Recently the Sunday school class I teach took a deep dive in C.S. Lewis’s classic The Great Divorce. In this imaginative exploration of the afterlife, Lewis gives us a parade of unforgettable images, but none startled me more than the herd of unicorns. Yes, you read that right.
If you haven’t read the book (or haven’t in a while), here’s the gist: one of the ghosts in the story—a woman trapped in her own self-absorbed fear—is stuck. She is so focused on herself that she is unable and unwilling to take the small beginner steps needed to inhabit heaven on God’s terms. A bright, heavenly Spirit tries reasoning with her, inviting her toward truth and freedom. But she’s not budging. Finally, in what seems a last resort, the Spirit pulls out an unconventional tactic: he summons a herd of unicorns. They charge toward her, wild, dangerous, and radiant. The reader is left wondering whether the fright prompted her to move in the right direction or to retreat to the familiar confines of hell.
The herd of unicorns is a strange moment in the book, but a powerful one. And it raises a useful question for us as coaches: Are we too reluctant to stir our clients?
What a Herd of Unicorns Might Look Like
There’s a time for stillness, reflection, and patient waiting. But there’s also a time to startle. A time to lovingly disrupt. A time to introduce a little holy chaos—not to traumatize, but to wake up what’s gone dormant.
I’m not suggesting we rent a foghorn or hire a live stallion to charge into the coaching session (though I admit, either would be memorable). I am suggesting that we take seriously our responsibility to help clients move—especially when they’re stuck in loops of fear, self-deception, or passive delay.
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A bold question.
Years ago, I had a client who had spent months circling the same drain. He voiced ongoing frustration with his church staff, blaming everyone else, yet unwilling to look inward. Finally, I asked pointedly, “What if you are the problem?”
At first, he resisted, insisting he most certainly was not the problem. I persisted: “But what if you are?”
That was his unicorn. It didn’t feel good. But it stirred him. He explored the what if and came to some difficult new awareness, including the hard realization that he was playing the victim. -
A direct truth.
One client told me she couldn’t move forward because she “wasn’t confident.” I replied, “I didn’t know confidence was a prerequisite for obedience.” I think I’d heard that statement on a podcast, read it in a meme, or something. No matter, it was the right statement at the right time.
It caught her off guard—but she wrote me two weeks later to say it changed everything. That statement startled her just enough to snap the spell of her perfectionism and start taking the steps that were well within her scope of agency. -
A confrontation with reality.
Sometimes it helps to read the scoreboard aloud. One client kept saying he wanted to grow his business—but he spent all his time making plans, tinkering with systems, and reevaluating his strategy while giving zero time talking to people.
I asked him to bring a weekly tally of actual business-building conversations. The numbers made him squirm, then move.
Unicorns don’t always come with horns and hooves. Sometimes they show up as clarity. Sometimes they look like data. Sometimes they sound like the words no one else has dared to say.
Fear Isn’t the Enemy—Stagnation Is
We live in a culture that tries to insulate people from discomfort. But growth was never meant to be cozy. As Christian coaches, we’re not in the business of coddling—we’re in the business of transformation. And transformation almost always comes with a jolt.
Jesus Himself used disruption—flipping tables, telling people to let the dead bury their own dead, calling out hypocrisy in religious leaders. He didn’t weaponize fear, but He certainly wasn’t afraid to stir people with it when necessary.
Coaching, too, is an invitation to wake up. To act. To repent. To see more clearly. And sometimes that requires a little trembling.
It’s tempting to employ modern versions of unicorns—innocent, tame, cuddly pets that represent our own desires imagined and idealized. But our clients will not be coddled out of their stuck places. They must be stirred. Historically, unicorns were mythical beasts that represented strength and courage. C.S. Lewis depicts a stampeding herd “…thundering through the glades: twenty-seven hands high the smallest of them and white as swans but for the red gleam in eyes and nostrils and the flashing indigo of their horns.”
Let’s not shy away from the herd of unicorns. Let’s be wise, Spirit-led, and full of love—but also willing to summon what’s needed to rouse a client who is stuck. After all, when fear wakes someone up to truth, it turns out not to be fear at all—but grace in disguise.
