Fresh Eyes: Why You Need a Coach or Consultant
Jim Pace
June 30, 2023

Recently I texted some friends a few “anti-inspirational” quotes about consulting, including my favorite: “If you are not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”  But this applies to much more than just consulting.

How many of us have started to do some remodeling and found out it would be harder, more expensive, and much slower than we thought? Or we take our car in for something that seems small only to find out that this “small issue” is connected to something much bigger and more expensive? 

So the question remains: why would we seriously consider voluntarily inviting a consultant or a coach into our church if there is a chance they will make things more complicated, not less? 

If you’re asking this, I get it. I was on staff and a pastor of our church for 25 years. What makes pastoring so difficult is not that we have complicated pastoral, personal, organizational, or theological issues to navigate; it’s that those issues are confronting us all at once.

So then, why would you ever invite more potential complexity or challenge by inviting a ministry coach for yourself or a consultant for your church? 

The first reason is that consultants, physicians, contractors, and mechanics, who have expertise and integrity, are not inventing the issues; instead, they are directing your attention toward the areas and issues you might not be able to see. You know those times when you’ve driven to work or the store and you don’t actually remember driving there? We weren’t in a trance or asleep; our brains were processing thousands of micro-decisions along the way, and we weren’t overtly aware of them.  We can easily look past things that are important because we do not see them as immediate needs.   An experienced coach and well-trained consultant can help us notice what we have probably noticed at a certain level before, but they can bring it into our conscious awareness. And with that awareness, we can be in the best position to address those issues head-on.

The second reason: a good coach and consultant can give you a discerning partner in looking at the issues that you both notice. Even with 25 years of pastoral experience, I still needed an outside voice and perspective who could bring expertise that I did not have into our context. I needed someone to see things were fresh eyes because it was too “normal” for me to notice issues that could arise. I wanted them to bring their experience, training, a greater breadth of options or responses, and their awareness of structure. But they needed to appreciate that I and the other members of our church were the keepers of the story of God in our community. We knew the hurts and joys people had gone through, and those needed to be honored as well. 

A good coach or consultant will appreciate that dynamic and it becomes a conversation from these different inputs where we discern together. If you want a good, quick test of whether your coach or consultant is interested in this conversational approach, just see how many questions or conversations they have with you before they start sharing with you what you need to do.

One pattern I’ve noticed: the majority of leaders I coach spend about half of each coaching session talking about how they are navigating the challenges they are facing. Having a safe person to let our hair down with, and a safe place to vent and openly share challenges we are facing is essential for pastors and leaders to navigate pastoral ministry in a healthy way. With great frequency, the coaching sessions with leaders start in one direction – and then a question will come up or a thought will be shared and the conversation will go in a completely different direction entirely. Having someone with whom you can share the whole story of how life is going, without having to assure them afterward that you really do still love Jesus and have hope for His church (we all know that feeling don’t we?), is incredibly important. 

There are many more reasons, for sure: navigating the morass of ideas and strategies that are out there, helping you figure out the order of issues to be confronted, assessing whether what you are doing is working, developing the steps to take/having someone that will ask about your progress through them, or just talking to someone that has navigated what you are confronting multiple times in multiple contexts. These are all important benefits provided by a coach or consultant.

A good coach or consultant should have experience in what you are trying to do, needs to have a strong faith life themselves, and needs to be willing to listen as much as speak. 

Ironically, when those elements are present, it doesn’t feel like coaching or consulting; instead, it feels like ministry. And that is what I love about it. 

Jim Pace

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An Ethical Response to Violence

By By Jim Pace • September 15, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, social media has been filled with perspectives, as is typically the case. I am reluctant to add mine as there seems to be no lack one way or the other. To be clear, this is not just about Charlie Kirk, this is about violence across the board. I did not feel led to write this because it was Charlie Kirk specifically, but rather another in a long and winding line of acts of violence, that my ministering at Va. Tech gives me a bit of personal experience with. But as I have just finished teaching two classes on Christian Ethics, and as I was encountering again the spread of responses from my Christian sisters and brothers, I felt led to look at this event through that lens. Ethics, at its base, seeks to answer the question, “What is better or worse? Good or bad?” As a follower of Jesus, this is what seems right to me… 1. We never celebrate harm. Whatever our disagreements, rejoicing at a shooting violates the bedrock claim that every person bears the imago Dei (Gen 1:27). Scripture is explicit: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Prov 24:17); “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). I don’t love blasting verses like this, but you cannot get away from them if you are reading the scriptures. 2. Moral responsibility sits with the shooter—full stop . Saying “his rhetoric got him shot” smuggles in a just-world logic that excuses violence. As a contextual theologian, I have an enormous amount of respect for the impact our various narratives have in shaping our understandings of the world around us. They are inescapable. But that is not what I am talking about here. Ideas can be wrong, harmful, or worth opposing vigorously, but vigilante ‘payback’ is never a Christian category. My primary gig is that of a consultant for churches and non-profits. Today, in my meetings and among friends, I have heard some variation of “He got what he deserved,” and “I vote for some very public justice for the shooter.” Both of these views speak of revenge; the follower of Jesus is called to lay these down as our Messiah did. Not asked to, told to. 3. Grief and outrage about gun violence are legitimate; schadenfreude is not . Channel the pain toward nonviolent, concrete action (policy advocacy, community intervention, survivor support), not dehumanization. Here are four thinkers who have had a profound impact on the Christian ethic I try to work out in this world. As I share them, three things are worthy of mention. One, I certainly do not claim to follow their guidance perfectly, and at times I do not even do it well, but they have all given me what seems like a Jesus-centered and faith-filled direction to move in. Second, I do not claim to speak for them in this particular matter; I am merely showing how my ethical lens has been formed. Third, clearly I am not dealing with all the components of our response to these types of violence, this is not a comprehensive treatment, merely the reflections in the moment. Stanley Hauerwas : “Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence.” It’s part of following Jesus, not a tactic we drop when it’s inconvenient. Stanley Hauerwas, Walking with God in a Fragile World, by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor N. T. Wright : “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good. In other words, we answer evil without mirroring it. David Fitch : Our culture runs on an “enemy-making” dynamic; even “the political rally… depends on the making of an enemy. Don’t let that train your soul.” The Church of Us vs. Them. Sarah Coakley : Contemplation forms resistance, not passivity. For Coakley, sustained prayer trains perception and courage so Christians can resist abuse and give voice against violence (it’s not quietism). “Contemplation, if it is working aright, is precisely that which gives courage to resist abuse, to give voice against violence.” Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self. Coakley would say that far too often we react before we reflect. This is the problem that Fitch is getting at in much of his writing, that our culture actually runs on antagonisms, the conflict between us. We need to find a better way.