Wake Up, Look Up

[Music]

hello everyone thanks for listening to

wake up lookup a podcast where we

connect events happening in real time to

the Gospel of Jesus Christ I'm Zach wck

and in today's episode we're asking the

question should you buy Community it's

prompted by an article in the Atlantic

called please tell me what to do by Olga

Kazan it's about life coaching which is

uh a trend or industry now that is on

the rise and the author writes from her

own experience of having to make some

major decisions in life feeling uh

inadequate or incapable of doing so and

then paying someone to actually tell her

what to do uh it's interesting that this

trend of life coaching is on the rise

because it's incredibly expensive that's

one of the things the article pursu that

you you have to pay a lot of money for

this and there are no real

qualifications I mean there's life

coaching is not something you get a

degree to do as though when you graduate

22 at 22 and you've taken a few classes

you're now qualified to tell a 42

year-old how to navigate a 15-year

marriage or raising children or any of

those kinds of things it's it's one of

those things where it's tough to know

when someone's qualified but not tough

to know that they're going to charge you

a lot of money it's also connected to a

decline in traditional methods of

support people increasingly are turning

less and less to their parents or to

their friends or to their faith

community in order to make decisions

we're becoming more and more isolated

and more and more used to paying for

things so it just makes sense that the

advice we might have at one time gotten

from a friend over coffee we now get

from an employee we're also moving to a

culture that believes in the y a great

deal and life coaching is kind of adj

adjacent I'm going to say kind of

because psychiatrists and psychologists

actually go to a lot of school and do

have a lot of training life coaches tend

not to but if I ask someone to help me

navigate my anger why not ask someone to

help me navigate my career choices uh

the reason why this is interesting to me

is because in life coaching people are

paying for something that was always

meant to be free

something that God intended to provide

them through a local church that in some

part people are paying for life coaching

because they have stepped outside of

God's design for them and they're not

part of a local church where for example

in the book of Titus older men and older

women are told to pour into the lives of

younger men and younger women that is

what the Bible means by the way when it

talks about dis discipleship that's one

of those words that I worry has taken on

a whole meaning that the first century

they just wouldn't have thought of when

we think of discipleship we tend to

think of reading theology books or

taking theology classes and certainly

growing in our understanding of who God

is and how he's revealed himself in the

Bible is an important part of

discipleship but when an older mother

helps a younger mother figure out how to

keep her toddler in bed at night that is

disciples ship it is figuring out how to

do the thing that God has called you to

do to the glory of God and to the good

of in this case your toddler we have to

stop labeling discipleship with Theology

and start thinking of it as real people

helping real people do life that's

what's meant to be happening in the

local church now I don't mean to imply

it always is happening what tends to

happen is older women in church hang out

with older women and younger women in

church hang out with younger women and

in so doing they both deprive themselves

of the community that God wanted them to

have and so they go pay for something

that God has actually called them to do

for each other this is what Paul means

in Galatians 6 by the way when he says

that we should bear one another's

burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ

because the thing is when I'm I just was

at breakfast this morning with a guy

younger than me younger father when I'm

helping him that's what it means to bear

his burdens we're talking about college

about whether you buy the teenager the

car or you have them raise money for it

and when I left that breakfast we had

discipled each other for free well I

guess we paid for breakfast but you get

my point that's what God wants us doing

for each other and you might not feel

qualified to read a theology book with

someone or to teach a theology class but

I bet there are a lot of ways whether

it's managing money whether it's buying

a home changing your job dating getting

married raising kids I bet there's a lot

of things that you can actually help

people with and a lot of things you're

looking for help in instead of paying

for them or Googling them why don't you

show up at your local church and make a

friend why don't you go to your pastor

or pastors and say I'm looking for an

older person or younger person who can

help me or who I can

help let's reclaim discipleship and then

let's take all the money that we were

going to spend on life coaching and give

it to the kingdom let's reach more lost

people be in better community and be

growing in our faith all at the same

time doesn't that sound good well life

usually is good in God's design hey

thanks so much for watching this episode

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