In this episode we talk about coaching and all the benefits this process brings to planters and leaders. We also talk about church planting and where we need to be going in the future.
In this episode we talk about coaching and all the benefits this process brings to planters and leaders. We also talk about church planting and where we need to be going in the future.
Transcript of Podcast by Multiply Network
Created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-
making communities across Canada
2019 – John Caplin
Paul Fraser: Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast, a podcast created to champion church multiplication, provide learning and inspire new disciple-making communities across Canada.
Hi there. Welcome to the Multiply Network podcast. My name is Paul and I’m the host of this podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. We are on episode #11. I know you are going to love this interview that we have coming up with John Caplin. He’s a coach. He has worked in District Office. He has worked with other denominations. He has worked nationally.
We talk about how to engage leaders, how can we create church-planting Movements. He brags about how awesome Victoria, BC is, where he lives. But primarily we talk about the importance of coaching. That’s what this month’s Multiply Network podcast is focusing in on especially in the life of a church planter. We talk about when is the right time to engage a coach, what a coach does and what are some of the expectations and outcomes that you hope to get from the coaching experience. You’re going to love this interview. It is coming up right now.
We are super excited today to have John Caplin join us. He’s been coaching for many, many years. In fact, he was one of the guys I first saw that led coaching and made me want to be a coach. So thanks John for joining us on the podcast today.
John Caplin:
A. Nice to be with you. Thanks for asking me to be part of this.
Q. You have been a part of this for a really long time as it relates to church multiplication and coaching. We may get into that a little bit later. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself to people who may not know who you are? And it’s okay to brag about where you live if you want.
A. Well, let’s get that out of the way. I live in Victoria, where the flowers are already coming up. I am married to Donna and have been so for just over forty-one heading on to forty-two years. We have 3 daughters, 4 grandchildren and sons-in-law, which are the joy of my life. In terms of my professional career I started to senior pastor in a place called Terrace in northern British Columbia. I was there for thirteen years. After that, when our District made the Assistant Superintendent a full-time position I was elected into that position as the first full-time Assistant Superintendent. I was hired as a specialist in the area of church development, mission and leadership development. So I looked after all the issues that were related to that.
As part of that I think we were part of an organization called Church Planting Canada, as one of the founding members. Nobody was really thinking about church planting so we started thinking about how do we create a systemic approach to it. Coaching was a part of that, as well as creating networks of people where they could get together and support one another, care for one another and learn together. And so I created all of that while I was Assistant Superintendent, assessments and a bunch of stuff to do with church planting, but as well leadership development, church development stuff. And I did that for thirteen years. My wife says I can’t keep a job more than thirteen years!
Then for the last just about twelve years I’ve had my own coaching company, just a little coaching and consulting business. I coach people both inside and outside the ministry world, mostly leaders of organizations and as well do consulting just part time. I do a variety of different consulting. I facilitate groups, help strategic planning and that kind of thing.
Q. So as it relates to coaching, because that’s what our focus is for February, you’ve been quite involved. I remember seeing the Church Planting Canada website; contact John about coaching, about training. So you’ve not only done the coaching itself, you also do training of coaches.
So why don’t you tell us what is coaching because there’s people out there that think well, maybe it’s the same as a sports coach where you are just telling people what to do? What is coaching to you and why is it so great?
A. The coaching metaphor of course immediately you think of a hockey coach and many people think of a Pee-Wee coach, where the guy is trying to get them to skate properly, handle the puck and stay in their positions. If anything in terms of similarity it is kind of like an NHL coach where you have high-level professionals, people who are brilliant in and of their own right. Your role is to focus them, support them and help them discover and tap into their best. So coaching is really about focusing, supporting and challenging the individual to clarify their goals, reach their potential and move to greater levels of effectiveness, fulfillment and sustainability. So that tends to be the things I focus on when I’m coaching.
