Distance coaching (also known as executive, personal, professional, business, phone, career, life coaching) can help people set and reach goals as well as develop and refine skills. Distance coaches help their students in specific areas of desired improvement and provide the tools, support and structure needed to develop the skills they feel they need to succeed in their careers. Again, unlike classic mentoring / discipling relationships that require face-to-face interaction, distance coaching can occur phone- to-phone when the coach and learner are miles apart.

Good coaches do not tell their clients what to do; they help them analyze problems, find solutions, and develop skills through the use of insightful questions and reflective dialogue. They become partners who help their clients focus on what they passionately desire and how they can get it. Coaches may use personality instruments, assessment exercises, questionnaires and / or learning contracts to help discern the clients' needs and goals. Only then is a course of action decided. Thus, coaching provides a guided learning experience in which there is structure and accountability. The initiative for learning remains with the client at all times. Research indicates that people stick with a coach for an average of about two years. Many people become coaches after being coached themselves.

How I Did It

In my long-distance coaching experiment, I actually worked with three pastors -- Lloyd and his copastor Jeff, who were working together to plant a church, and Mark, who had been a pastor for only nine months. All three were eager to participate.

The first thing I asked of the men was that they read Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson. This text provided a common understanding and language to discuss expositional preaching. I instructed each of them to send me a cassette tape and full manuscript of each sermon. The manuscript was beneficial for discussion and also for developing the discipline of thinking on paper. I also asked them to listen to their own messages before our phone conversation.

After reviewing their material and listening to the cassette, we would talk on the phone. I guided them through various principles of preaching and applied those principles to their messages. Sometimes we discussed their upcoming sermons and how to present them. It was not uncommon to discuss other matters related to pastoral ministry. We would use e-mail to summarize our discussion and plan for the next coaching call.

In one of my early sessions with Jeff, he mentioned that he sometimes has a difficult time pulling his messages together. "I've got so many mini-messages floating in my head that I have a hard time landing on a few good principles that I need to drive home," he said. He felt tempted to load all of his ideas into one message.

As a result, we spent the bulk of our time talking about "ideas." We looked at Ephesians 6:18-20, the passage for that week's sermon. "What was Paul's original idea?" I asked. "How did he develop that idea in the passage?" "What is his flow of thought in the larger context?" "How can you communicate that idea to a modern audience, your specific congregation?"