Looking for coaching? Keep reading below!
Looking to become a coach? Register for Barnabas Coach Training today!
Barnabas Coach Training is a 10 week course that covers all the best traits of a great coach, and how to share them with the people God sends your way.
The Role of a Coach:
Coaching is the process of coming alongside a person or team to help them discover God’s agenda for their life and ministry, then cooperate with the Holy Spirit to see that agenda become a reality. Coaches come alongside to help, just as Barnabas came alongside Paul (Acts 4:36), and then Paul came alongside Timothy and others. By encouraging and challenging others, coaches empower them for ministry.
The goal of coaching is to help someone succeed. And what is success? It’s finding out what God wants you to do and doing it. Given that definition, success will look different for different people, but it will all be tied to accomplishing the biblical mission. Far from a top-down program designed to accomplish pre-conceived ends, coaching empowers each individual believer to listen to the Spirit and act in accordance with the mission they sense God calling them toward.
A coach does not need any particular information or expertise on a given topic to effectively coach a person on that topic. The coach’s role is to listen attentively and ask powerful questions that open up new understandings and possibilities for the leader being coached. In this way, the coach helps the leader being coached to broaden and deepen their understanding of an area, identify both opportunities and challenges, develop action plans to move forward, and stay accountable for results while celebrating victories along the way.
How It Works
Complete the form and select your top three coaches
You will receive word within two weeks
It’s that easy!
What it looks like to be coached
Free, No charge
Agree upon 6 one-hour sessions, meeting once a month
A signed agreement of commitment is required; declaring your intention to follow through on action steps you set during sessions.
Coaches want to get to know you. Your first few meetings will be about discovering your goals and accessing your next steps.
Evaluation of compatibility occurs after the first one or two sessions with no strings attached if your coach is not a good fit.
The Ministry:
The Barnabas Coach Ministry is dedicated to training and coaching individuals to enable them to encourage and support others through the process of coaching. Our vision is to welcome heaven to earth and help raise up world-changing leaders by remaining dependent on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide our conversations. This ministry and process fit well with the strategy to establish a strong community of growing disciples at Vineyard Northwest. The Barnabas Coach Ministry can enhance and support this process and can help develop leaders in any of our ministry areas.
Curious if you are ready for coaching? Take the assessment below!
Meet the Coaches
Elly Thielen
Elly is a people person. She loves spending time hearing their stories, encouraging them, and witnessing their lightbulb moments of self-discovery. She says digging deep to understand what someone is carrying is a catalyst for compassion and empathy. Elly worked as a teacher for years but now focuses on her family and writing.
Availability: weekdays during school hours
Sherrie Boggio
Sherrie is excellent at problem-solving and organization. She has a servant’s heart and gifts for administration, hospitality, and teaching. Her long career in healthcare equipped her to be a good listener and crisis manager without being judgmental. Sherrie now works part-time at a coffee house where she steps out of her introverted self to engage with the younger women she works with. She’s an encourager who loves to draw out the gold in people.
Availability: most evenings except Mondays
Rob Clippard
Rob is prophetic, creative, and an out-of-the-box thinker who loves a challenge. He’s had a variety of unique experiences in life and has the ability to discern wisdom in a situation that leads to God’s blessing of success in an area that was once a failure. He uses creativity as fuel to explore ideas in new ways, help people discover what they’re capable of, and process their next steps.
Availability: flexible
Mike Utech
Mike has a gift for talking to people, encouraging them, and quickly turning strangers into friends. He has a positive outlook and ministry leadership experience with youth, small groups, financial coaching, and Divorce Care, to name a few. He enjoys creating a space for others to process their thoughts and is passionate about seeing them serve well. Mike is a whiskey enthusiast and has professional career experience in IT focused on Cyber Security.
Availability: evenings, weekends
Iris Lachey
Iris is a kind and sensitive introvert who values family and friends. She would rather listen and encourage than do her own talking and enjoys praying for people and inviting God into difficult situations. Her gifts are evangelism and serving, and she loves getting to know people and welcoming them in.