I’ve been involved in this professionally for the last twelve years. I did it as part of my role for probably the last twenty-five or thirty years in various levels of proficiency. Originally it was more ---
I was trained in reality therapy which has very similar protocols to coaching. And then in the District I used coaching a lot and trained even at the most basic level a lot of people. I went on to do it for Church Planting Canada. I did some of it. I pretty much trained all of the coaches in the Quebec District and I trained a bunch of coaches over in (something). So I have been involved in coaching really a lot.
Q. I really love that. You have obviously got a great history with coaching and lots of experience. But I love what you said about fulfillment and sustainability. I think there are some church planters, some senior pastors out there going, okay, sign me up now. I want to find fulfillment. I want to find sustainability. Why don’t you unpack that a little bit more because I think that is a great thought.
A. Well, there are two big questions every leader has to ask. What do I need to do to stay at my best? What do I need to do to help those around me be at their best? And you can’t do the second without doing the first.
Q. Wow.
A. Because a leader’s behaviour creates the culture of the organization. A stressed leader creates a stressed organization. A frustrated leader creates a frustrated organization.
Q. Right.
A. So paying attention ---
We all know this in terms of our spiritual life. If you neglect your spiritual life you run out of juice. But it also goes into areas of what are the things that are replenishing? What are the things that give you energy so that when you show up you are thinking outward, you are thinking long term, you are thinking about others rather than how quickly can I get out of this meeting. I’m really tired. I hate this job; all of those kinds of self-talk which is really internal talk rather than focused outward.
So every leader has to pay attention to those things.
Q. Right. One of the books that helped me a lot, and I can’t remember the author, but I remember the title. It was called The Power of Full Engagement. I don’t know if you have ever read that one but it is a book about high performers don’t manage time. They manage energy. I mean, that’s one thought in the whole book. There’s more to it. But boy, that has helped me a lot. I try to look at my tasks, I try to look at my day from an energy standpoint. What is an output? What is an input? If I’ve got more output than input at the end of the week, I need to make some adjustments for the following week. Energy is absolutely crucial. And energy comes from fulfillment. Right?
A. It does. And also that is unique to each person. I use the instrument, The Birkman Profile, and it gives us really key insights into the kind of organizational tasks where you will find energy. You could do them forever. And other things that drain you. Also environments. Like some of us are really exceptionally good with people, as long as we have time away from people. So I have learned I have to be away from people. Some of us can really keep up a high pace as long as we have time to think about things and we have breaks in there.
I am the only one who can really manage myself in such a way so self-management, self-leadership are really crucial to being at my best. And that is really a unique pursuit for each person. What gives you energy? What takes energy?
Q. Right.
A. It is different from person to person.
Q. Absolutely. Which is what a coach is there to do, to draw that out in them.
A. Absolutely.
Q. So you’ve been in this a while. What has changed in coaching since you started?
A. One. The fact that people are actually talking about it, thinking about it, the fact that it has become a part of the world of leadership and probably a lot of that has to do with the Millennials coming up, the disintegration of social structures, all of that kind of stuff, where mentoring used to naturally happen from one generation to the next, you know, your grandpa, your uncles, your aunts, your dad, all that kind of stuff, your mom, all of those people. That doesn’t seem to be as prevalent so people are looking for other sources to help them.
And I think also the more collaborative models of leadership over the years, you know, the guru at the top, the brilliant leader, that kind of has fallen to the wayside and there is much more of this collaborative environment. So inviting outside help, having people invest in you, is considered to be acceptable now where it used to be: what’s wrong with you? You’re the leader. You should know.
Q. Right. That’s a great catch because I actually think that collaborative piece is a big part of it where the expertise is actually in your team, not just in one person.
A. Not in one person.
Q. Yes. So when do you think the church world really began to embrace this? Because I know the corporate world seems to be on the front end of these types of things. They are a bit more maybe early adopters. When did you see the church begin to kind of gravitate towards coaching?
A. That’s a bit of a fuzzy starting point. There always has been this idea of mentoring, when you think back to Paul, everywhere he went he had this entourage and he was sending people out and he was working with people like Timothy. You can kind of see a bit of that in the letter to Titus where’s he talking to kind of a peer and he’s doing a bit of that coaching-mentoring piece. It’s a bit different with Timothy.
