Seminary bolsters its

coach training program

      PORTLAND — As coaching continues to gain traction in marketplace and ministry contexts, Western Seminary has responded by creating a direct pathway to attaining coach credentials: a certificate program in transformational coaching.
      Western Seminary has offered coach training for ministry leaders and Christians in the business community since 2006. Its coach training program has prepared Christ-followers to use coaching in ministry and marketplace roles, as well as to launch professional coaching practices.
     “Leaders and learners come to our coach training because we’ve been able to create a sweet spot of quality coach training, taught from a thoroughly Christian foundation, and at a cost that is about half that of other coach training schools,” said Chad Hall, seminary director of coaching. Hall is himself a professional coach who came to the seminary from an executive coaching role at SAS, Inc.
      Coaching appeals to both ministry and marketplace professionals because it is a highly flexible and successful approach to helping others move forward in life, work, or faith. As a profession, coaching has grown exponentially in the past decade. A relatively unknown and unpracticed discipline in the 1980s, coaching got a foothold in a few corporate settings in the 1990s, gaining credibility and silencing skeptics in the process. Since 2000, the profession has expanded to include coaches who help clients with a broad variety of challenges: professional success, key relationships such as marriage and parenting, health and habit goals, career transitions, and self-improvement.
      The leading membership organization for coaching, the International Coach Federation, recognizes more than two dozen sub-disciplines for coaches and boasts a global membership of more than 16,000 coaches in 100 nations. Professional coaches can serve in churches, companies, and non-profits, or they can launch coaching practices.
      Two recent developments signify he seminary’s ongoing commitment. First, the seminary’s coach training has been designated as a provider of Approved Coach Specific Training Hours (ACSTH) by the International Coach Federation (ICF). Hall said this is about adding value to students: “Our training has always aligned fully with the ICF’s standards and definitions for coaching, and now the ACSTH designation confirms the quality of our training.”
      Second, the seminary has launched the in-house coach certification program, the Certificate in Transformational Coaching (CTC). In the past, Western’s coaching students took training via an a la carte approach that allowed each student to create their own learning path. While that option is still available, the CTC provides interested students a clear learning pathway that includes training, supervision, mentoring, and examinations that prepare participants for certification.
     “Certified Transformational Coaches will know they are coaching at a professional level not simply because they have been trained, but because they have been tested and have proven — to themselves and to potential coaching clients — that they are great coaches who provide significant value to those they coach,” said Hall.
       For more information on the program, visit www.westerncoaching.com.