Coaching Resources

One of the greatest gifts you could impart to your coaching clients is to help them cooperate with God – first in being, and then in doing. This manual attempts to help bridge and reprioritize this doing/being gap. Therefore, we’ve included six chapters that address foundational spiritual formation topics that may arise in coaching relationships.

We hope to help existing Christian coaches to more effectively use their coaching skills in the context of spiritual formation by:

1. Helping to empower and sustain you and your coaching clients in ministry through strengthening and deepening your personal relationship with Christ;

2. Introducing spiritual formation topics conducive to a coaching relationship;

3. Facilitating the adaptation and integration of spiritual formation into your coaching practice.

We desire to help you coach others in such a way that your coachees live a more authentic and integrated intimacy with God.

The Mapping Tool for the Teresian Mansions Paradigm

The Mapping Tool is helpful for any area of spiritual formation coaching, in that it provides an objective assessment of the Coachee’s place in the spiritual journey. This allows both the Coach and Coachee to explore and define a main coaching focus for their ongoing spiritual formation coaching relationship that is consistent with the Coachee’s present place in his unique spiritual journey.

Abiding Prayer

We believe that instead of coming to God merely with our agendas and “to-do” lists, we can and must come to Him primarily for the goal of enjoying His companionship. Instead of replicating methodologies of prayer that promote our agendas and strategic plans, we can and must seek God for God Himself. In such a place of abiding, God sets the agenda; God’s gentle and loving voice can correct, guide and direct our steps. Being in the presence of our loving God leaves a subtle but sure imprint upon our souls and manifests outward toward our love of neighbor as well as self. In fact, our increasing intimacy with God in Abiding Prayer is directly related to our ability to let God lead in prayer, drawing us toward Himself and His heart for the world.

The Ignatian Exercises

The twenty four Units or Weeks of the Exercises provide an ongoing six months to a year process of prayer that moves the believer from simple meditation into experiences of contemplation and silence. The five-point journaling method provides an excellent tool for reflecting on the experience of prayer and can be used to give a coach insight into the process going on in a coachee’s prayer life, even when shared from a distance.

The Spiritual Disciplines

One who would coach another in the Spiritual Disciplines must be ready to expose them primarily to the spirit, the essence, of the Disciplines; to help them discover, explore and avoid straying from that life-giving stream. The coach must be prepared to skillfully accompany the coachee on her journey to fruitfully discern and experience those spiritual activities we know as the Spiritual Disciplines.

A Personal Spiritual Formation Plan

Personal Spiritual Formation Plan is a document, prepared by someone who wants to be intentional about their ongoing spiritual growth, and is ready to delineate specific practices and goals that will clearly delineate the path ahead and provide a means for ongoing accountability and reevaluation – all in response to God’s call to greater intimacy with Him. This coaching is intended to assist someone design a personal SF Plan, which is made in response to the Holy Spirit’s movement in their life, and is sensitive to their present stage of spiritual growth and life, for the purpose of fostering further growth towards spiritual health and maturity.

Imago Christi

A Community of Spiritual Formation Ministry