We kind of lost a lot of that. Probably in the early nineties and late nineties I noticed it was starting to come around. We started to use it in the District and started training people at a very basic level, not anything as advanced as we probably do now, but very basic levels in the early 2000’s. It was starting to be talked about in a variety of circles, particularly as we started mapping out what does a church planting Movement look like and we’ve said we’ve got to have coaching or mentoring or something in there which allows for the application of all of this knowledge in real time.
It looks different when you talk about it than when you are actually doing it. How do you stay brave in the midst of some opposition? How do you keep encouraging yourself? How do you keep focused? What is the next step? All those kinds of conversations are really essential to church planters.
Q. Yes.
A. Because they really don’t have a lot of structures around them or a lot of people around them sometimes and they need someone who is committed to them but who isn’t necessarily emotionally engaged in everything that they are doing.
Q. Yes, and can give that outside perspective, can draw questions, all those things. I actually saw coaching the first time when I went to the District Office, which would have been thirteen years ago now. Lorne McAlister, who was the Superintendent at the time said, “Paul, you are taking some coaching.” I’m like what’s coaching? He said, “Phone Dave.” So I phoned Dave and we started chatting and by the end of the first phone call I’m like I want to be a coach. I want to do what he just did for me in an hour, for other people.
But then I saw it show up in church planting. I didn’t really see it show up much in local churches. I saw church planters, I saw coaching, you know, Church Planting Canada had coaching, I was seeing it in the States.
Why is it so important? You touched on it a little bit. Why is it so important for church planters to have a coach and what happens when they don’t?
A. The things that coaching does well is it keeps you focused. It keeps you supported. In other words, there is always somebody there that is committed to you in a confidential way and allows you to process raw thoughts without having to worry about any of the implications of them. But also helps you come to some conclusions about what you need to focus on now and hold you accountable in a supportive, non-structural way. It just says okay, you wanted to do this. How did it go? We can celebrate that or if it hasn’t happened, okay, what happened. What went on? Well, I ran into some opposition. Okay. So you are able to talk it through because people have all sorts of good ideas. But ideas without action never really impact at all. Church planters really need to stay focused and encouraged in order to do it. Those are the two rails that everything runs on: competency and clarity about what I need to do but also the motivation and the passion to actually do it. Coaching really helps make sure that both of those things stay intact.
Q. Sometimes as a coach all you do is just help them give themselves permission.
A. Right.
Q. It’s like hey, you are waiting for someone else to give you permission when you’re the one who needs to give yourself permission to go. That focus and that encouragement, that championing is so critical to a church planter.
A. And things in your head sound different outside of your head.
Q. That’s so true.
A. You get them out of your head and you start talking to somebody who says, okay, so what else do you need to be able to get this going.
Q. Right.
A. Well, I don’t think there’s anything else. Okay. So what’s the next step? So when you starting talking about it it doesn’t have the same impact out of your head sometimes as it does in your head.
Q. Yes.
A. It’s like this is going to be hard. This has so many steps. And by the time you’re finished it’s like 4 steps, 3 people and you can have it done in a week. You think like I’ve been waiting on this for a month!
Q. Yes. What do you say, because I hear this from time to time, I don’t know if coaching would work for me because I’m more of an internal processer. I internally process so for me to talk it out isn’t really going to be that helpful. What would you say to that?
A. My response always to people is everybody does better with somebody walking with them. At some point everything you process internally you have to bring external. Wouldn’t it be better to bring it external with someone you don’t have to worry about the implication of, to look at it, process it, fine tune it before you have to go public with it? Because if you are a leader at some point you have to go public with everything in your head if it is going to make a difference.
Q. That is actually a fantastic thought. I wish I would have thought of that maybe ten years ago when I started coaching. That is true. At some point it is all going to be external. And some people obviously take more time to internally process. I found the people that I’ve coached who are internal processers, when they leave the session they actually start coaching themselves. They actually start moving towards their goals quicker because they have taken time to think it through.