Availability: weekdays during school hours
Laurie Cochrane
Laurie has a heart for helping people find their next steps and giving them a safe space to be heard. She's an encourager, sees the strengths in people, and challenges them to be their very best. Laurie is gifted in many areas including administration, organization, prophecy, and evangelism. She’s a pastor who loves God, her family, and her church and makes an impact on whatever she does.
Availability: Wednesdays during school hours, flexible
April Ingram
April is kind and calm. The peace she carries is balanced with inner strength and focus. It should be no surprise that she enjoys strength training as well as coloring. April is gifted at analyzing a situation, prioritizing, and staying on track with a plan. She enjoys helping others realize their capabilities and desires and can excite them with the possibilities in front of them. Until recently, April has been a stay-at-home mom.
Availability: weekends, evenings, Jan - early August
Heidi Clippard
Heidi is a leader passionate about unlocking Heaven’s potential on earth to a greater degree. Her strategic thinking inspires others to new heights previously thought impossible. She’s called to equip, empower, and encourage all in Heaven’s abundance. The Holy Spirit frequently knocks her socks off in successes (and failures!) flowing from 20+ years of experience as a pediatric occupational therapist and consultant, adjunct professor, writer, and most importantly, a wife and mother.
Availability: flexible T-Th afternoons
Jenn Utech
Jenn is an encourager and a “cheerleader for change”. She’s fascinated by ideas and has a desire to continually improve. She loves to read and learn new things and then incorporate what she learns into her work with others. Jenn says, “I believe all of us have something incredible to offer this world.” She worked in corporate America for 25 years and is now a Licensed Professional Counselor.
Availability: Flexible
Megan Wilcox
Megan is a passionate and joyful champion of people. She enjoys helping individuals become who they were designed to be and succeed in accomplishing their goals by empowering and strategizing. She observes and analyzes, looking at circumstances from various perspectives to find practical and teachable opportunities, knowing that there isn’t just one solution. Megan loves worship, travel, prophetic ministry, and diversity of cultures. She is spontaneous and fun while also being organized working full-time as an International Business Analyst (IT) in corporate America, part-time with VNW, and Micah Turnbo's non-profit, Behold Wonder.
Availability: case-by-case basis.
Testimonials of Barnabas Coaching:
Stephanie:
“Being coached helped me with parenting my teens. I now see the value of listening more than giving advice. As teens are preparing for adulthood and are eager to think for themselves, coaching has taught me to help guide them in thinking for themselves. Being coached has helped me to organize my time, to where I can now spend more time listening to my teens. There are times when I am able to stay up late with them and we have deep meaningful conversations. Coaching and being coached have helped the dynamics in my home in so many ways. From marriage to homeschooling, business, home organization, and communication, Barnabas Coaching has helped improve my family's life. I honestly didn’t think I needed it, so glad I was wrong.”
Jordan:
Coaching has played a huge role in my personal development and professional development. I was coached for the first time over 2 years ago and am still using some of the processes my coach helped me to implement into my work schedule. It was so helpful that I am going through a second round now in order to grow further.
Sue:
I wanted to be coached because of some problems I was having in my workplace. I had to move from one building to another due to the pandemic and I acquired a whole new set of colleagues to work with. These co-workers spent the day complaining. The coaching helped me to focus on Jesus and what Jesus would want me to do. I learned that I couldn’t just avoid the situation and be unhappy myself. I had to work through it and maintain a positive attitude. Megan suggested that I compliment my colleagues and that worked. Eventually, I was able to pray for them. Without coaching that would not have happened. I think Jesus was teaching me about patience and about not holding grudges. Another important thing I realized through coaching was how I deal with conflict in general, and how I need to improve in that area. I learned that I could change my own attitude if the situation itself wasn’t changing. I could continue to have joy because I can feel Jesus in my work, and I love my work in spite of the obstacles.
Wilson:
Coaching was transformational for me. My coach, kindly and effectively helped me gain confidence and develop systems for managing my calendar and to-do list. I can’t recommend coaching enough.