Resources I bring to Coaching

  • I was effectively active in congregational ministry and diocesan activities for 38 years.
  • I really like clergy and value what we do.
  • I feel a fierce compassion in the face of the cloud of oppression beneath which so many of us live, the vulnerable underside of our caring.
  • To strengthen my own congregational ministry, I cultivated competences in the following areas, among others:
  1. Human Relations Training (HRT)
  2. Organizational Development and Consultation (OD)
  3. Polarity Management (PM)
  4. Spiritual Direction (SD)
  5. Open Space Technology (OST)
  6. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
  7. The Appreciative Way (...uh)

A "Google" search will open the first six areas for those not familiar with them. A word is in order about the seventh:


Please Note: Gray Temple will be
returning from Germany
Spring 2009

Dr. Rob Voyle developed The Appreciative Way (AW) as a refinement of the more familiar Appreciative Inquiry (AI) developed by David Cooperrider, PhD. Its chief distinctions from the latter are:

  • Intentional congruence with all non-toxic expressions of spirituality
  • The specific application of AI to clergy coaching and interim ministry
  • A time-saving recourse to NLP at helpful points
  • A shift forward from mere problem-solving or conflict-management toward personal and professional transformation.

My coaching clients experience the transformative power of The Appreciative Way, with the other resources brought to bear as needed...

Services offered

Personal coaching is done by telephone except where the client is within convenient distance. (I recommend enrolling in a VoIP service such as Skype to save on long distance costs and/or cell phone minutes.) We schedule meetings for our mutual convenience.

Teleconferencing with co-professionals is offered to clergy who have previously undertaken an Appreciative Way workshop with Dr. Voyle or one accredited by the Clergy Leadership Institute.

Gray Temple Consulting

Clergy usually enter a coaching relationship in order to manage issues in their work environment. Nearly as often a wish to acquire or improve additional skills draws us to a coach. Coaching works effectively at those levels.

The real adventure for both coach and client occurs when the conversations explore higher upstream:

  • to the cleric’s personal and professional values;
  • to the cleric’s sense of personal and professional identity;
  • to the cleric’s very sense of life purpose;
  • and – at holy moments – to the client’s actual relationship to the Source of all Life.

Disciplinary Boundaries

Conversations with an AW coach and with colleagues on a teleconference enjoy the confidentiality we demand in our private offices.

The boundaries between AW coaching, spiritual direction, and psychotherapy are distinct -- but flexible.

  • AW Coaching assumes that the client enjoys a wholesome relationship with the Source of Life.
  • It assumes a genuine “call” to ministry, even on a bad day.
  • It assumes that working with consciously available information is fully sufficient.
  • Most important, AW coaching assumes and trusts the goodness and competence of the client – even on a bad day.

Even if turmoil obscures them, the AW coach holds all those assumptions safely in trust for the client.

Fees are normally $100 per hour-long session. Each teleconference hour is $25.

Most judicatory officers will agree that such fees are an appropriate use of professional discretionary or continuing education funds. Not all clergy, however, are in a financial situation to meet those rates. Under such circumstances the fees are negotiable. Coaching, after all, is ministry among colleagues.