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Passing of Friend Milt Hughes

Milt Hughes passed away on November 5, 2024.     Milt made a significant impact on the lives of college students and collegiate ministers not only in the United States but around the world. After effective service as a campus Baptist Student Director in California, he accepted a position as evangelism consultant for National Student Ministries at the Baptist Sunday School Board.    For many of us, he refined the concept of “evangelism.”   In his Share Seminar material, Milt helped us to understand that effective evangelism is not a “one off” of sharing one’s testimony or the Four Spiritual Laws.  His approach began with the formation of the disciple as one whose walk with Christ empowered that witness.   I was preparing to teach Milt’s material on a campus in Arkansas, when I realized the full implications of John 7:38: “The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” (NASB) Sharing one’s experience of Christ comes from o
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Spiritual Direction and Life Coaching

  An effective coach goes in the direction the client chooses.  The client sets the agenda.  If your client is a person of faith and wants to bring their spiritual development into the conversation, it is wise for the coach to follow their lead.  As a person of faith, spiritual reflection may be the way that the client processes life experiences. We have identified the focal area of coaching as “the client’s whole life.”  Does this not include their spiritual life?   A recent conversation with a pastor who is a coaching client dealt with personal clarity about goals for her ministry.  She identified part of this as a spiritual challenge.  She was already aware of some spiritual disciplines and suggested that one of these might give her additional insight.  One of my favorite International Coaching Federation core competencies is titled “Evoking Awareness.” In this core competency, the coach is encouraged to help the client “facilitate insight and learning.”  Applying insights from spir
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What’s the Difference Between Life Coaching and Spiritual Direction?

In our Introduction to Coaching Class, a question that is often asked is, “What’s the difference between coaching and spiritual direction?”  We usually respond by referring participants to a chart developed by Mark Tidsworth that is included in our book Disciple Development Coaching (see excerpts below).  We also point out that each process has become a well-developed discipline with clear standards for training and credentialing (for spiritual direction, see Spiritual Directors International or Spiritual Directions.com ; for coaching, see International Coaching Federation ).     Here are some ways we might differentiate coaching from spiritual direction.   Focus Coaching:     Developing people through learning by doing, partnering between self-discovery and sustainable action Spiritual Direction:     Listening for God’s direction, gaining insights into one’s spiritual journey.   Expertise Coaching:     Expertise within client Spiritual Direction:     Client’s spiritual journey, with
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St. Patrick: A Missional Leader

The second icon I purchased was St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.    As one might expect, much of the story of Patrick is shrouded in myth. The accepted story is that he was kidnapped from Britain by Irish raiders when he was 16 and taken to Ireland where he was a slave for six years.  He eventually escaped and returned to his family, but he took vows with the Church and returned to his place of enslavement as a missionary.  He is credited with converting the island to the Christian faith.  By the seventh century, he had come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.   The genius of Patrick seems to have been his ability to contextualize the faith to win converts.  He took advantage of the well-developed stories, customs, and institutions of Ireland to present the Gospel in a powerful way.  So significant was this approach that it gave birth to what we call Celtic Christianity, a movement that differentiated itself from the Roman form of the faith for centuries.     In his
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St. Barnabas: Outgrowing Your Mentor

Barnabas is one of my favorite characters in scripture; he was a person who looked for the best in others and was called “the son of encouragement” by the early apostles.     He embodies what I hope that I have been to others during my ministry. His icon is one of the first I purchased.   Barnabas is known for many things in the New Testament, but perhaps his most significant role was that of mentor to Saul and his first co-worker in missions.   In the Book of Acts, we read the story of a mentor-protégé relationship that prospered for a period but ended with some discord.  We sometimes forget that Barnabas was a mentor for Saul, the persecutor of the Way who would become its most articulate spokesperson.   When Saul first appeared in Jerusalem after his conversion, many of the church leaders feared him, but Barnabas recognized that his experience was authentic and advocated for him.  Later Barnabas found himself working with the new church in Antioch and sent for Saul to come join him
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What’s a Good Baptist Doing with Icons?

A friend is currently pursuing a course in Spiritual Direction using the practices of Ignatian Spirituality developed by Ignatius of Loyola.     It occurred to me that it might be appropriate to share with him an icon of the saint. So where did that idea come from?    Baptists have traditionally criticized the use of images as a part of worship linking the practice as idolatry.   Icons have a long history in Christian tradition.  An icon is a religious work of art, usually a painting, often created in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.   Eastern Orthodox tradition holds that the production of Christian images dates to the earliest days of Christianity, but most modern art scholars believe the earliest religious icons were created in the third century.     Widespread destruction of images occurred in the Eastern Orthodox Church during the Byzantine iconoclasm (destruction of icons) of 726–842, although this conflict did settle the question of the appropriateness of the us
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Pastoral Intelligence: A Book Review

In  Pastoral Intelligence:  Why Your Emotional Health is the Key to Your Church’s Health , Maurice Graham has shared not only from his lifetime of ministry, but what he has learned from two decades of counseling clergy. Although Graham incorporates the work of emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman, the concept of Pastoral Intelligence adds theological intelligence or one’s relationship with God to the mix.   The first part of the book, Graham describes the Transforming Self Triangle.   He shares not only the results of his research related to clergy experience that inform this model, but examples of how this process has been used in his work with clergy.  He builds this personal development model on the work of the Holy Spirit in the clergy person’s life.  From the theological perspective, he notes, “Ministers have to understand that God is always at work in the background. The invisible God is made visible in Christ as redemption is taking place, not only in our past and present bu
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