A. Or they will come back to you and say, “Yeah, I got to this point and I thought what would Paul or what would John ask me?”
Q. Yes. Right.
A. And I use that. They say it actually worked, you know ---
Q. Laughter.
A. --which is exciting because it is that process that really is beneficial to them because the outcome is really what we are looking for, that effectiveness, sustainability and people’s increased ability to act with effectiveness.
Q. So where do you see coaching going in the future as it relates to the church world and church planting and church multiplication? Where do you see coaching and how do you think that is going to help our churches?
A. I think where it is going to go is that more and more of our pastors are going to learn this. By learning it they are able to equip, motivate and help people fulfill their God-given gifts and calling. The idea that the pastor knows everything ---
Tapping into the brilliance of all of the body of Christ ---
There are great leaders around us and helping them. Coaching is a phenomenal skill to help people. Because many people that came to me for counselling were just people who were stuck. I would ask them some questions. These were people that were high functioning. They were running departments in their business or their companies and they were stuck spiritually or they were stuck at work. When we were coaching them we weren’t telling them what to do because I don’t know what they should do in their job. But it was okay, let’s think this through together. What about this? What do you think would happen, you know? We asked them all these kind of what questions. So I think it is going to become a part of the tool box and at some point I think it will find its way into our colleges.
Q. Are you talking about training coaches?
A. The coaching skills, the other people become coaching professionals like me. I developed a training course for Church Planting Canada and we designed it around people that were never going to be professionals. But it’s a skill set that is essential to working with people and just integrating it either as part of the college training program, or as a post-college training program for all of our ministers. I think it is essential. I think it will change the way that people minister.
Q. You’ve got two coaches on the phone so obviously we’re going to be very pro-coaching. But it literally is my best discipleship tool that I have. I don’t have a tool that is better than learning how to lead a coaching conversation.
A. Yes. I remember when we trained all of our cluster leaders. We had about forty or fifty clusters of ministers, bringing pastors and church planters, for everybody, basically. So we were just training all of our cluster leaders. So here’s a youth pastor coaching one of the pastors of our largest church. Both of them – it was just a training exercise – both of them were surprised at how powerful the coaching experience was for both of them. I coached this guy and he found it really helpful. And the guy is saying there’s a youth pastor and he was just asking me questions, following the protocols, and by the end of it he had helped me get clarity. It was one of those moments where you thought, and they said it publicly, which was brilliant because everyone went whoa. And that is always happens on the first day of training when you coach and people see it and they start to do it. It opens their eyes.
We just did it with some of the brethren in Newfoundland. They thought it was going to be a day of training but by the end of it they were all stoked on coaching because they had experienced the power of it personally and they had coached and they’re like wow, they are helped!
Q. Yes. And it is the difference between a professional salesman and a satisfied customer. We can tell them coaching is great and all this. But until they experience it, I remember I did a coaching training, I can’t remember if it was for Bible College students or some people for ordination. And at the end of it I actually wrote out 7 questions they were to ask. Even the questions they were asking, they’re just like -- it got cool when they started going off script and starting getting curious and asking. It’s fun to watch.
I think, and maybe you can unpack this a bit more. I think any leader can have these coaching skills. They may not be a professional coach but you can have coaching skills. Right?
A. Yes. In the professional coaching world there is what we call coaching, which is a professional structure. There are agreements and all that kind of stuff. And there is a coach approach. In the context where you can’t literally say to a person whatever we talk about is confidential. I mean, if you are a supervisor or a denominational executive, you know, there are certain places where you have other roles that mean you can’t say this is confidential. You just can’t say it.
Q. Right.
A. But you can use a coach approach to help another person think through what they need to do as next steps, to bring sustainability, to increase their leadership capacity. You can use this coach approach in a multitude of contexts where it gets incredibly valuable. I think it is one of the key leadership skills in my estimation.
