What is Christian Marriage Coaching, and Who Can it Help?

Christian Marriage Coaching is the application of Christian coaching concepts and skills to facilitate growth and change for couples. Below is a brief introduction to Christian coaching. Everything that applies to coaching individuals applies to coaching couples.

One, Christian coaching is fundamentally client-centered and directed. The client is the focus: their needs, the issues they want to work on and helping them discover what they are motivated to change.

Two, the Christian coaching relationship is essentially transparent and authentic. The coach models relational authenticity including transparency to the person(s) being coached with the desire that the client will be able to do the same in the relationship.

Three, Christian coaching is empowering. As the coach empowers the client to work on the issues that are most important to them, the client is helped to focus on the development of goals and the action steps necessary to achieve those goals. For those who have successfully utilized coaching concepts, it has proven to be an effective, efficient and comprehensive way to move a person toward change. And the process is completely transferable: it can be used in multiple relationships and different circumstances.

In general, individual coaching is an empowering voluntary authentic relationship in which coach and client focus on clarifying goals that the client wants to accomplish. Instead of focusing on the individual, the objective of Marriage Coaching is to facilitate identification of growth goals that both partners are motivated to pursue. Once goals are determined, the coaching couple collaborates with the couple being coached to develop and choose action steps to accomplish those goals.

Couples that coach their own marriage practice the discipline of believing in themselves and their marriage by actively pursuing growth and change through a process in which they keep themselves responsible. This process is obviously more challenging than coaching individuals because each partner’s perspective must be drawn out, clarified and understood before goals are negotiated and decided, and action steps are chosen. While Marriage Coaching is offered as a service by trained couples (from lay to professional), its reliance on basic skills such as asking, listening, and setting goals makes it an approach that any couple can quickly learn to use to help their own marriage.

Couples can learn skills and a process in a relatively brief period of time—when compared to the amount of time spent in an average counseling relationship—and then begin to apply them at home.

Marriage Coaching: Heart Hope and Skills for a Great Relationship Williams, Jeff and Jill 

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