Video Transcript: What Causes the Need for Coaching Part 1

Hello again, my name is Steve Elzinga. For the next three sessions, we're going to be looking at some of the causes for the need for coaching. My first question is, when did you first hear about coaching? My guess is, it wasn't that long ago; coaching is a relatively new phenomenon.

It's not in the sporting world, okay. The whole concept of what a coach is comes from the sports world. If you're on a professional soccer, football, basketball, or baseball team, whatever it is, generally, there is a coach. You have the players, but you need a coach, someone that organizes the players. If we just had the players, the players would end up fighting about who plays what position and who has to sit on the bench, and who gets to play in what positions they play, what strategy we're going to do, and how we're going to practice and all the management kind of activities.

There's this need for a person who's not playing, to step in and say, This is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to practice, this is how we're going to identify who plays where and when. The whole coaching thing originated out of the sporting world.

But then over the last maybe 20 years, the whole concept of coaching has shifted from just the sporting thing to the business world. They used to be called consultants. You have a business, and you want to talk to some expert in the field. You're trying to do something with someone who has a lot of experience. They come in, and they teach you about all the things that they've done and what they see that works and they try to help you improve your game improve, whatever business that you're doing. We call them consultants.

But over time, it was the wild west of consulting. A consultant could encourage, a consultant could teach, could give a whole program of activity, could just listen could evaluate and then lead could manage. I mean, there was a whole bunch of things. But over time, this whole concept of coaching, which is more of a limited thing, it's not coming in there and teaching about how to do something, it’s really about helping people do what they already want to do, but they just can't seem to do it.

That has really developed over the last 10 to 15 years. It's really over the last couple of years that everyone's been talking about it. It's sort of trickled down to the whole church world as well, the Christian ministry world, where people are now becoming Christian life coaches. There’re life coaches, there's business coaches, there's personal training coaches, exercise coaches, there's diet coaches, every topic you can think of there's a coach to help you succeed, in whatever it is.

Now, the question that I have for us here today is why? 100 years ago, we didn't have coaches, and people went out and did things and accomplished things and had, families and raised kids and started businesses and churches were developed and expanded all over the world, the great missionary movements. There were no coaches. So why now? Why is this a thing? Why is this becoming a thing with more and more people interested? If you're taking this class, you got introduced to this whole idea of coaching and you heard it enough times that you decided, Hey, maybe I should do something about it. I see there's a class out of the Christian Leaders Institute. I think I'll take that.

So here you, are trying to figure it out. Why? Why did this thing even come to you? What has happened in our culture that makes coaching more of a necessity than it was in the past?

I'm going to talk about several things but the one thing I want to talk about in this lecture is the rise of the ‘someone should do it for me’ culture. What I mean by that is I'm trying to do something, I run into an obstacle, and I don't power through the obstacle, I don't push it down or go around it. I wait for someone to do something about it.

Why is there this obstacle? The government should change this, or the community should change this, or the pastor should change this, or my parents should change this, or my business, my boss, the company should change this. It's always looking for someone else to fix the problem. Someone should do it for me, there's a problem. There's a frustration in my life. I can't do anything about it. So, someone else should.

And I'm saying that this is becoming more and more a way that people think, that someone should do it for me.

I want to look at just three basic examples: number one, socialism versus capitalism; number two, the Sunday school movement; and then the church just to give you a little flavor, a little idea of sort of how this has happened.

Again, the first one it's a little complicated, but socialism versus capitalism.

Number one: What is capitalism? Capitalism is opportunity plus responsibility equals success. Opportunity, plus responsibility equals success. At Christian Leaders Institute, we believe that in giving you an opportunity, giving every person that wants to learn a chance to learn, if you can get connected to the internet, it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter how much money you have, or whether you were raised in the right environment, had the right parents in the right social status, we don't care about any of that. Equal opportunity for all. We are giving everyone the opportunity, but the only way that you're going to succeed at this opportunity is to take responsibility.