Q. I agree. I totally agree. So you have worn the coaching hat all these years. But I want to circle back to that conversation when Church Planting Canada started, you were part of it when there weren’t a lot of books out on church planting, you guys were writing stuff, courses.
A. I know.
Q. I just looked the other day. So I typed in Top 10 Church Planting Books. Everyone has a Top 10 list and they are all different. There is so much stuff on church multiplication. So I want to get your thoughts because you have been in the conversation for a long time, sat down with lots of different leaders. Let’s talk about church multiplication in Canada and what we should be doing now and in the next 10 years.
A. These are the things that we focused on at the beginning. As a denominational executive I wasn’t interested in planting churches. I was interested in creating a church planting Movement. So as a denominational executive you had to think systemically. In other words, why weren’t we planting churches. Here we were, the premium church planting Movement. No churches in 1900. We were the largest evangelical denomination in the 1990’s. You don’t get there by not planting churches. What was it about our DNA that somehow we lost? Along the way there was a variety of different things. But going backwards, number one, we had to start thinking culture. We had to start thinking from the very beginning how do we create capacity for church planting in our colleges.
So we included a professor at our college as part of the developmental stuff to do with the networks of church planting. He’s one of our cluster leaders. He still teaches church planting. It’s part of the college. Working with our churches. You know, every conversation you had to bring it up.
So the first thing we had to do was get it on everybody’s agenda. It is on everybody’s agenda now. You hear it everywhere.
The second thing is you have to create systems which allow us to do that effectively and don’t have a variety of casualties along the way. So how do we assess them? How do we support church planters? How do we help churches that want to plant churches do it in a thoughtful sustainable way, get the right kind of leadership so they won’t look at church planting and say all of that does is cost us money and it’s a big mess. Rather they look at it and say it was one of the most exciting times in the life of our church. We want to do it again and again and again.
So thinking systemically is what we need to do as a denomination. So, things we look for are how do we create relational networks, so these people are never alone. Because church planters that are alone fall apart. We did that multi-denominationally because we found that church planters all had the same issues. So putting church planters with church planters multi-denominationally seemed to work well because they were all talking about the same thing. So that helped.
We wanted to make sure they had strong prayer support so creating prayer networks around them, creating places where they would be prayed for and looked after and that kind of stuff. We worked at that.
We worked at the training piece and also the coaching. Because training ---
Theoretical stuff is really important to kind of get your mind in the right space. But when you start to put it in practice things can get lost. So what about your timeline? Where are you at in your timeline? What is the next piece you see? Making sure that people stay focused and don’t get distracted by the millions of opportunities that can distract, you, the shiny new things.
So that systemic approach I think in the next 10 years is going to be more and more integrated into all of the ways that we do stuff. But more fundamental is it will become a part of the culture once again. At this point all the leaders are saying we need to plant churches, we need to plant churches. Executives are saying we need to plant churches, we need to plant churches. But pretty soon we will start to hear churches saying to other churches: When are you going to plant a church?
Q. That will be when culture is shifted.
A. And we are starting to see some of it where churches are talking to other churches and they are saying hey, there’s a community down your road. There’s no church there. What are you thinking about? Do you want to work together, you know, because we’re coming from the other end.
We started to see some of that ---
Remember, I’ve been out of District life for the last 10 or 11 years, Church Planting Canada, I was up to about 2011 and I still work with church planters and overseas I work with helping denominations rethink how they plant churches. So I’m a little bit out of it but still in it, you know.
I coach church planters.
Q. Yes, which keeps you in it.
A. Yes.
Q. Walking with their everyday stuff is going to keep you fresh, especially on the front lines of stuff. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build a culture with the Multiply Network, with podcasts and resources and all those things. But at the end of the day it has to be that personal relational connection and our Districts are starting to get onboard with that. It’s exciting to see. We’re trying to build the language into our culture that you are not a fully revitalized church until you plant it.
A. Yes. We used language back in the nineties when I started talking about everything that is healthy reproduces. So, if your church is healthy the next thing you think about is how do we reproduce. We get tired of just doing us and you’re thinking what else can we do. Well, church planting is one of the next steps, as well as impacting the province, the country and the world. That’s kind of one of the next steps. Everything that is healthy reproduces.
