I’m often asked if as a coach you can use the same approach for coaching Christians and non-Christians? The starting place is that everyone, Christian or non-Christian, has a destiny. God has created everyone for a part; we just get to choose whether we join God’s play or not. Even when you have not yet given allegiance to God, you have the design He placed in you from the beginning. And God is still at work in your life, sending you the experiences you need to prepare you, stir your passion and make you ready to accept his call.

Therefore, the same tools work for coaching Christians and non-Christians alike in the areas of Design, Preparation and Passion. Only allegiance to God and being called as part of his larger story are missing.

The good news here is that for those who come to Christ later in life,their life before faith is not wasted!God will use everything they experienced.For instance, some of the greatest evangelists have come out of the deepest gutters. Why? Their life experience has prepared them to understand the lives of the unsaved. They have been through everything that the people they want to reach have, and knowing the pain of their journey and the joy of their redemption, they are passionate about introducing others to the great God they’ve found. When coaching Christians and non-Christians, the most effective way for people to get beyond the fallacy that their life is wasted is to help them find their call, and then discover how their life experience has prepared them for it.

Tony Stoltzfus is a best-selling author, leadership coach, master coach trainer and director of the Leadership Metaformation Institute. Additional information on this topic can be found in Tony’s book, The Christian Life Coaching Handbook.