What images come to mind when you think of a coach? Are you reminded of that time on your under-10s soccer team where the coach was a teammate’s dad, trying to live vicariously through his kid and was impossible to please? Or maybe it was your PE teacher at school who was so hands-off she was paying zero attention, and you had to endure a whole term’s losing streak.

It’s easy to get distracted by the caricatures of coaches from movies or personal experiences. But it did leave me wondering what it would look like for me to coach a Howie this year! What do I hope and pray for Ellie after two years of ministry with us, with me as her coach?

The EU GradsFund vision seemed like a good place to start!

Firstly, I hope for her to be biblically and theologically mature.

Any staffworker will tell you that no matter how many years you’ve been on this staff team, start up is an incredibly busy time – meeting new students at the welcome stall, ringing new contacts and trying to get their timetable so they might link in with a small group, training new leaders to get ready to lead their small groups. And if you’re a new staff worker, you’ve got relationships to build quickly with a student team put together the year before.

So, the beginning of the year can feel very reactionary, you’re never quite on the front foot of what’s to come. We had a lot of conversations about how to do ‘x’ and when to do ‘y’ and it didn’t feel like I was coaching Ellie so much as treading water next to her, doing the same things in my own faculty. But as we got into a rhythm, and the semester got underway, Ellie raised that she wanted to dig into thinking about how we exercise our gospel freedom and pursue vocational ministry. It was a real stand-out hour together as we worked through part of Galatians – such a privilege to get to read the Bible together, and seek answers to life’s questions from God’s word.

Secondly, I hope for her to be servant-hearted. This feels like it’s almost built into the role of being a Howie, as they serve their faculty. But how do you coach someone in growing in servant-heartedness? Well, not long ago, we had a wonderful moment doing life together where I asked Ellie if she’d help me move some furniture. She joyfully agreed and next thing we knew, she also sacrificed 4 hours of her
day off to help me build an IKEA couch! Getting to do life together in this way has provided so many opportunities for me to humbly ask for help, and for her to offer it, helping us both grow as disciples of Jesus.

Thirdly, I hope for her to become an innovative ministry strategist. This is certainly my weakest point. I’m not an innovative person; I’m the ‘get-things-done’ person. But something that we’ve been working on in
this coaching relationship is that I’m not trying to make a clone of myself in Ellie, rather I’m trying to strengthen her strengths for the gospel, and help her work through her weaknesses, so that she is still Ellie as she serves the Lord, not Sylvia 2.0. It’s made for some cool moments, like hearing Ellie wanting to try out leading longer small groups because of the relational benefits we’d see, where I’ve thought to myself, “I wouldn’t do it this way, but this is exciting!”

Coaching Ellie has been a steep learning curve. Knowing when to give her advice or let her come to her conclusions, giving her agency to make decisions, but also showing care in telling her what I think sometimes. It’s been a huge privilege to cheer for her from the sidelines, or grieve the losses together, and a humbling experience as I figure out what kind of coach to be.

– Sylvia Barry, EU Senior Staff