round the amount left in your professional expense line item up to the next session value. My intent has always been to keep you from leaving any of your hard-earned benefits on the table and to encourage you to invest in your leadership growth for the coming year. I can’t imagine a better time to hit both of these marks. While it’s important to steward your church’s money well in these uncertain times, it’s also essential to use your available resources to prepare to pastor in a rapidly-changing world. Coaching is a great way to do that, because it

• is done remotely,

• takes place at your pace and on your schedule,

• is geared toward reframing your situation in helpful ways,

• helps you make positive steps forward, and

• can be completely customized to your goals, leadership style, and context.

If you are looking to make progress in such areas as

• finding a good oscillation between caring for others and caring for yourself,

• developing and grounding yourself in your pastoral identity when others are projecting their anxieties about the state of the world on you,

• searching for a new call and/or leaving your current one well under the restraints imposed by Covid-19,

• helping your church members engage well among themselves and in the community when there is no end to the pandemic in sight, or

• addressing conflict that is even trickier when those involved are unable to gather in person for conversation,

coaching can help.

The round-up special is valid in December only. Contact me or schedule a free exploratory call by December 30 to take advantage of this offer.

As I imagine is true for most coaches, the bulk of my new clients come from current coachees’ outreach to colleagues who might benefit or casual word-of-mouth recommendations. I am very grateful for these referrals! I want to make it easier for people to tell others about the value of coaching and reward their efforts in doing so.

To that end, I have made this referral sheet available in PDF format, and you can click on the image below to save it as a PNG file. It names the people and groups I work with, details my vision for and approach to coaching, differentiates coaching from counseling and spiritual direction (two disciplines that are distinct from but dovetail nicely with coaching), and provides information on how to get started. Page two, should you choose to keep reading, provides some testimonials.

When potential clients sign up for a free discovery call, I ask where they found out about my coaching services. If they name you specifically, you get two free one-hour coaching sessions. If you’re a current coachee, those two sessions get added to the end of your package. If we’re not coaching together right now - and even if we never have! - you get two sessions to use at your convenience. That’s a $200-300 value, because referrals are that important.

Thank you to all who have recommended my coaching in the past, and thanks in advance to those who will. It is a privilege to serve the church and its leaders in this way.