If you don't take responsibility, nothing's going to happen. And if you've already taken a few classes here at Christian Leaders Institute, then you know that the courses are there, the lectures are there, the quizzes are there, but I can't come and force you to do it. I can't even go over there encourage you to do it,. You have to take responsibility for what is going to happen.

This doesn't sound like the ‘someone should do it for me’ culture, right? This is ‘you should do something’ culture. It's up to you. That is part of capitalism. But we're going to look at socialism, then we'll come back to capitalism, because capitalism has also led to some of the ‘someone should do it for me’ culture. You wouldn't think it, because it has responsibility right there. But it has.

Socialism is provision. In other words, something is provided plus equality is equals success. Both are trying to succeed. But the way to do it in socialism is to provide for people to make things equal. Capitalism makes things unequal, because when someone works really hard, and they get twice as much done as someone who does not work as hard.

Paul, in one of his letters to one of the churches, said if you don't work, you don't eat. If you work, you eat; if you work really hard, you eat really well. If you don't do anything, you starve. As humans, we don't like that. Some people are getting rich, and they're getting powerful, and they have everything. And then other people don't have all the opportunities that others have, and they're struggling, they're suffering and they're innocent children are suffering, so we should do something about it.

We should provide. We’ve got to figure out how to balance.We have these two systems that keep fighting with one another. and we keep fighting with it. Here in our country, where we were started as a capitalist nation, we were founded on that kind of principle. In our political world, right now, we talk about socialism. You would think, Why are we even talking about it? But we do, because human beings see the suffering of caused by the inequity of things, how some people are hurting and some people aren't. Some people have way more than they need, and some people have less than what they need. It's like this: it feels wrong, somehow. When we get to heaven, is it going to be a capitalist system where some people have more gold paved streets in front of their house, or are we all going to have enough to eat?

How does this go? You can see that the socialist mentality is that everyone needs to be equal. The only way to do that is to provide for people. But if that becomes sort of the symbol of how we do things, then you can see where this idea, that someone should do it for me, becomes the mentality.

The more of this mentality that people have, that someone should do it for me, the less they take ownership of things. Because people don't take ownership, they can't get anything done. They can't succeed in anything, because the first obstacle that they hit, they stop and blame and say, someone should take care of this. For me, it's hard to succeed at anything, if every time you run into an obstacle, you think someone else should remove it.

People need coaches to come alongside to help them get over that, because you can't have this mentality that someone should do it for you, or you'll be waiting your whole life for someone to do it for you. A coach is needed to combat that idea that someone should do it for me.

By the way, the whole problem with trying to make everything equal is that it's almost impossible to do. The very thing that you used to fix something often causes another problem. I just listened to a report about how in the 60s, in the United States, before the social system was really developed, that 25% of homes, in poor families, that the father was absent: the father left. You have a single mother trying to raise children.

So a safety net was provided. Different programs came in to try to help that single mother deal with trying to live, raise children on her own. I just heard a report that said that even though we've tried to fix that problem, we now have 75%, of poor families without a father. In trying to fix a problem, all we've done is incentivize it, because now it's easier for a single mother to do this, because there's more resources, so fathers don't feel responsible, so they leave. There's a safety net to take care of it.

The very thing that we use to fix something is the very thing that causes the problem. Again and again, this whole idea of trying to fix all these things, and what does it do? It gives people the sense that someone should fix this. Someone out there should fix all these problems.

Now, I said that capitalism can do the same thing. Capitalism has led to a sense of inadequacy. Adam Smith, back in the 1800s, wrote a book entitled The Wealth of Nations, and he's called the father of capitalism. In that book, he outlines how wealth can be accumulated in the nation.

He basically said that before, we had sort of a farming world, and on the farm, the farmer does everything. He has to be a mechanic, he has to be good with animals, he has to be good with the fields, he has to know a little bit about everything, since he does everything. And he manages! He does the accounting, but he's not specifically good at any of it.

