Adult Learning & Development
How coaches make sense of experience, engage with feedback, and integrate learning into practice.
CHRISTIAN COACH EDUCATOR & PRACTITIONER
Developing the
Person and Practice
of Coaching
Justin Tilghman’s work sits at the intersection of Christian coach education and adult learning. As both an educator and practicing coach, he is particularly interested in how coaches develop toward increasingly skillful practice, and how that development can be supported intentionally.
Looking for coaching? Visit Balanced Coaching
The person of the coach.
The practice of coaching.
Christian Coach Education✧Adult Learning✧Relational Maturity✧Spiritual Formation
THE HEART OF THE WORK
How Coaches Learn and Develop
How do coaches develop the capacities required for increasingly skillful practice, and how can that development be supported intentionally?
This question increasingly guides my teaching, writing, and professional inquiry. I am exploring it through adult learning and coaching practice, with particular attention to the relational and spiritual dimensions of development.
Several areas are shaping how I explore this question.
Coaching Practice
How listening, questions, judgment, and respect for client ownership become increasingly responsive to the person and situation.
Relational Maturity
How self-awareness, emotional steadiness, and patterns of relating influence learning and the coaching relationship.
Spiritual Formation
How Christian spiritual formation informs a coach’s posture toward learning, responsibility, and service.
AN INTEGRATED BODY OF WORK
Current Work
Learning from teaching. Learning from practice.
My work across coach education, adult education, coaching practice, and pastoral ministry offers different settings in which to explore how people learn and develop. The connection is an enduring interest in how learning becomes something people can practice with skill and care.
More about JustinCoach education
Lead Coach, Life Coaching Accelerated Program
AACC / Light University
Coaching practice
Founder & Principal Coach
Balanced Coaching & Consulting
Higher education
Professor of Leadership and Ministry Studies
Carolina College of Biblical Studies
Research
Dissertation Committee Reader
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Ministry
Pastor of Development
Grace Fellowship Church
TEACHING, WRITING & CONVERSATION
Selected Contributions
COACH EDUCATION
Life Coaching Accelerated Program
AACC / Light University
Serving as Lead Coach for AACC/Light University's Life Coaching Accelerated Program, facilitating live cohort-based development in coaching presence, powerful questions, client ownership, faith integration, ethical scope, and practical coaching skill.
INTERVIEW · 2026
Pioneering the Christian Life Coach Network
Christian Coaching Magazine
A conversation about credibility, collaboration, professional standards, and strengthening the ecosystem of Christian coaching.
View contributionARTICLE
The Role of AI in Improving Coaching Effectiveness: A Christian Perspective
Christian Coaching Magazine
Exploring the opportunities and challenges artificial intelligence presents for coaching practice from a distinctly Christian perspective.
View contributionNEWSLETTER
The Balanced Leader
Writing on leadership, formation, relational maturity, and the conditions that help people and organizations flourish.
View contributionA QUESTION BEHIND THE WORK
“What helps people become the kind of people who can flourish, lead, relate, and serve well?”
This is the broader concern behind my work across education, coaching, leadership, and ministry. Within coach education, it leads me toward a more focused inquiry into how coaches develop, and how their development can be supported with intention and care.
Justin TilghmanLET’S CONNECT
Speaking, training, or collaboration?
For speaking, professional training, media, publishing, academic, or collaboration inquiries, I’d be glad to hear from you.