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Leadership Coaching for Women | My Calling Unfolded

June 2, 2025

 

leadership coaching for women

 

From Pastor to Christian Leadership Coaching for women.

I didn’t set out to be a coach. But somewhere between the intersection of my last pastoral role and a sunny beach in Florida, God began to stir something new around this idea of leadership coaching.

For quite some time, I had been longing to stretch and exercise my visionary muscles, to step into something fresh and expansive, with space to fully use all my gifts, not just a select few. So, I set aside a week away. No TV, no responsibilities, and no relationships to tend.  Just me and Jesus. (Okay, I’ll admit there may have been a little shopping… I couldn’t help myself, I was in Miami after all!)

But in the quiet of that retreat house, something sacred happened. As I stilled my heart and leaned into His presence, a vision began to take shape, one that would draw on every season of my ministry and leadership, yet would take expression in a brand-new way.

In that space of deep listening, God clarified the invitation. It wasn’t a single path, but a co-vocational calling, a way of living and leading that was synergistic and mutually beneficial. I sensed two distinct yet connected streams:

Coaching leaders through a new business, particularly through a practice of leadership coaching for women, focused on helping leaders break free from performance-based leadership and return to their true self with bold authenticity.

And planting a non-traditional church expression, designed to cultivate spiritual community and embody a co-leading model of shared leadership.

This model blended the visionary with the grounded, the personal with the communal. And I realized I was being called to come alongside any leader, pastor, entrepreneur, or high-capacity influencer, seeking healthy and sustainable ways to lead.

Why Coaching Matters for Women in Ministry

At first, I wrestled. Like so many women, I thought I needed someone else’s permission to step out — to lead boldly, to follow the vision God was giving me, even if it didn’t fit familiar molds.

But what if God was the only One whose approval I truly needed?

I knew this call would require something of me. Not only would it draw on what I had already cultivated, it would demand investment in my own growth.

That felt vulnerable.

Women, especially, often struggle to invest in themselves when it comes to leadership. We pour out so easily for others, yet hesitate when it’s time to pour into our own growth. Let’s be honest, it often feels easier, even more responsible, to buy our kids new sneakers than to devote time and resources to our spiritual and leadership development. But deep down, we know that when we live and lead fully as God designed, everyone benefits.

I knew that if I was going to lead others into wholeness, I had to continue pursuing it myself. Obedience would mean not only saying “yes” to God’s vision but also saying “yes” to myself. That’s where coaching became essential.

I wouldn’t be who I am today, living and leading the way I do, without leadership coaching. It was through coaching that I was able to untangle old narratives, confront hidden wounds, and find the clarity and courage to step into my calling.

Leadership coaching gave me something I couldn’t find on my own:

→ Perspective beyond my current circumstances
→ Permission to prioritize my own growth
→ Support as I navigated fear, uncertainty, and resistance

This is why I am so passionate about it today.

I know many women struggle to validate investing in themselves. They can’t always see beyond where they are, because survival and service have defined their stories for so long. But what if coaching could become the sacred space that helps you see yourself, and your leadership, with new eyes?

For me, it wasn’t optional. It was the vehicle God used to help me become who I am and do what I am doing now.

Permission, Obedience, and Spirit-Led Leadership

For years, I had internalized the idea that obedience and ambition were in tension. That humility meant hiding; that if others were uncomfortable, then I must be wrong. But in that quiet season, I realized something freeing:

You don’t need permission to be obedient.

When God opens your eyes to prophetic imagination and invites you to steward what He’s placed within you, the only response is surrender.

“Yes, Lord. Here I am. Your servant, use me.”

Obedience is not about waiting for others to validate your calling. It’s about trusting the One who calls, and stepping forward, even if you’re the only one who hears the invitation> Like Samuel, who heard God call his name while others around him heard nothing at all, we must be willing to step out and be obedient to what God reveals to us.

A New Vision: Coaching and Church Reimagined

So I did.
→ I said yes to a new expression of ministry outside of a traditional role.
→ I said yes to helping leaders lead differently.
→ I said yes to partnering with God to create spaces for healthier leadership.

→ I said yes to taking steps of faith, not fully knowing where it would lead.

It wasn’t all clear at once. But as I kept taking the next right step, my eyes and heart opened wider.

The more I moved forward, the more I saw:
Leaders, especially in church spaces, were burnt out, disillusioned, or quietly struggling. I also found that the church often lacked a prophetic imagination about leadership models that move beyond hierarchy and control.

Redefining Power: Leadership Coaching for Women Rooted in Mutuality

In conjunction with my coaching practice, I sensed the need for an alternative to current church leadership structures — one rooted in the relational nature of the Trinity. A way of leading that embraces mutuality and equality, fosters accountability, and models co-leadership between men and women as partners, not competitors. Allowing each to be grounded in self-awareness, bringing their unique strengths to meet the needs of the moment, and trusting that leadership is strongest when shared.

But what God was revealing to me wasn’t about launching another program or stepping into pre-existing spaces — as meaningful as those can be. Instead, He was inviting me to embody a new way of leading and living — one that felt deeply integrated, fully human, and born from the kind of vision that disrupts what is for the sake of what could be.

“The task is reframing — seeing a new possibility in the midst of the old hopelessness… The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined.”Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

This is the kind of prophetic imagination I long to hold space for — the kind that gives birth to new ways of leading, loving, and building community rooted in wholeness, not hierarchy.

In my coaching, I now help leaders experience this.

Coaching isn’t about offering all the answers. It’s about walking with leaders. It’s about listening deeply, asking powerful questions, and creating sacred space for them to reconnect with who they really are and how they are uniquely called to lead. Mutuality, in my coaching and my vision for church planting, means we no longer lead in isolation. We lead together.

How Leadership Coaching for Women Is Inspiring a New Way of Leading Together

Leadership Coaching and church planting weren’t pursuits I set out to find — they found me.
At first, they seemed like separate paths. But over time, I began to see they were deeply connected — two expressions of a longing I hadn’t yet named. A longing to create spaces where leaders can lead with authenticity, heal from their wounds, and co-create mission-centered communities grounded in shared leadership, mutual trust, and Spirit-led presence.

Ultimately, this call wasn’t just for me. It was an invitation to help reimagine what faithful, embodied leadership could look like in the church and beyond:

→ Where men and women co-lead with trust and humility
→ Where wounded leaders find room to heal and lead with authenticity
→ Where obedience looks like wholeness, not exhaustion

And, step after step, the picture continues to unfold.

While my leadership coaching for women business has taken shape, the vision for the church plant is still in process. I’m having ongoing conversations with others who resonate with this kind of Spirit-led, non-traditional expression of church. If that’s you, let’s start a conversation.

How Leadership Coaching for Women Is Inspiring a New Way of Leading Together

It’s a slow, intentional process — one that God is revealing piece by piece. And as Brueggemann reminds us, the work begins not with implementation or requesting all the details to be spelled out, but with imagination. I’m learning to trust that the details will come. But first, we must ask:

Can we imagine it together?

Because I’m realizing that God often gives us only part of the picture at first, inviting us to move forward in obedience, trusting that what we need will be revealed along the way. We don’t have to wait for everything to make sense to begin.

As I take my steps of obedience, others are taking theirs. Together, we are stepping into a vision that is still becoming — an unfolding invitation to trust, to go, and to discover new ways of leading alongside one another.

It is a vision for how we might all be invited to lead differently.

 

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Mentorship for Women in Ministry: More Than a Model—It’s a Movement

 

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