It is amazing how public opinion can make a complete about-face. It happened with smoking, where it used to be death-defyingly cool, but is now considered brain-defyingly stupid. It happened with ‘spirituality’, which used to be a word of ridicule among intellectuals, but is now a thing to be admired and sought after (as long as it doesn’t take a too definite shape).
The latest turnaround concerns being told what to do. The same 30-somethings who sang along with Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education; we don’t need no thought control” when they were teenagers, are now hiring ‘Life Coaches’. Life Coaching is the latest global fad, spinning out of the scene led by American personal development guru Anthony ‘The Giant Within’ Robbins. One of Robbins’s ex-promoters has started life coaching services for executives in big corporations, where he provides a ‘trained’ coach who makes him/herself available for telephone and internet consultation (it isn’t usually face to face, because most clients are too busy for that kind of thing). The coach helps ‘align’ the client’s life, providing guidance in all manner of areas, from career and finance, to health, to romance, to moving house. The two main reasons clients give for appointing a Life Coach are the need for more focus in their work and the desire for more money.
Coaches tend not to give directions to a client or make any value judgements, preferring to be not Mr Fixits but Mr Youcandoits. I can’t imagine how such non-directiveness is possible. Surely, if you are paying someone $500 a month, you are hoping for more than a listening ear. Imagine a football coach not giving directions. Imagine a language coach never explaining how the personal pronouns work. There must be some kind of judgement made, or there would be no point in paying the estimated $4295 it costs to complete the two-week Coaching diploma from (I kid you not) Coach University, USA.
Christians have always been into coaching. The Bible speaks of various mentor-mentored relationships (prophet-Israel, master-slave, older woman-younger woman, Paul-Timothy), and it is usually positive about the benefits of such arrangements. They work because the mentor has something worthwhile to give the mentored—not by virtue of being more successful or worthy, but because of the situation into which God has placed them, or the understanding and experience that God has granted them. Christians tend not to appoint their own coaches; God provides them—parents, older Christians, Sunday School leaders, pastors.
Despite these differences, it is interesting to see the world once again changing its mind in the direction of Christian wisdom. It used to be considered weak and pathetic to need help. Now there is an admission that someone else might be able to give you the kind of guidance you need. But there is still the pretence that it is undirected, and the client is really doing everything for himself. Independence dies hard. You can have a therapist, a personal trainer, an astrologist and now a Life Coach, and still without a trace of irony, sing with Sinatra all the way to the grave, “I did it my way”.
There may be a new evangelistic opportunity for churches here—or at least a new name for an old style of ministering. It used to be called pastoring, discipling or mentoring, but churches now can provide Life Coaching for those who want to get their lives in order. Having established an open Coach-Client relationship, we can slowly come around to the idea that your life is not in fact your own; you were bought for a price, redeemed, and set aside for the head coach, Almighty ‘The Giant Above’ God. Your life is hidden with God, dedicated to him, sustained by him. He is sovereign over all you do, he brings you both blessings and trials, and he often refines his clients by fire. See how that rearranges people’s schedules.