What the Industrial Revolution did is this: you break things into its parts. If you're going to build a car, you're break it into a sort of the assembly line, and one person does one thing. When they do one thing, they do it really well. Because they do it really well, they get really fast. Because they're fast, the price goes down with the product that they make. Because the price goes down, more people buy it because more people buy it. You can do a bigger scale, a bigger scale, you can get it done cheaper; the cheaper it gets, the more people buy it. It becomes a revolving door and wealth is created.

That's worked really well in the industrial world. It's really made our modern world. It's why things are so inexpensive as they are and why you can be listening to this. We have smartphones. We have all these things because of this revolution.

It's worked really well with business but hasn't worked so well with other arenas of life. It hasn't worked so well with parenting, for example. Now a parent is sort of like the farmer: he has to do all of it. There's educating. There's teaching. There's training there's, you know, when they're little and all the different stages of parenting.

What's happened is the industrial revolution is the capitalist ideas came to parenting. Why should you teach your kid anything? We, as a parent, don't know. You're not an expert teacher are you? Send them to a teacher. Your kid wants to learn how to swim, send them to someone that can teach them how to swim. Your child needs to learn how to play a sport, so you send them to the coach, he'll help. What we've done is that we've jobbed out the parenting role to all these experts, these people who have focused on one thing.

The problem is that we lost the parent child connection. Back before, when a child was raised on the farm, and the father had to teach a son everything, there's a connection, there's an excuse for father and son to always be together, for father and son to talk about life to sons to observe the father and see what he does and learn. So there's a relationship, there's an excuse to form a relationship.

When the father shares his heart, and the father shares about God, there's a relationship, there's something there. The modern father hasn't spent any time with his son. He's jobbed out his son to learn all these things from all these other people.

So now, when the father wants to say something important: Son, I really want to tell you the secret of life is to walk with God. Well, Dad, you haven't taught me anything else my whole life. What kind of relationship do we have? I don't even know who you are. I'm exaggerating a little bit. But it's sort of what's happened.

Because of the industrial revolution, we all feel inadequate in most of life. We feel really good in the one thing that we know how to do, but in the rest of the rest of life, we feel inadequate. Because we feel inadequate, we can't get things done. That's the need for coaching. A coach comes and says, maybe you can do something. Maybe you can spend time with your son. Maybe it's more important that you teach your kid how to swim poorly and develop a relationship than to have some expert teach your son how to swim well.

But it's in a coaching process that you can find out what's really going on in your life. I think people are just on autopilot, and we don't know what to do. I think because of all these things, people don't know what to do. They don't know what to do with their children. They don't know what to do in their marriages. They don't know what to do in their business. They don't know whether they should take education. Here you are taking Christian Leaders Institute.

You don't know what to do either. Should I work in the church? Should I quit my job? Should I be a tentmaker? How? What can I do? How can I do this? I think you're not alone. I think everyone is like that, because we don't know what our role is. We don't know what we should be doing. We have this conflict between the capitalist and the socialist system, and we don't know how to figure it out.

So, we need someone to cut through all that and help us. I need someone to come into my life and say, what's important to you? Where are you hurting? What would you like to work on most in your life? And then someone to help me do that?

The Sunday school movement. In the United States, the Sunday school movement happened some 100 or so years ago. If you go into the rural areas of the United States, you will see churches, and they all look like one big box with a steeple on it. There's no educational wing, because 100 to 150 years ago, there was no Sunday school. There were no classes.

The responsibility of teaching the Bible and teaching the doctrines of the church was not the responsibility of the church staff; it was the responsibility of the parents. Sunday schools started as a movement to reach the kids of parents who didn't go to church. How are these kids going to learn about Jesus, how they can learn about the Bible if we don't do something? People came up with this idea of Sunday school, it's at Sunday school. This is an educational process for the kids whose parents don't go to church.

