When Does a Moment Become a Movement?

Many people live for a moment in time when everything seems to come together for them. Many coaches are trained to “stay in the moment” for the people they are coaching or training. These are great goals and are very satisfying to the participants.

My question that I have been processing over the years is what actually makes for a movement of these moments; a sustainable momentum that goes beyond those individual participants to become something real, tangible, and even generational beyond any one person's experience or stewardship?

Here are some of my operating values and principles on creating or even stewarding any movement; including a coaching movement.

A movement has to be organic in its connections and has to follow relational lines to form into a movement. The now classic text on church growth called The Bridges of God explained that “people movements” in church history always emphasized that the “Gospel always travels along existing social networks”.

A movement has to have a transferable DNA that is coded in both a curriculum and in the people who steward the process of that curriculum. For a coaching movement to meet this standard there needs to be evidence of years of tested results across various cultures that achieve consistent transformation. It is the people, the process, and the paper that make for a multiplying movement. (Thank you monks for preserving the movement of the scriptures during the Dark Ages!)

The larger vision for the movement has to be encoded in a song, a metaphor, or some kind of rallying cry so that individuals are able to “see” or “hear” something much larger than their own experience and interpret that personal experience in light of the larger call. We have chosen both the Seven Mountains call and the continuum of personal, family, vocational, and community transformation as our movement language that brings people out of their personal career plans for coaching to a call to Kingdom significance in the ministry and the marketplace.

What are you learning about movements that inform how you are bringing coaching into the lives of those around you?

Joseph Umidi