Receiving Care

Do I need care? If you are wondering if you need a spiritual coach or mentor, then the answer is most likely yes. Mentoring is for people who feel stagnant, stuck, or lost in life, and coaching is for people who are happy, motivated, and ready to make changes in their life.


What’s the difference between coaching/mentoring and counseling? While both professions have the same goal of helping, they do not get there through the same avenues. Biblical coaches/mentors focus on solving problems through discernment and future goals whereas therapists typically solve problems by looking into the past. Coaches/Mentors ALWAYS follow the clients lead, assessments are taken, and goals are made and accomplished by the client whereas therapy is often therapist led.


What’s the difference between a coach/mentor and a friend? A coach/mentor is a trained professional who will listen objectively and provide wisdom and discernment without judgment. Friends are usually emotionally involved and therefore can only provide biased subjective input, while also lacking the training and educational background needed to move a person along in the journey of faith.


How is Duane uniquely equipped to help me? Duane has a deep love for Jesus and a strong background in pastoral counseling, with experience as a senior pastor and associate pastor in various churches (26+ years). He also has extensive business experience running a farming operation and a non-profit organization focused on creation care and spiritual formation. He has a masters in counseling and theology and a doctorate in spiritual formation. Raising six children with his wife, Julie, also gives him a unique and special appreciation for the process of shepherding a child's heart. His weekly schedule at times can be quite full, so appointments may need to be made months in advance.



                          Three Ways to Receive Care

  • 1. Coaching

    The aim of our coaching ministry is to assist you in the discernment process by helping you identify and achieve personal goals in any area of your life. To help you do this, Duane takes a holistic approach using his uniquely designed PODS Process™. He believes that one area of life has an impact upon another, and so abiding in Jesus will in turn lead to improvements in one’s health, personal relationships, and the achievement of career goals. He will help you discern your current satisfactions, explore what you want to achieve, and help you create a strategy for development.

  • 2. Mentoring

    The aim of our mentoring ministry is to equip you to thrive through the difficult seasons of life by using our uniquely designed PODS Process™ to apply biblical wisdom, truths, and life experience. The purpose of being mentored is to take a person one step beyond the coaching relationship. Duane is a safe person you can be honest with about your struggles. He is a gentle shepherd who will listen, lovingly explain and explore God’s Word with you, and winsomely encourage you to grow and live in the fruit of the Spirit. Mentorship is not to be confused with therapeutic counseling.




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  • 3. Discipleship Events

    The aim of our discipleship events is to create a communal setting to assist you in the formational process of life by offering and hosting lectures, forums, training events, retreats, and colloquies. Duane and the board of Ithaka Fellowship seeks to create a calendar of events that will be of interest to a wide range of participants and which can be led by a suitable teacher or facilitator. As you will note from the our podcast archive, the range of past topics is quite broad and we continue to look for topics in new areas to strengthen the interrelationship between Christ, humanity, and the created world.


    Unless specified, events are provided at no coast to the participants.



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