Barnabas File

In our coaching and coach training, our focus is usually on the partnership between the coach and the client.     In this process, the coach leads the process with the client providing the agenda—the subject for discussion, resource discovery, action plans, and achievement.    In a recent online presentation, Professor Peter Hawkins suggested a new perspective for the coaching relationship. His presentation on “From Ego to Eco Coaching:  Creating Value Beyond the Client” offered a challenge to place the coaching relationship in a larger context.  How can the coaching relationship benefit the organization, society and the world?   Hawkins outlines the change in perspective in this way:   For the coach it means moving “from facing the person you are coaching as your client, to going shoulder to shoulder with them as your partner, jointly facing what their world of tomorrow is asking them to step up to.”   For the coach and client, the...

“He said to them,  ‘Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’” (Luke 20:25, NIV)   Updated introduction:  Responses to the assault on our Capital Building this week have been varied and often ludicrous.  One that especially puzzles me is that of devout believers who argue that we as Christians should just see this as an expression of a sinful world and that these actions have little to do with the message of Christ.  Wrong!  If God cared enough to send a son into the world to live among us, God must have cared about the state of the world.  Jesus certainly pointed out moral and ethical failings that could be addressed by very human listeners.  As you read this blog, please consider your responsibilities as a citizen of two kingdoms.   When I did supply preaching on a regular basis, I was often called on to preach the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July holiday.  It was ...

Dr. Richard C. Halverson (1916-1995), chaplain to the U.S. Senate, is credited with this statement made in 1984 in a speech before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church:  “In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe where it became a culture, and, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.”   This statement may be a bit harsh but, in many ways, our churches tend to function today more as businesses than as spiritual organisms.  For example, when the stewardship committee of a church sends out a letter encouraging congregants to invite people to church in order to “meet our budget,” the church has lost its focus.  When the building committee becomes more interested in maintaining the physical facility than serving the community, prio...