How we Measure Coaching Effectiveness
At the Impact Community, the goal of our certified coaches is to help church planters launch strong, stay healthy, and build a foundation for enduring city impact. With this vision, we talk to many church planters, sending pastors, and team members about what we do and how exactly we do it.
If you want to learn more about our available coaching tracks, we encourage you to visit the coaching page on our website. You can also enter the church planter portal and watch the introductory videos that explain our coaching process from beginning to end. We make this content open to the public to answer any questions people may have about what to expect.
As we talk to church planters and their teams, a common question that comes up is this:
How do you define success or measure the results of Impact Community coaching?
This is an important question because any coaching engagement requires a high level of investment (time, money, focus, etc.). Therefore, leaders want to ensure positive, measurable, and sustainable returns on their investment.
As coaches, we understand that we are often tasked with making intangible ministry goals tangible. For example, if a church planter desires to “plant a strong, healthy, and life-giving church,” they must first identify what qualities or characteristics define a strong, healthy, and life-giving church. In other words, they must turn a general and high-level goal into a specific and practical process with actionable steps. We believe this is where a coach can offer a lot of value.
Our coaches work hard to understand each planter’s unique vision and help them develop a strategic plan to achieve that vision. A coach also helps a planter leverage their unique strengths and lean fully into their ministry context. Not only do we encourage each planter to follow a God-given vision, but we guide them to implement that vision in a practical way that works best in their city.
This brings us back to our original question. How do we define success or measure the results of Impact Community coaching? What metrics are used to benchmark the effectiveness of each coaching engagement? As an answer to these questions, we offer four benchmarks that we use to measure our effectiveness. After a coaching engagement is completed, we ask ourselves four things:
Did the church launch strong?
Did the church planter develop and follow a launch day checklist? Did they follow a progressive launch process leading up to launch day? What were the results of their launch? Did they make an large evangelistic impact? How many unchurched people were in attendance? Were essential growth systems in place (guest follow-up, discipleship pipeline, marketing, etc)? Did they launch with a cohesive team? Did they launch with spiritual momentum? Did their launch day help to build spiritual momentum moving forward?
Is the church planting family healthy?
Does the church planter and spouse have a higher level of self-awareness due to coaching? Are they aware of their unique strengths? Have they established rhythms of family enrichment and do they have a plan for personal renewal? (spiritual, emotional, relational) Has the planter felt a high level of support and encouragement from their coach? Do they have a supportive team working with them?
Have they laid a foundation for enduring city impact?
Has the planter developed a post-launch church growth plan? Do they have a team development plan in place? Is the church financially secure and does it follow sound budgeting/accounting practices? Are they following a process to assimilate and disciple new converts? Do they have an active and compelling presence on social media?
Was the church planter’s Strategic Launch Plan and God-given vision fulfilled?
To what extent was the planter’s strategic launch plan fulfilled? What goals or objectives are not yet achieved? What aspects of the plan had to be adjusted or revised? What factors or results show that God was clearly involved in the process? (miracles, conversions, baptisms, etc.)
All of these things will be discussed between the planter and coach over each 1-year coaching engagement. Rather than pinpointing a singular or specific metric such as launch day attendance, we feel that it is best to view coaching effectiveness through a holistic lens. Ultimately, we feel that if the church planting family is healthy and following a strategic God-given plan, then the church they start and sustain will grow and make an enduring impact as a result. A tool that we utilize to gain and review the above information is an Exit Interview. This is an extensive digital survey that we ask each church planter to complete after each coaching term. In the Exit Interview, church planters rate their coach across ten specific areas and also provide specific data points related to the overall impact of the coaching engagement.
In this conversation, we feel like it is important to go on record and say that to be effective in any ministry context, leaders need soft skills (emotional intelligence, self-awareness, relational skills, etc.) and hard skills (tactical knowledge, budgeting, public speaking, etc). Psalm 78:72 says that David led Israel with integrity of heart and skillful hands. Though soft skills can be harder to measure or quantify with numbers, we feel like they are equally important in the cultivation of enduring leadership. At the end of the day, that is our vision for church planters. We’ll give them tactical resources and situational training, but we also hope to encourage the integrity and health of their hearts. As we lead in community and partner with the Spirit, the outcome is that we all get better, stay healthy, and plant strong churches.
