Coaching for clergy and faith leaders
You may still love the church. You may still believe deeply in your calling. And yet something has changed. You are not the first to feel this, and you are not alone in it.
Every conversation is private. Nothing is reported to a bishop, a synod, or a call committee — and I hold no agenda about whether you stay, reshape your ministry, or go.
If that question has crossed your mind, it doesn’t mean your faith has failed or your calling was wrong. It usually means something quieter and more human has been happening for a long time.
A name for what may be happening
P.I.E. can happen when years of ministry expectations, responsibilities, conflict, and adaptation gradually create distance between who you are and how you are serving.
It is rarely one event. It is the slow accumulation of small adjustments, each one reasonable on its own, until one day the person you are in ministry and the person you are everywhere else no longer quite match.
Before we ever speak
It helps to know who you’d be sitting across from. Here’s a conversation about the work, why I do it, and what these sessions actually feel like.
Three ways to work together
Every one of these begins the same way — a free conversation, with no expectation of anything after it. We simply talk about what you’re carrying and whether I’m the right person to walk alongside you.
For clergy and faith leaders sensing the distance between who they are and how they’re serving. We begin with your WHY.os Discovery, then work through what’s happening, what it may be telling you, and what your next faithful step could be.
Schedule a free consultWorking with the patterns underneath the patterns. As a Master Practitioner and Certified Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, I help you notice the assumptions and habits of thought that shape what you believe is possible — and gently loosen the ones that no longer serve you.
Schedule a free consultFor staffs, councils, and ministry teams carrying something together. We create a space where people can say what’s actually true, hear one another differently, and find a way forward that the whole team can genuinely stand behind.
Schedule a free consultThere is nothing to purchase on this site. Every path begins with a conversation.
How the process unfolds
We begin with your WHY.os Discovery, helping you recognize the motivations that naturally drive the way you think, lead, serve, and make decisions. Then we work together through a simple process.
What is happening in your ministry, your leadership, and within you?
What might your experiences, frustrations, hopes, and WHY be telling you?
What possibilities are emerging — and what might your next faithful step be?
The answer may be to stay. It may be to reshape how you are serving. It may be time to transition.
The goal of coaching isn’t for me to make that decision for you. It’s for you to become clear enough to make it for yourself.
How I coach
My own WHY.os shapes the way I walk alongside you.
I naturally look for possibilities. When something isn’t working, I believe there may be another way forward that we haven’t discovered yet.
I’ll ask questions that invite you to examine assumptions, expectations, and patterns that may be limiting what you can see.
I trust you to discern your own answers. You won’t be pressured toward my solution. Our conversations are a confidential space where you can think, question, explore, and tell the truth.
Who you’d be talking to
I served as a Lutheran pastor for 47 years, in congregations across Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Missouri, before retiring. I know the weight of the work from the inside — the competing expectations, the 24/7 availability, the quiet distance that can open up between your calling and your week.
I’m an ICF Professional Certified Coach and a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I coach under the ICF Code of Ethics, which means what you say stays between us.
Mostly, though, I’m someone who has sat where you may be sitting — and found that the questions were survivable, and that asking them out loud was the beginning of the way through.
Trained, certified & affiliated with
Before you reach out
Yes. Nothing you say is reported to a bishop, a synod, or a call committee. I coach under the ICF Code of Ethics, and I am independent of any call process.
No. Spiritual direction attends primarily to your relationship with God. Counseling works with past wounds and psychological health. Coaching begins with where you are now and moves toward what you sense you are being called to — using your discernment rather than mine. Some people are well served by more than one of these at the same time.
No. You don’t need to know whether you should stay, reshape your ministry, or transition before we talk. That’s what discernment is for.
No. I trust you to discern your own answers. The goal of coaching isn’t for me to make that decision for you — it’s for you to become clear enough to make it for yourself.
We talk. You describe what you’re carrying, in whatever order it comes out, and I mostly listen and ask. By the end we’ll both have a sense of whether working together would help. There is no cost, no pitch, and no obligation of any kind.
Yes. I served as a Lutheran pastor for 47 years across four synods, and I’m a Certified ELCA Coach. I know what the call process asks of a rostered leader — and I am not part of it.
Begin with a conversation
You don’t need to know whether you should stay, reshape your ministry, or transition before we talk. That’s what discernment is for. You simply need to be willing to explore the questions.
The first conversation is free and carries no expectation of anything after it.