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Hey, everybody! Welcome to the Relational Toolshed where we equip everyday people with everyday tools to successfully work through everyday relationships. I’m your host, Tim Parlier.
Let’s get to work!
This is our first episode and, as part of our first episode, I wanted to give you guys a sneak peek into some of the motivation and vision that we had for creating the Relational Toolshed.
I’m the biggest tool in the shed today, so you’re stuck with me. I’m going to be sharing just a little bit of why I wanted to create a podcast about giving people tools to build everyday relationships. A lot of it comes from my professional background. Over the last five to ten years, I’ve worn a lot of hats – as a life coach, a mentor, even a youth pastor. I work for FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes), so I’ve been working with youth of all ages across junior high all the way up through college. But I have also worn the hat of a high school football coach. I’ve been an assistant coach at a high school in Solana Beach, CA where I’ve had to motivate and teach as well as build relationships with high school young men as they are going through a hard patch of life. And then, my third path that I wear is a pastor. I’ve been a pastor for a few years now and people look to me for spiritual leadership and direction. Specifically, at my church, we operate around missional communities and sharing life together as the family of God.
And through those experiences, I’ve been smacked in the face with an observation about our culture. We aren’t prepared in our formal education for navigating the difficulties of relationships.
If you can imagine with me, you spend your primary school going through kindergarten through 12th grade, and then maybe tack on an extra four years of college, and then If you go on from there maybe two or four more… you could have 20 years of formal education and no one has ever sat down and talked to you about navigating conflict in your marriage, or restoring an unhealthy dynamic in your family, or managing healthy conflict in general or your own emotions. Not to mention navigating challenging relations at work or in other venues that you’re involved with.
And that’s sad, to me. I think we are seeing the manifestation of bad relational skills, or tools, all around us and throughout our culture.
And, the vision for this podcast was to work against that… almost as a revolution against bad communication and bad relationship building skills, or maybe just the lack thereof.
I believe that it’s not necessarily just a “want to” thing. Some people would claim, “Well… no one cares and that’s why we have the situation we have.” Maybe there’s some truth to that.
But, the deeper reality that I’m experiencing is that we don’t have the right tools in our “toolbelt for life”. I would love to help us, as a community here in the toolshed, build authentic relationships; have the tools to navigate the challenging situations we find ourselves in.
And, this is for normal people. This isn’t just for people in professional ministry or professional counseling or executive coaching. This is for your everyday person. This is for moms, dads, coaches, high school students, teachers, influencers of any kind and from any spiritual background. Obviously, I’m a pastor so a lot of the perspective that I bring will be from a Christian worldview. But, I hope this is a blessing for anyone from any spiritual background. I hope that this will be a place that we can learn and grow, hear some amazing stories and apply some practical, tangible tools to our toolbelt for life that we can implement right away.
So, that’s the show in a nutshell. I hope you stick with us for the long haul and that this show is a blessing to you, as are the guests.
So, let’s get to work!