Church planter coaching in St. Louis with Noah Oldham Pt. 2

Church Planter Coaching Podcast

See under the hood of the church planter coaching system in St. Louis. Hear about the wins and the challenges of providing a great coach for every church planter. Learn the importance of a strong coaching champion to help encourage and develop coaches in a city. And learn the secret of great coaching in your city.

• Noah Oldham's church: http://augustgate.com/

• Principles and Practices of Church Planter Coaching free ebook: https://www.namb.net/send-network-blog/sending-well-principles-and-practices-of-church-planter-coaching

Introduction: Thank you for joining us on the Coaching Podcast. As part of the Send Network, we are passionate about equipping church planters to live out the call God has placed on their lives. Join us as we talk through healthy coaching practices and why every church planter needs one. Here's your host, Dino Senesi.

Dino Senesi: Welcome to the Send Network Coaching Podcast. My name is Dino Senesi, and I'm the director of coaching for the Send Network, and today, I have a guest from St. Louis. His name is Noah Oldham. Now, Noah is a utility player. Now you know I'm going to segue into baseball, right? He's a utility player in the kingdom because he's a Send City Missionary, and that's part of his role, and the other part of his role is that he is a church planter and pastor of a multi-campus church in St. Louis, August Gate Church. Welcome, Noah, to the podcast.

Noah Oldham: Thanks Dino. Appreciate you having me.

Dino Senesi: Yeah man, and so let's talk Cardinals. What are you thinking? What's it going to look like this year because at least now, we're in March, so we're thinking baseball, right?

Noah Oldham: Ah man, yeah. I think the Cardinals always kind of look middle of the pack strong, even when we've been the best in the division or ended up best in the division, but folks are pretty depressed right now. We just had a pitcher that we offered money to, and he took $5 million less to go to another city-

Dino Senesi: Ouch.

Noah Oldham: So that he could win, so I think that people are a little bit down in the dumps right now.

Dino Senesi: Well let me tell you, as a baseball fan, I've never been anti-Cardinal, but I've been a Reds fan and a Braves fan, and so great deal of respect for a great organization, and yes, many years, you have looked like middle of the pack, and you've come out with a World Series on those years, so be encouraged. You can do it without what's-his-name, so very good. What's one place I need to eat in St. Louis the next time I come?

Noah Oldham: I'm not sure if you've eaten there already. I may have pushed you this direction, but Bailey's Range. It's a restaurant at 10th and Olive downtown. It's a St. Louis original restaurant. The owner, Bailey, everything he touches turns to gold. It's a craft burger, craft milkshake place, all locally sourced, in-house baked goods. It's an amazing place.

Dino Senesi: Wow. You’re making me hungry. Yeah, so very good. We went to a good place last time we were there with your coaches, your existing coaches. We got some good food. Do you remember where that was?

Noah Oldham: Man, I don't. Oh yeah, we went to Tuckers. It was steak house.

Dino Senesi: Oh dude. That was some good grub right there. So, it was very good. What is your wife's name?

Noah Oldham: My wife's name is Heather.

Dino Senesi: Yeah, Heather. And I met Heather at either a Send Conference or ... I think it was a Send Conference at Long Beach. So I met her, but how's everything with Heather?

Noah Oldham: It's great. She's busy these days. She's the pastor's ... The planter wife care advocate here in St. Louis, and she homeschools our four children, and she's a lead pastor's wife, and so she does a tremendous amount. She's busy, but she's thriving. She's doing well.

Dino Senesi: Wow. And she is busier than you, and you're a utility player.

Noah Oldham: That's right. That's right. She keeps it all together here.

Dino Senesi: Very good. What's something your family loves to do in St. Louis together?

Noah Oldham: We love to hit up some of the free spots in St. Louis. St. Louis is known to be one of the most budget-friendly, family cities. We got a world renown zoo that's absolutely free, and so we like to hit that up. We like to go to Cardinal's baseball games. We like to spend together. Since we homeschool, we enjoy our time together, and so we try to do a weekly family worship with the kids, break out musical instruments. Some of them dance. We put music on YouTube on the TV and just let loose for Jesus. It's a lot of fun.

Dino Senesi: That sounds so cool. Appreciate your family. Appreciate Heather, and I know that's something that's vitally important to what's going on in your world, so I appreciate you as well, my friend.

