PrinceOfPeace
Coaching
Read through the Bible in one year
with a mentor who can help you see
that Peace is Possible
Isaiah 9:6-7 6 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. |
Luke 2:13-14 Matthew 5:9 |
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What is a Coach?A sports coach will make you run more laps than you feel like. A sports coach pushes an athlete to achieve optimum performance, provides support when the athlete is exhausted, and teaches the athlete to execute plays that the competition does not anticipate. To maximize performance, the coach will make sure the athlete gets in shape before the season begins, knows the rules of the game and the team playbook, and practices. Someone has said, "Stretching is necessary to have a successful practice. Not stretching can be dangerous and unhealthy." A coach makes the athlete stretch. A sports coach will tell it like it is. The role of the Business Coach is to coach business owners to improve their business through guidance, support and encouragement. They help the owners of small and medium sized businesses with their sales, marketing, management, team building and so much more. Just like a sporting coach, your Business Coach will make you focus on the game.* A Bible Coach makes you read the Bible more than you feel like. The Christian Scriptures teach that life is like a race that we need to train for, run hard, and win. A Bible Coach pushes you in the race set before you (Hebrews 12:1; 2 Timothy 4:7), helping you apply what you read, building personal habits, overcoming defects of character that keep you from winning the race and being awarded an imperishable crown (1 Corinthians 9:24-25). |
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If you read some of the definitions of modern "coaching" in the box on the right, you'll discover that they're very different from Vince Lombardi, and unlike the kind of coaching we offer here.
If you're on a professional football team, and the Coach tells you to run with the ball downfield as fast as you can, and you go the opposite direction, your team won't get points for a touchdown, the other team will get points, and you will probably get kicked off the team (if you were deliberately ignoring the Coach's instructions).
If you're on a professional football team and you insist on using a baseball, basketball, or tennis ball, again, you'll probably get kicked off the team.
So the first question is, Which Sport Are You Playing? Which Race Are You Running? Who Makes the Rules?
Most modern "life coaches" believe "the client has all the answers within." If you're running down the field in the wrong direction, most modern coaches believe they must be "non-judgmental." As Ludwig von Mises (arguably the greatest economist in the 20th century) would put it, the economic coach won't tell you what you ought to do (morally speaking), but will only inform you of the pragmatic results of your actions: "If you engage in policy X, you will achieve result Y." The modern economist offers no ethical judgment as to the morality or sinfulness of policy X.
Our coaching program involves the construction of a Biblical Worldview. All the options of life are viewed through this worldview. In order to develop this worldview, we prescribe a training course in which the athlete reads the five most important works in the history of Christian Civilization. The goal of this program is to develop a Biblical Worldview.
After this program is completed, we embark on a program of personal coaching. During the time you study the training materials and develop a Biblical Worldview, you will also learn how to be coached. This is a discipline in itself.
Goldsmith won't take on a client who doesn't want to change -- someone who, as he puts it, has not a skill problem but a don't-give-a-shit problem -- but, short of that, the more obnoxious the better. "My favorite case study was in the 0.1 percentile for treating people with respect," he says. "That means that there were over a thousand people in that company and this person came in dead last. This person would be in an elevator and someone would come up and say, 'Hey, how's it going?,' and he wouldn't even respond. He was hardworking and brilliant; he didn't lie, cheat, or steal. He was just a complete jerk. The case was considered hopeless, but in one year he got up to 53.7 per cent.
"You know how I helped the guy to change? I asked him, 'How do you treat people at home?' He said, 'Oh, I'm totally different at home.' I said, 'Let's call your wife and kids.' What did his wife say? 'You're a jerk.' Called the kids. 'Jerk.' 'Jerk.' So I said, 'Look, I can't help you make money, you're already making more than God, but do you want to have a funeral that no one attends? Because that's where this train is headed."
When Goldsmith started executive coaching, in the early eighties, he was a pioneer. Coaching really came into its own as an industry about five or six years ago, when employee retention became a serious problem. Prosperous baby boomers were retiring early, and members of Generation X were looking for variety and fulfillment rather than security. Human-resources departments, meanwhile, were calculating the cost of losing an important employee (between one and two times the employee's annual salary and benefits, according to one estimate), and had discovered that one of the two main reasons that people left jobs was that they hated their boss (the other being the general failure of the company). Clearly, it was foolish to lose talent for no better reason than that a vice-president appeared to his subordinates to be insufficiently interested in what they had to say. Moreover, a bad attitude on the part of senior management was held to be detrimental not only to retaining employees but also to the formation of strategy. The old-fashioned leader, with his bulldozer personality and his single-minded certainties, was thought to be too arrogant to lower his ear to the ground and listen for changes coming. Thus, the executive coach.
Coaching being still in its chaotic, juvenile phase, there are, as yet, no licensing requirements of any kind. Anyone can call himself an executive coach, and thousands do. Schools are springing up everywhere: Coach Universe and Coach U conduct classes by phone; CoachVille.com trains coaches for a seventy-nine-dollar lifetime-membership fee. For this reason, first-to-market coaches like Goldsmith, who already have solid reputations and have received notices in the business press (he was listed as one of five top coaches by Forbes, and in the top ten by the Wall Street Journal), are flourishing. Goldsmith's current clients include ChevronTexaco, Motorola, Thomson, and Pitney Bowes. Some executives remain suspicious of coaching, thinking of it as a reproach or as enforced psychotherapy, but more often these days the offer of a coach is taken as a compliment -- a sign, since the service is expensive, that a person is being groomed for significant promotion.
