Sam Farina

Sam Farina, a leader from Dallas, Texas, shared his wisdom in coaching with us tonight. A fun fact I found out is that Mark Batterson’s book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, was based off a sermon of his several years ago. Since I’m a huge fan of that book, it immediately caught my interest and was eager to hear more. Mr. Farina’s presentation taught us the basics of coaching. Coaching is pulling out of leaders and organizations the path they feel they need to go on and the steps they need to take. It’s a vehicle- a partnership to help people develop a plan and overcome obstacles to reach their desired outcomes.

He was pastoring a church when he was asked by the district to take a two-day coaching training course, where he heard a woman’s testimony of how God called her to minister in the corporate world, and he felt called to the same thing. Today, he services clients in the Dallas area, which has given him great opportunities and open doors to share Christ in the corporate world.

For this class, he took the coach role and brought the entire concept to life.

He opened the session by asking: “What the three things you hope to walk away with from this class?”

• Better Leadership Skills
• Understanding discipleship
• How to walk people through the process
• How to effectively equip leaders in roles
•  Personal discipleship models
• Practical How To’s of a better coach
• More experience in using technology
• How we can become better disciple

Of those three, which one will impact your personal and professional life the most?

From those things, we created a plan for the rest of the semester, week by week, to accomplish those key things. It was sort of a road map to our end goals. Our group came up with the following plan:

• What is a disciple?
• How do you prepare yourself to disciple?
•  A biblical model of discipleship
• One-on-one discipleship and real-life scenarios/role play
• What does discipleship look like step-by-step in our culture?
• Developing strategies/programs
• “Where do we go from here?”

As a class, we took all the lists and combined them into one plan for the rest of the semester:

• What is a disciple? (Definition and exploration, biblically and today)
•  Discipling a non-Christian (evangelism vs. discipleship)
•  Discipling a Christian
• Leadership models/process- guest speakers
• Thanksgiving (students finish presentations)
• Design a model
• Finals week

Mr. Farina’s entire presentation was extremely practical. It was all about taking vague concepts and making them concrete, and making goals realities. A lot of times we know what we want to have and do, but we need help in how getting there actually looks like. I loved the practical aspect of it! He never told us what to do, rather, he allowed us to come to those conclusions by asking us questions and guiding us along the process. It was humorous when a classmate asked, “Wait… who’s teaching this class?” because he gave us the opportunity to create a plan on our own. I loved that. The entire presentation was very informative and I was very blessed to hear from Mr. Sam Farina.