I want to talk about coaching in St. Louis. Obviously, this is a coaching podcast. I'm just a curious guy, and I love big cities and what God's doing in those cities, but we'll just talk about church planter coaching. You gave us a longer story in a previous podcast, but coaching ... There's a personal meaning to coaching to you. Could you give us a thumbnail of that story?

Noah Oldham: Yeah. The story goes that we had a miscarriage, early in the life of our church after years of infertility, and then getting pregnant on our own, we lost a baby in the middle of the pregnancy, we were just alone, and we were crushed. It was in that season of life, when we felt like we had no one to turn to that my coach pursued me deeper in conversation and deeper in relationship in the midst of our coaching relationship, and through that, brought his wife into the situation to help care for my wife, and they became some of the most dear people to us. Again, I always say, if it wasn't for the Hubbards, we might not be in ministry today.

Dino Senesi: Yeah, yeah. It's really a great story. I would surely recommend to our listeners, if you did not hear the previous podcast, you could find it on the Send Network Coaching page, and you'd love to hear the details as how God used Mike Hubbard as a shepherd coach to walk alongside and shepherd the soul of Noah and Heather during excruciating circumstances, and it gives you a little bit of different vision of the value of coaching.

For some planters, Noah, you know they perceive this as, "Well, this is what NAMB is making me do." Or, "This is what my network's making me do. I got to have a coach. Oh no. I hate it." And when, in reality, a great coach is a gift from God.

Noah Oldham: Absolutely. A hundred percent necessary for the life and the health of a planter.

Dino Senesi: Yeah, very much so. And so, tell me ... Give me an update. How are things going for church planter coaching in St. Louis?

Noah Oldham: It's going really well. St. Louis has always been, since I've been here, at least, a strong city for coaching. When I was going through the planting process nearly a decade ago, immediately the different networks that exist here were all pushing coaching as something that was necessary and helpful and beneficial coaching, but what's been so cool about the last season for St. Louis ... Dino, you brought it to St. Louis, this unified vision for what our coaching can be, and so while we have a couple different state conventions that we work with and local associations, we've been able, through our NAMB Coaching, our Send Network Coaching, to bring one central lane for coaching instead of three or four or five different avenues, and that's been so helpful. We can track coaching better. We know who and who isn't in coaching, and it helps us to find coaches in an easier way as well.

Dino Senesi: Yes. Very much. When you think about something that'll last and something that'll grow, there has to be some unity in what does it mean to have a coach, and how often does someone meet with their coach, and what do they talk about. I've been having these conversations, specifically in the NAMB context, for five years, many years before that as well, and it's ... Coaching has been very random across North America. Some guys, like yourself, you had a great, great coaching story, but there was probably three or four guys in St. Louis that didn't have that same opportunity. The sheer numbers get ahead of us, but by having a system that creates a culture, then the number of coaches that know what they're doing and are passionate about what they do, continues to grow as your church planters grow, and then every planter has what they need, which is a great coach. So, what's your biggest challenge right now with church planter coaching?

Noah Oldham: We need more coaches. We have had a lot of guys doing a lot of things for years, and we're trying to grow our pool of coaches. Guys that are interested in it, even guys who aren't connected to church planting. We have a lot of guys who are getting coaching who we think are going to be tremendous coaches after this initial season of planting of receiving coaching, but we need to grow our pool, and so we're beginning to look even outside our region and even outside our tribe a little bit to get guys that are excited about the process of drawing out these church planters and helping them to flourish as they do it.

Dino Senesi: Yes, and definition of coaching, I'm thinking of this too. As you find the coaches, as you train them, as you assign them ... Well, there's two things. I want to address the one at the end, but one of the things that our coach developers, such as your top-level coach developer, Kevin Wright, on your staff, they often say, "My coaches just want to hang out with their guys. There's not that level of intentionality." What are you doing, and what could we do to help move our coaches to being more intentional?

Noah Oldham: Well I think one of the number one things is finding that coaching champion. Kevin Wright, our coaching champion, I can't say enough good things about. Not only is he, like you said, he's on my staff, we planted August Gate Metro East together. He leads that gathering for our church, but he's a natural coach. He is so good at it.

So when this role became available, and it was placed in front of him, it was just a perfect fit, and so he is reproducing that. He's encouraging that culture. He's reminding people of what coaching is and what coaching isn't, because I think in most of our lives, especially those who played sports, we hear the word coach. We often think more like a mentor. We think like a sports coach as somebody who was really good before, and now that since they've got bad knees, all they do is tell people how to do it, but that's not what we're looking for, and Kevin understands that, and he is creating a culture here that is just exactly what we have needed in this season.