One of Goldsmith's clients is an executive in a large corporation. He is high-ranking -- only a step or two from the top. None of Goldsmith's clients are far from the top -- his services are too expensive to waste on mid-level managers. (He won't say how much he charges, but it is reported to be in the high five figures per client per year, which makes him one of the best-paid coaches in the field.) On a recent visit to the executive's office, Goldsmith ran into his client in the hallway, where the two of them were spotted by a little white-haired man wearing a red bow tie.
"Who's getting their head shrunk today?" asked the white-haired man in a jovial tone. The executive gave him a pained smile.
The executive was in his early forties and wore an open-necked white shirt. He had the genial, Saturday air of a man with a beer, making a seamless transition from fraternity to barbecue -- an air that, by all accounts, had served him well in his work. But, at the same time, there was a tense wariness about him. The people in marketing who worked under him thought he was terrific, but his peers were tired of what they felt were his incessant competitive put-downs, and people in sales felt that he had failed, as Goldsmith primly put it, to treat them like customers. The executive had to stop being so territorial, the C.E.O. decided. Goldsmith was called in and signed up for a year.
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I want to be your personal coach.
I want to inspire you, empower you, guide you, help you find answers to your questions, nag you, encourage you, and be a tool in your transformation into a Christian Anarchist.
I promise to be patient with you, no matter how frustrated you get.
I promise not to compel you or try to force you to believe everything I believe, in exactly the same way I believe it.
I just want to be a part of your journey. I've been on a similar journey. I've gotten frustrated with people who told me I should not become an anarchist. I've struggled to believe the Bible rather than the politically-accredited and socially-accepted celebrities in the world around me.
I've cut a path through the forest. I'm still cutting. Let me join you as we re-trace the steps I've traveled. At some point God may call you to leave the path I've been cutting so you can cut another path. It's a big forest. We need lots of paths. Eventually you and I will make it to the other side: the City of God.
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Praises for Washington by his contemporaries
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Some people have asked:
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What would George Washington say about you if he were your personal coach?
If you're like me, he would say you're a lousy Christian and a stinking rotten American. Ouch! Why would he say that?
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What is a "Personal Coach?"If you're an athlete and you want to win a race, you get yourself a coach. Your coach will encourage you, nag you, maybe yell at you, in order to drag out your maximum performance so you can win the race and take home the Gold Medal. George Washington said if you want to be a great human being, you need to be a great American and -- more important -- a great Christian. The Christian Scriptures teach that life is like a race that we need to train for, run hard, and win. So if you want to follow George Washington's advice, you need a coach. Wouldn't it be great to have George Washington as your coach! He coached the Continental Army to victory over the mighty British Empire. He coached the Constitutional Convention to agreement on a new Constitution. And after he served as America's first President, he became known as "the Father of his Country." Keep reading this page and you learn the two things you need to become an extraordinary American, an Extraordinary Christian, and an extraordinary human being. You need to learn the basic skills of winning life's race, and you need encouragement from a coach. This is where you get both. |
You are a victim of Educational Malpractice.
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George Washington's AdviceOn May 2, 1778, when the Continental Army had emerged from its infamous winter at Valley Forge, Commander-in-Chief George Washington issued the following:
The Writings of George Washington, JC Fitzpatrick, ed., Wash. DC: US Gov't Printing Office, 1932, Vol. XI:342-343, General Orders of 5/2/1778 On May 12, 1779, in a speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs, Washington coached them:
The Writings of George Washington, JC Fitzpatrick, ed., Wash. DC: US Gov't Printing Office, 1932, Vol 15, p.55. |
George Washington has been criticized for owning slaves -- even though he inherited them, and even though it was illegal for him to free them (when Virginia tried passing laws against slavery, the King of Britain overruled them). But being a slave in a Christian nation is better than being "free" in an atheistic nation. |
Samuel Adams, speaking at the State House in Philadelphia, “to a very numerous audience” on August 1, 1776:
If you are an ordinary American, you are a pampered slave. You are wealthy beyond the imagination of anyone alive in 1776. But you would rather keep the remote control of your TV than fight for liberty and personal responsibility. |
In a nutshell, public schools 200 years ago taught Americans to follow George Washington's advice: to be a good Christian. |
You Need to Read the Five Most Important Works in the History of America and Western CivilizationThere are three main components of the George-Washington-Coaching Program. The first is reading the five most important works in the history of America and Western Civilization. Most Americans in 1776 knew these ideas backwards and forwards, and certainly a lot better than most Americans today. You may be in the top 1% of Americans in terms of knowing these key ideas, and yet be in the bottom 50% of Americans in 1776. The first book, of course -- the most significant book in the history of America and Western Civilization -- is the Bible. During the next 365 days, you will read the Bible from cover to cover in a way you never have before. In 1837, the Supreme Court of Delaware said this:
Day by day, your eyes will be opened as you see how the Bible is the foundation of liberty and civilization as we know it. |
GeorgeWashingtonCoaching is a rigorous distance-learning program that helps you learn these ideas and develop the skills to put them into effect and promote them in our society. It is a year-long program equivalent to four university-level courses. The homework assignments are free. There is a fee for nagging. You'll need lots of nagging. Sign up for more information on how to get started: |
You Need to Learn and Avoid the Three Biggest Mistakes George Washington and America's Founding Fathers MadeYou're going to have your world turned upside down when you hear why Patrick Henry ("Give me liberty or give me death") and George Mason ("Father of the Bill of Rights") both opposed the Constitution.
You Need A CoachYou need someone to push you, so that you can accomplish all that you're capable of accomplishing. You Need a CommunityYou will benefit by participating in on-going discussions with other people who are having their world turned upside down by the most important ideas in American history.
After one year, you will not be the same person. You will be
Or you get your money back. |
GW's Three Mistakes | Program Features | Program Benefits | Program Outcomes | Enroll Now |