Q. Right. So one of the systems that we’re looking at as a group, and we’ve chatted about this John, you and I, is leaders. We’re having a hard time finding leaders that will step out, do the entrepreneurial plant or churches that would release their best leaders to go start a new work. Why don’t you help us think through some of that as it relates to how do we enrol people in leadership as it relates to church planting leaders and how do we encourage churches to send their best to go start new works?
A. What I say for organizations is everything exists in its present form by common consent. There is a reason why it is like this. What we have done is we have highly valued effective large church pastors. So everybody aspires to that. Or if they come through a college they aspire to be a professor. Part of it is we have to start making heroes and opportunities for church planters and people that are effective to have apprentices, to start to build that reproductive capacity, because everybody reproduces after their own kind. If you are a good teacher you produce teachers. If you are a good church planter you will tend to produce church planters.
So part of that is we’ve got to get a few of them going and immediately have within it this kind of apprenticeships, mentorships, of those successful church planters with others so they start to reproduce after their own kind. The second thing is generosity isn’t limited to money. They found with church plants, church plants that came from mother churches where the mother church was excited, celebrated it, the mother church recovered all of the people and all of the money within 6 months to a year when they released people. That was the statistic back when I was looking at this.
Q. Wow.
A. It was that biblical principle. If you sow seed there is a reaping that comes. That generosity of spirit when you cast your bread upon the water comes back to you. There is a sowing and reaping that goes on when you are generous, not just with money but with resources, with your people. And giving your best people ---
What we find in local churches is there’s a sucking up from the bottom of potential leaders into new positions when you give away some of your best. People are surprised. It’s like they were captive because there were people above them. All of a sudden they step in. They are doing new things. They are excited in a new way because they get this opportunity to do something. Everybody seems to do better but it’s got to be celebrated. They found in churches who were begrudging, like I hate this. We’re giving away our best people and it’s going to cost us money and we’re going to suffer for a while. Those struggled.
But the ones that were joyful givers recovered and seemed to have more energy at the end of it while having multiplied and having a church plant that seems to be doing really well.
Q. Wow. This is so good, John. I’m just sitting here thinking I’m going to have to go back and listen to some of this stuff as it relates to my job and trying to implement some of these things. Great thoughts.
I want to leave you with some room to speak to our leaders, church planters, church multipliers, both in our PAOC tribe but outside. What is in your heart for Canada? What is in your heart for church planting and coaching and how it all connects? I just want to give you a chance to speak candidly to the group.
A. The big thing I would see as a Pentecostal Movement, even larger than that, rediscovering the first love that we had in the beginning of our Movement. What did we do at the beginning? We planted churches. We sent missionaries. I read the obituaries of many of our early pioneers when I was Assistant Superintendent as part of our Conference. Brother so-and-so, Brother Bell, you know he pastored this church but he planted A, B, C, D, E, F, G church. So-and-so went and was commissioned by Central Assembly and D. N. Buntain, you know, the Buntain brothers and was sent off to plant a church wherever the Lord would lead them! This was kind of our beginning. It was a part of a Pentecostal mindset which was the power of the spirit came to give us power for service and power for witness.
Q. Yes.
A. And we as a Movement I think there’s a bit of a rediscovery of what it means to be Great Commission in entirety, not just in Jerusalem but in Judea and Samaria.
And part of that is part of our pastor’s rediscovering what it means to see the harvest, to engage the harvest, to get beyond our local structures and think first about we exist to bring the good news of Jesus to every creature, every tribe, every strata of society. So that piece I think is a cultural piece and our leaders are talking about it. But it’s a rediscovery in our culture that wherever we go we are always thinking about how do we best reach these people with the good news of Jesus because that’s why Jesus sent us.