Some of the Church Fathers way back then said, Whoa, let's be careful with this. And people said, Well, why? Iit seems like a good idea. These wise Church Fathers said, okay, but this is what we think might happen. If we start doing Sunday school for the kids of parents who don't go to church. Eventually, that Sunday school will be used for the children of the parents who do go to church, and if that happens the parents will stop taking ownership for the spiritual direction of their children.

And that's exactly what happened.

From Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South Volume One, in the early days, what we now term religious education was primarily a function of the home. Parents were expected to train their children in the knowledge of the scriptures, and also of the doctrines. It was the pastor's responsibility to see that this duty was not neglected.

What has happened with this Sunday school thing? What has happened in the church? Someone should do it for me. The parents had the responsibility. It's the responsibility of the parents teach the Bible, and to teach the doctrines. It's the responsibility of the church to make sure that they do it.

But what's happened over time is that people say, No, someone should do it for me. Why should I do this? I'm not an expert, let's let an expert do it for me. That that mentality of ‘someone should do it for me.’ If you have that mentality, it's hard to get anything done.

One more example, the church.

The church, in general, is not only just Sunday school, where this has happened, where the education of the children is now in the hands of the church. It's almost everything. Worship is now in the hands of the professionals who do it on Sunday morning.

My father-in-law was a farmer, and he loved singing the hymns. They had a pianoand they would sing a couple of hymns every day. He'd be singing the hymns in the barn. When the uncles and aunts came over for 20 minutes or so, they'd all gather around the piano and sing some hymns.

Now, people don't sing. They don't sing the hymns together. No one says, Hey, let's sing for a while. It's all done on Sunday morning. And it's done by people who have been practicing and figured it all out. We go, and if you look at the modern church today, half the people aren't even singing. Why? Because someone is doing it for them. Let's have them do the worship.

My father-in-law farmer, a simple farmer, had Calvin's Institutes sitting by his bedside. This is tough doctrine reading. He would read those at night before he went to bed. But today, people are like, that's what we pay pastors for. Let's let the pastors study the Word of God. Let them figure out what it all means. On Sunday, I will come and just listen to him. I let I let the professionals do it for me.

What has happened? Churches are filled now with people who sit back and are letting other people do the spiritual things for them. What is the result of that? Unhappiness. If my only role is to come and sit back and listen to you, what am I going to do? I'm going to be critical.

You know, last week, Pastor, you really did a great job. You hit it out of the park, it was a great sermon, really effective, but this week is kind of lame. I hope next week is better. I'm not involved. I'm not doing anything. I'm not taking ownership. I'm not reading the Bible. I'm not studying what it says. I'm not tricking, trying to figure out how it applies to life. I'm just sitting back and letting you do it.

You know, just as an aside, in our church, we're trying not to do that. I have a little book that I write for every sermon series. Every day, there's things to read, questions to answer. On Sunday, I preach out of it. I don't want to be the one who does it for you. Because I don't want the people in my church to get this mentality that someone should do it for me.

So, what am I saying? I'm saying that with the example of capitalism & socialism, the example of Sunday school, the example of church, what I'm saying is because of this attitude, this pervasive attitude that's growing around the world, that somebody should do it for me, people's lives are broken. People aren't accomplishing things. They're frustrated in their marriages, frustrated in their parenting, frustrated in leading in business, frustrated at leading in church, because people are sitting around waiting for someone to fix it all.

Waiting for someone to swoop in and change things. We elect people. We un-elect people. Some countries have a coup, they kick that government out, they bring in a new government and it's the same old thing over and over, because people aren't taking ownership. Some people are now discovering that a coach can help you get over that mentality. You don't sit around and wait for someone else to do it for you. You do it. You can do it. And that's what a coach, what that coaching relationship, does. It enables people to actually accomplish things and go after things instead of sitting back.