This past February, I spent a week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, sharing in many venues about the transforming power of coaching for Christian leaders. Several young adults who attended my presentations expressed interest in an ongoing team to learn coaching skills and build up others through coaching. I facilitated their first meeting through email, then they took the ball and ran with it! Thus was formed the Coaching Network.
They are all young professionals with many time commitments. Yet they have all committed several hours early Saturday morning every other week since June to meet, share, study and pray together. They are passionate about how coaching can make a difference in live own lives and particularly in their churches, especially with youth.
This newsletter introduces three of these young Ethiopian Christian leaders. They are each living, breathing examples of how God is working through leaders via the power of coaching.
I hope you enjoy meeting them! Each one is an inspiration to me! (Each shares entirely in his/her own words, just as they were sent to me; I have occasionally slightly changed spelling or grammar for better English comprehension.)
My name is MELAK HAILU. I am a lawyer by profession and I work at World Vision Ethiopia as Government Relations Officer. I am married to Eden Gashaw.
I joined the coaching Network team which was established informally (for the time being) in June 2019. My reason to join this group is that I wanted to know, understand and explore basically the concept of coaching and its related disciplines. I want an intentional journey to endeavor in an internal self-development. I want to know my life calling, to have the grace, understanding, and skill to live it fully in the context I live. I want to be a blessing to my family and community. I find the seminar I took on coaching at EGST and the coaching Network’s meetings so far to lead me to those aspirations of mine.
I think coaching is important to our churches because from the beginning if we dare to start a discussion on the subject matter we would have a chance to look at ourselves and the approach we used to minister our Lord Jesus.
I see a community of a command giver and command receivers in our church. I see top-down relationships. I don’t see genuine discussions and the tradition of asking critical questions being encouraged. I see modalities set probably before 20 or more than that being applied still to serve church communities. I see an assumption where the ministers of the church are treated as all-knowing fellows and the remaining members as people who always needs the teachings and prayers of ministers. The concept of coaching is really important in a context like this. It would have a gradual effect and would make the wrong assumptions right.
I consider coaching important for the majority of young people here. It would give them an opportunity where their stories are listened to, where they would be faced with critical questions and learn the skills on how to deal with them.
My name is MINDAYE YOHANNES and I am married to Tsegaye Petros who shares a similar vision and passion with me especially towards the young generation.
Currently, I work for a government university engaged in different activities as explained above and serve in the leadership team of Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church national youth ministry and youth mentoring program in my local church in Addis and take all this together as my calling and ministry.
I am a teacher, trainer, researcher and consultant in my vocation and coaching is very important for me personally to grow rich in my professional life and to impact organizations and people in the right ways. So I have a deep hunger to be coached and mentored in my vocational engagement.
I joined this couching network team because of my deep passion about coaching and mentoring the youth in my church and community. So I thought that working as a team will empower me to be enriched with the ideas, concepts and practices of coaching, mentoring and other related approaches that might help for peoples’ holistic growth.
I am also very grateful that I participated on the seminar organized on “the transforming power of coaching” by Dr. Rich Hansen at EGST. I think this seminar served me and my friends to finally end up being connected by our passion. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Dr. Rich; your guidance, prayers and commitment to guide as in this journey means a lot to us. May God Bless You and your Family!
I hope that we will grow rich together in this team just as we are doing now. I also expect from the coaching network team to work together in an organized way to the enrichment and holistic human growth and flourishment in our nation so that we can help people specially the young generation to live out their full potential and talent for the glory of God.
Coaching is very crucial in the church because it is a place where people see, experience and share the life of Christ in this fellowship. It is also a center of holistic empowerment and continues growth to the fullness of Jesus Christ. Therefore, without coaching and other helping approaches like discipleship and mentoring, we cannot lead people to live out their full potential, talent and other natural gifts both in the church and in their lives everywhere.
Without coaching, we cannot also build and expand Gods’ kingdom. Hence, coaching and other related elements are vital to the church in order to nurture, shape and to lead people to God and for his glory manifested in peoples’ lives. As St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is humanity fully alive.”
Coaching is very important especially for the young people because they are vulnerable, insecure, confused and in need for guidance in most cases. Besides, Ethiopia is a young nation with thirty million people between the age of 15 and 29 today. But there is a weak or no organized and intentional coaching system in various churches. So, there is a real time of need and call for more coaches in the church, among the society and in various institutions including schools, work places, etc.
My name is TSEGAYE PETROS and I am glad to have a Godly and passionate wife, Mindaye Yohannes, to share my vision with her.
Currently I am working for an organization called Bible League Ethiopia as a training coordinator. I am also working in Fares disciples’ evangelistic team which works in evangelizing and discipling high school students as a team leader. Besides, I minister in prayer and as a mentor of college students in my local church.
Dear Dr Rich, I am so thankful to God for having such a courageous person like you around us in our coaching network journey. Thank you for your tireless guidance and encouragement. It has been so wonderful that I was able to understand the concept of coaching and mentoring. I also would like to appreciate the Coaching Network team members for their courage and commitment to engage in every activity of the team.
I was motivated to join this coaching network because of the passion that God has put in my heart to serve the youth, especially college and high school students in the Church. For about four years I used to Minister College Christian students as a youth pastor. It was a great opportunity for me to know the identity of the youth.
During those times, I realized that youngsters are in a high need of searching for their identity, they seek a lot to know what their passion is, and they are also too energetic and courageous to implement what they are interested in. I believe that unless we are aware of their common behaviors and how to handle them skillfully, it will be too difficult to minister and disciple the young people around us.
As I understand, coaching is so important to solve the problems that the youth are facing in these days in our country, Ethiopia. Previously it is not widely known and used in our country. I think this is why we see many youth around the country are highly engaging in conflicts that bring disasters in every aspect of life.
Lacking a right coach or mentor made the young generation to have meaningless life as well. Therefore, I highly encourage churches and other bodies to accept the coaching and mentoring concepts and develop the culture of using it.
For me involving in the Coaching Network will highly develop my skill of ministering others and it will also help to be part of the change that comes by coaching and mentoring involvement in the future. I trust God that he will use us as an instrument to support many youth in the church, in the work place and in the community to know their calling and to live accordingly.
Yeah …interesting keep it up