EH-01 Instructor - About Eddie Hammett

Eddie has served on church staff and in denominational leadership for over 28 years. A prolific author, Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation and popular speaker, retreat and seminar leader across the country and among over 12 denominations and judicatories. Eddie is a founding coach of Valwood Christian Leadership Coaching (www.valwoodcoaching.com) a founding partner of The Columbia Partnership (www.thecolumbiapartnership.org) and an affiliate with Coach Approach Ministries (www.ca-ministries.com). He currently serves in a partnership with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina www.cbfnc.org as their Church and Clergy Coach. His coaching experiences are deep and wide touching churches of various denominations, church planters and lay and clergy leaders across the country.

Eddie is the author of five books dealing with preparing the church for a more effective ministry in the 21st century. He has also authored over 350 published articles. Leonard Sweet invited Eddie to contribute coaching questions to The Gospel According to Starbucks released in 2007. His most recent best-selling book is Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60, Chalice Press, 2007. The companion piece to the Reaching/Keeping book is Making Shifts Without Making Waves: A Coach Approach to Soulful-leadership released October 2009. His new book will be released in fall 2014 Recovering Hope for Your Church: From Maintenance to Missional & Incarnational Engagement. Eddie has also served as a lead coach the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project funded by the Lilly Foundation to develop coaching strategies for pastors and congregations across the Southeast United States and across denominational lines. On his personal website is www.transformingsolutions.org you will find free leadership newsletters to assist in the coach approach to church, non-profit organizational development, programming and local church and denominational ministries.

Persons like Bill Easum, Tom Bandy, and Leonard Sweet invite Eddie to lead online and face-to-face national seminars on themes related to his published writings. His seminars, coaching and leadership cross denominational lines as he has worked with American Baptists, Presbyterians, United Methodists, Free Will Baptists, Lutherans, The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Age, Southern Baptists and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He recently was the plenary speaker for Academy of Leadership Excellence and the Cabinet Consultation for Southeast Jurisdiction of United Methodists.

Eddie’s call to ministry is to ‘equip the saints for the work of ministry’ inside and beyond the walls of the traditional church. He lives out this calling through his consulting, coaching, writing ministry and through his personal ministry serving as a life coach for a growing number of ‘spiritual travelers’ (persons on a serious spiritual journey, but not connected consistently to a traditional church).

Eddie has been mentored and coached through the year by many who have deeply influenced his life and ministry. Dr. Findley Edge was his mentor during and beyond seminary days. L.D. Johnson, William Clemmons, Gordon and Mary Cosby, Ken Smith, Reid Hardin, George Bullard, Jane Creswell, MCC; Linda Miller, MCC; Suzanne Goebel, PCC; and countless others have influenced his life and ministry.

He is a graduate of Furman University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with post-graduate studies at Duke Divinity School, Southeastern Seminary, NC State University and Fielding Institute. He has lectured at or served as adjunct faculty at Gardner- Webb Divinity School, Northern Baptist Seminary, Southeastern Baptist Seminary, Duke Divinity School, Western Seminary, Golden Gate Seminary, Southern Seminary and Campbell Divinity School.