HGC Vision: Coaching

A tale of two churches, one without a coach and one with a coach.

Tale One

In the summer of 1994, my wife and I courageously moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to launch a new church. It might be hard to imagine these days, but the plethora of resources that exist today on the church multiplication front simply was not available in the 90’s. There was no Exponential, no church planting networks, and the Internet was in its infancy. Google wasn’t even founded until 1998!

We had been married for two and a half years and in vocational ministry about the same number when New Life Community Church launched. We were staring at some serious learning curves. To make a long story short, we spent almost a decade making mistakes, starting a family, and putting down roots in Cincinnati. We had some great stories of life change to tell but not the impact we had hoped. We were limping and tired.

Tale Two

The small core of people that made up New Life made the daring decision to move so God could give birth to something new. That new thing was Journey Church. This second swing had many different dynamics we did not have the first time we embarked on starting a church. When we launched Journey Church in 2006, we were part of a dynamic church planting network, we had a fresh influx of financial resources to do ministry, and we had the necessary launch team at critical mass to launch large. The result: God authored a tremendous story that continues today.

Oh, I failed to mention the key dynamic when we launched our second church — coaching. To say coaching changed my ministry and maybe saved my life might seem overdramatic, but it is true. The presence of a coach in my life made all the difference for me, our team, and our church.

You Need a Coach

At HGC, we recognize it’s hard to make changes, start new life-cycles, affect life-change, or navigate new territory alone. We firmly believe we are better together and that we often need someone to help us reach the next goal.

HGC has a stable of coaches in our network that have effectively coached dozens of pastors to launch new life in their church and their city. If you or your church find yourself bumping up against barriers or challenges, we are confident coaching could be a key dynamic in helping you experience the breakthrough you long for.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Since it’s 2018, you can simply Google, “why you need a coach church planting,” to discover list after list that explains why it’s important. We’re not going to convince you any more by providing another ten reasons here. What we want to do is encourage you to make the step of faith and reach out to someone who has walked in your shoes, someone who’s said things like, “I can’t afford a coach,” “I don’t have time for a coach,” or some other form of rationalization.

Seriously, let us help you navigate those waters. We aim to match you with someone that will help you move forward as you strive to advance God’s kingdom on earth. Most of the time, we’re helping you make the decision that you need a coach, and then we connect you to someone outside of our network. We’re not concerned about building our business; we are concerned about building Healthy Growing Churches. The name is not a misnomer; it’s what we’re all about.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you along the way. Our dream is to help 1,000 churches experience a turn around with the ultimate fruit being multiplication.