Growing up playing many sports but especially soccer, I always had coaches in my life. My coaches have mostly challenged me to do my best, pushed me to try harder, encouraged me when I failed, and celebrated with me my successes. When a coach has seventeen players on a soccer team, one of his primary jobs is to slot the players in the positions that best suit them. Each player\u2019s suitability is a combination of their strengths of particular skills in the game, and also their genetic makeup, disposition, size, speed, and natural interest. Though most soccer players love the idea of the glory of scoring goals, many find defense much more suitable and effective for their own progression in the sport as well as the team\u2019s success.<\/p>\n
My high school soccer coach is still a friend to this day, though a rather distant one. We have stayed in touch all these years. I am so thankful for him because he was able to see in me what I could not see in myself at the time, both my strengths and my limitations. He moved me from midfield to defense in my senior year which turned out to be such a success I wondered if I would have gone further in the sport if another coach had seen that in me earlier.<\/p>\n
I have since gone on to coach many people myself, primary in ministry leadership and staff positions. I have never been one to function in ministry as a supervisor without also being a coach. It\u2019s the only way that has been modeled for me. My first year in my senior pastor role I benefited from having a professional coach, Tod Bolsinger, help me to determine my strengths, choose to the fight the wise battles, live into my limitations, and emphasize what I do best and what I am drawn to the most in terms of a sense of call.<\/p>\n
During this five year season of leading a multi-staff congregation, I also coached my middle daughter\u2019s soccer team for those five years. I started right away and we had six little girls in first grade. We kept those girls together, added a few along the way, and developed a team that won the league every year with no more than one loss, and a deep love and affection for one another as teammates and friends. I loved these girls and I loved being their coach and watching them, through formation, discipline, encouragement, and care, flourish in soccer with such joy and passion and success.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to me that I may know a little about soccer, but I don\u2019t have any formal soccer coaching training. My success with this team, the Flyers, had so much more to do with my training in human relationships and my theological anthropology. I knew inherently that my job was to form a team out of a group of girls and to make the team its best and to do that I needed to invest individually in the players.<\/p>\n
There was one girl, Veta, who was such a train wreck from day one. She couldn\u2019t even kick the ball, let alone pass it or shoot it or dribble it. She couldn\u2019t run in the right direction. She was terrible and a huge liability. The first year I stuck her in the back corner, but I encouraged her and helped her to finally discover that she can have a successful soccer career if the team utilizes her ability to throw the ball in, which turned out to be her greatest strength. She could throw the ball from the sideline to the center of the field, setting the midfield and strikers up for goal-scoring opportunities. She always loved soccer, but as she found success by being in the right position for her, she was able to develop a self-confidence that she did not have when she began with us. You could see her pride in her eyes when she would stop an attacker or get a throw-in. Life opened up for her, and I think that is what vocational or leadership coaching is meant to do for us\u2014open up new experiences of joy and self-discovery.<\/p>\n
Camacho\u2019s concept of matching our time with our design is so valuable and seems to be a daily challenge. One of the biggest challenges in my adult life has been to accept my limitations. As an only child with \u201chelicopter\u201d and \u201csnowplow\u201d parents, and a 7 on the Enneagram, I always had the false sense that through hard, I could so many things well and with joy. My adult life has been like a gradual chipping away of this concept, usually through burnout or anxiety. I say \u201cyes\u201d to nearly everything, which makes me not be able to do much of anything well.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour gifts don\u2019t make you any more important or more loved by God. Your gifts were given to you by the grace of God. Your role is to steward those gifts. Like the parable of the talents in Scripture, God asks you to bring a return with the talents you have. You are called to invest those talents into the work of His kingdom. In reality, they are not your gifts, but His. He placed gifts inside of us and knows how to bring them to their highest expression\u201d (103)<\/p>\n
I love these questions that Camacho suggests we both use in coaching others, but perhaps first for ourselves for the sake of greater clarity:<\/p>\n
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