Q. Right. Right.
A. So how do we do that? Now in terms of ---
One of the key strategies we found is with ---
It goes to coaching. It goes to church planting. One of the roles of every one, whether you believe in all the five-fold are still there, you know, all those kinds of conversations. But they were to equip people. In other words our job as leaders is to help people discover everything that God has for them, to release it, to empower it, to coach it, to support it, to train it so that everybody in the body of Christ can fulfill their God-given destiny. And when we do that we find there is all of this corporate energy, corporate vitality that needs expression beyond just what we’re doing here in our building or in our little community. But is always thinking what else can we do, pastor? What else? Where are we going to go? I think God is calling me to this. It creates an environment where the spirit of God is able to empower people and they feel empowered by the group of people they are a part of to step into things they never stepped into before. Church planting is part of that.
Q. I love that. That’s a great thought. I’m reading a book called Underground Church and they talk about this one example of ---
There was a neighbourhood football game and whoever showed up got to play. But then they would go to a Friday night high school game and only a certain amount of people got to play and lots of people watched. And then they went to college and even fewer people played. And sometimes the bigger you get the less people actually get to go and play and actually get to be in the game. I think sometimes in church culture we have created that where we’ve got lots of spectators. Getting them back in the game is one of the most important things we need to do.
A. When I was pastoring one of the things through a lot of pain and some really difficult circumstances I came to a very firm revelation that my primary job was to help everybody in the body be successful at what God called them to, starting with my staff, all the way through everybody else. I had to help them find what God had for them. When I did that one of the things I found is where people stepped into the things that God had called them to and they were gifted to and passionate about and felt energy when they did it, what happened was they were happy. They were the most fulfilled. They would take time off work, all of that kind of stuff. They didn’t want to miss weekends because they would miss their teenagers in their class. All of those kinds of things. That’s part of this Great Commission mentality where we tap everybody in the body of Christ to be released into the gifts God has for them and the calling on their lives.
It is work. It is a change of focus. You start to see people that do stuff way better than you, which can be very threatening for leaders. Again, coaching helps us. So how do you maintain your role because the more you understand who God has called you to be and focus on that and help others to focus on other things the better off everybody else is.
Q. So, so good. Well, we’re going to end our podcast with some rapid fire questions. So get ready.
Best book on coaching?
A. That’s a great question. Probably a book by Flaherty.
Q. Do you know the title?
A. At this moment I can’t remember the title. You caught me off guard.
Q. Okay. Sorry. What you don’t see in the podcast right now is he is looking at his bookshelf trying to figure out what book it is.
A. The one that has probably inspired the most people I think it is kind of a foundation, is Coaching for Performance by Whitmore.
Q. Okay. Good. Favourite activity in the summer?
A. Hiking and camping.
Q. Okay. Favourite fast food burger?
A. Probably Bin4.
Q. Okay. I’ve never heard of that.
A. or In and Out in the United States.
Q. Oh yes. That’s a good one.
Podcasts you listen to other than Multiply Network?
A. Further Up and Further In. It’s done by my daughter.
Q. Oh, okay. Cool. The place everyone must visit in BC?
A. Obviously Victoria.
Q. Okay. Favourite sport to watch?
A. I have always been a fan of soccer.
Q. And your favourite soccer team?
A. Probably Man U.
Q. Okay. Favourite down time activity.
A. Fixing and building things.
Q. Cool. Your wife probably loves that.
A. She does and so do I.
Q. Cool. How many countries have you visited? Ball park it.
A. Between twenty-five and thirty.
Q. Wow. Good. And what was your favourite place of all the countries you visited?
A. Well, I was in Israel fourteen times so Israel is special for a lot of reasons.
Q. Yes. Cool.
A. But we really liked Majorca.
Q. Where’s that?
A. It’s one of the Balearic Islands off of Spain.
Q. Okay. Cool. When should someone plant a church?
A. When? As soon as possible.
Q. Okay. How soon should they involve a coach?
A. Before you start.
Q. Okay. Hey John, thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Great stuff. Very helpful and thanks for doing all the great work you do with coaching and in your church multiplication.
A. Thanks for the invite. It is always good to speak about something like that.
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