{"id":34902,"date":"2024-01-16T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T09:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34902"},"modified":"2024-01-16T10:13:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T18:13:38","slug":"striking-gold-in-yellowknife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/striking-gold-in-yellowknife\/","title":{"rendered":"Striking Gold in Yellowknife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading “Mining for Gold” <\/em>by Tom Camacho came fresh on the heels of a recent visit to Yellowknife, a small Canadian city in the Northwest Territories synonymous with the gold rush of the 1930s. Even though the goldmines have been closed for some time, there is still a vibrant and eclectic community of approximately 20,000 people living there for various reasons. Diamond mining and tourism are the new rush. What intrigued me most, though, was our pastor and his family who had relocated from a city in Canada and have lived in this harsh environment for seven years.<\/p>\n

Camacho writes, \u201cThis book is written to help in this process of identifying, moulding and shaping thriving Kingdom leaders.\u201d[1]<\/a> His primary metaphor is that of mining for gold in the lives of people, leaders in particular, and learning to partner with God in his refinement of them.<\/p>\n

Upon meeting pastor Steve, I knew I had struck gold in Yellowknife. His hair was permanently unruly from wearing a camouflaged toque (wool cap) and he always wore locally made mucklucks (fur boots). He fit my image of a person from the north. He seamlessly spoke about church life, NWT politics, the indigenous Dene people, and the history of the town. Steve is as community-connected as they come, and he tours us around town with insight into every current Yellowknife issue. In every subdivision lives a good friend, or a life he\u2019s connected with, a place that he frequents. Steve is a captivating storyteller, spinning tales of the north and about fascinating characters who would be considered misfits in most places. One of them is a northern \u201cking\u201d who builds a snow castle every year and is referred to as \u201cYour Majesty\u201d by residents but whose real name is Tony. \u00a0\u201cYellowknife is the best and most interesting place I\u2019ve ever lived\u201d, he proclaimed into the frigid air with an unfettered enthusiasm that is rarely heard. The North has penetrated Steve\u2019s bones and has become a part of his psyche. With all that\u2019s transpired in the past few years and the challenge of living in the North, I thought he would tell me he wanted out.<\/p>\n

The church Steve serves is resilient and hardy. It\u2019s not big by our standards and unlikely to grow much bigger due to a constantly revolving door of short-term residents who often go north hoping to strike it rich or who are running away from something. But the church is standing firm, bearing witness to Jesus, and reaching forward into a post-covid, uncertain economic, and politically complex environment. Leading a church in this context resembles navigating whiteout conditions on an ice road. Like living here, pastoring here is not for the timid, and for all the effort Steve will likely never be in the limelight. I found it quite intriguing that he and his family would want to move into this unforgiving environment and stay here for as long as they possibly could to see the church become a transforming influence in the community of Yellowknife and other Northern communities.<\/p>\n

Steve is exactly the kind of person who I want to help thrive and who would benefit from the leader development model that Camacho is proposing in “Mining for Gold”<\/em>. When I read this book, it reminded me as well of the uniqueness of each of the 500 licensed workers that I work with in my role as Director of Leader Development in The Western Canadian District of The Alliance Canada.<\/p>\n

His model, easily remembered, is based on the acronym GOLD.<\/p>\n

G – Gold is everywhere.<\/strong> Leaders, like Steve, are like gold that is being refined by God and they are spread out throughout our district in Alberta and Yellowknife.<\/p>\n

O – Open your eyes to see it.<\/strong> It\u2019s everywhere, even in unlikely people who devote their lives to serving the church in hard, unwelcome, and remote places. A leader like Steve is remote and could quite easily be overlooked. Through prayer and learning to see what God is seeing in people, we will never have a shortage of work.<\/p>\n

L \u2013 Learn the skills to draw it out.<\/strong> The skills of leadership coaching are invaluable because they provide the leader with clarity and a simple plan of action in a world of complexity. Coaching is about the person being coached and provides them with the agency to act and accountability for the action. Steve has unique challenges in his location. A solution from our head office in the South will not be contextualized or personalized. Coaching Steve about what matters most to him is by far the best approach for development.<\/p>\n

D \u2013 Develop leaders continuously.<\/strong> We need to become intentional about leader development and make it a high priority. Developing a system to engage leaders like Steve, who live remotely, is important. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

There were several principles in the book that most resonated with me:<\/p>\n

First, the desire to see leaders thrive resonates with my desire to see every person experience Jesus promise of life to full in John 10.10. \u00a0I want to see leaders like Steve in Yellowknife thrive, not just survive, as they learn to discover and participate with God\u2019s refining work in their lives. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Secondly, I loved his emphasis on partnering with the work of the Holy Spirit in a leader\u2019s life. This model of leadership is Spirit-dependent rather than dependent on our ingenuity or charisma. He writes, \u201cWhen we see people by the Spirit, the way God sees them, powerful things can happen. God can show us the gold inside people, and then teach us the skills to draw out that gold and help them cooperate with what he is doing.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Thirdly, the coach approach to leadership is a profound leadership shift. Most leaders are experts and want to share their expertise with others by offering advice. We are trained to influence people through preaching, inspiring, encouraging and developing strategies. While these are valuable, the coach approach requires a different mindset, skillset, and process. The coach approach puts the person being coached in the driver\u2019s seat. The role of the coach is to listen deeply and ask great questions that help draw out the gold that is already inside the person. He writes, “In Coaching Leadership, we don’t solve leader’s issues for them or tell them what they need to do next. If we do our part well, leaders feel they are in charge and they choose the path that is best for them.”[5]<\/a> I felt that this segment of the book was just scratching the surface and could have been a bit stronger. This will likely be the greatest mindset shift for leaders. For the uninitiated, it would have been helpful to delve a bit deeper into coaching skills and a process for coaching.<\/p>\n

Finally, the warning in the book is to treasure and steward people rather than use them for our purposes.[6]<\/a> I think we need to be reminded of this fact regularly as we seek to develop the people around us. They belong to God, and we are there to simply steward his work in their lives. What a privilege we have!<\/p>\n

Overall, the content in this book is gold, and I will use this as I work with a leader development team to nurture a system for peer-to-peer coaching for our 500+ licensed workers. I will draw deeply on the wisdom found in Camacho\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching<\/em>, First published (Nottingham: IVP, 2019), 4.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Camacho, 5.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Camacho, 93\u201394.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Camacho, 27.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Camacho, 63.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Camacho, 83.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading “Mining for Gold” by Tom Camacho came fresh on the heels of a recent visit to Yellowknife, a small Canadian city in the Northwest Territories synonymous with the gold rush of the 1930s. Even though the goldmines have been closed for some time, there is still a vibrant and eclectic community of approximately 20,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1555,2967],"class_list":["post-34902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-camacho","tag-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34902"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34922,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34902\/revisions\/34922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}