Dino Senesi: Well, he is doing an incredible job, and I could attest of that from my seat on the bus, and you're a great team because you have the bigger picture. You have the heart. You have the personal experience that says you really need a coach, and Kevin's doing a great job implementing it, and he really does embody what a great coach is like and how a great coach thinks, so I've seen, even in my own journey, I learned the most about coaching through having a great coach and then through coaching reps. Just getting out there and doing it.

Kim Robinson spoke to our team. He used something in a broader context, but it's like, "Get out of the huddle and run some plays." A lot of times, we have coaching huddles, right? Let's train. Let's advance our skills. Let's go to advanced training. Let's go a hundred hours of training. It's like the training can help prepare you to coach, but only coaching can make you a great coach. Reps, reps, reps. And so, you got somebody like Kevin around and others. I know some of your other coaches, and appreciate their passion. Of course, Mike Hubbard, the veteran in your coaching system. A great coach, and so I think that's great for your culture.

Now, another thing that I get from coaches is my church planter doesn't want to be coached, and so normally who's listening to this podcast is coaches, but I think what words would you give that planter, maybe that's words this coach is going to pick up and give to a planter to help them really want to be coached or be coachable? What are some words of encouragement you'd give there?

Noah Oldham: Yeah, we just try to give testimonials. We walk a planter through the process. We really don't make coaching optional. We don't force it on them either, but we tell them, "Here is what NAMB is giving to you. This is what we're going to provide for you." And we just tell the story in a compelling way how this is how coaching can help you and benefit you.

We frame it, and we shape it as the gift that it is instead of a jumping through hoops, and we've had a couple guys who have gone through that who feel like they don't necessarily need it, and when that happens, I generally have a one-on-one conversation with them, and I ask them this question: "Have I ever asked you to do something that's a waste of your time?"

Dino Senesi: Wow.

Noah Oldham: And thanks be to God, they usually say, "No. Absolutely not. Everything you've asked me to do or told me I need to do has been really beneficial." Coaching is even more important than that. And so this is going to be good, and we're going to get you the right coach too.

So I think that's necessary. If you have a system where you're matching guys up in a relationship that's going to be beneficial, a guy taste it just a little bit, he's going to be sold on it, and so I just tell a guy, "Trust me, and let's move forward in this together."

Dino Senesi: Yeah, that's good. Match-ups are important. Getting the right match-ups. Creating the right culture, which you guys have done, and it really does take time, and so building a coaching culture in most cities, although St. Louis had the benefit of having a longer history of coaching, it takes a while. It takes a few people going through a coaching cycle, those informal conversations that a person coached has, that's worth a hundred points on a zero scale to say ... It just takes one of those from somebody like you with leadership cred that says, "Trust me. This is going to help you."

Noah Oldham: One of the other cool things too, Dino, is that in our process, after we do the one-day coaching map, we do peer-to-peer coaching for a few months, and I have grown so much in peer-to- peer coaching, and so I'm able to tell planters that as well. Like, "I've gone through coaching, and here's the ways that it's benefiting me. You want to do this."

Dino Senesi: Yes. And at least in our process practicing, Keith Webb says that when you have follow up practice to do after training, the results go up 300%. I would scare to think about what our results would be without peer coaching, and that's where we take two participants, two coaches that are going to be deployed within 60 to 90 days, we let them practice for a couple of months together. We even look in on them and give them some feedback because we don't want it to be okay coaching. Our target is for it to be great coaching, and so those relationships help prepare them for their planter. We want the planter to get the best possible coach they could get. So, that's another word too. If we've got crummy coaching in our city, we're kidding ourselves when we're trying to talk a planter into having one.

Noah Oldham: Right. Right.

Dino Senesi: So, hey Noah, I appreciate it. This is a lot of value, I think, for our listeners today, and if you'll check our show notes, you'll be able to see a link to August Gate Church, a link to our Send Network Coaching page, and even a way to get access to more podcasts than just this one. The podcast is focused on helping coaches become great coaches, so we appreciate you listening. We appreciate your feedback, and Noah, thank you for the update on the St. Louis Cardinals, but even more important, for church planter coaching in St. Louis.

Noah Oldham: Thanks for having me, Dino.

Dino Senesi: That's awesome. Until the next time, keep coaching.

Speaker 1: You have been listening to The Coaching Podcast, a resource of the North American Mission Board. Are you a church planter in need of a coach? Visit NAMB.net/Coaching to learn more.