“It’s important for you to know that I did not start out in life knowing how to build great relationships — with my family members or with anyone else!
I was a very shy, quiet kid. I know it sounds crazy, but I didn’t talk out loud in school until the 2nd grade. I didn’t start conversations with anyone else, because I was so reserved and socially awkward. And nobody else started real conversations with me, either. I was the bent-over kid with coke bottle glasses and seemingly nothing to say.
Truly, the only kids who said anything to me were the bullies. And the things that they had to say were not exactly uplifting — their cruel comments just strengthened my belief that the world was a cold and uncaring place.
Despite my near-total inability to relate to others, I did well in school, particularly in math and science. When I went to college, I majored in engineering (or course!). While I was in college, two life-changing events occurred. First, my father died. For a child who had very few friends and idolized his dad, that was a shock, to say the least. If I had any doubts as to whether I really was alone in the world, my father’s death removed them. I was convinced that relationships brought nothing but pain and I began to wonder why I was even here.
A year later, still grieving and confused, I took an elective course in psychology. Wow! In that class, I learned that people’s behaviors could be understood, that relationships worked (or didn’t work!) for some very specific reasons, and that I could actually learn to make sense of what had seemed to me to be a meaningless, chaotic world.
That experience changed my life in a profound way. Ever since that class, I have been on a mission.
Truly, I have spent the past forty years studying relationships — learning how to build, strengthen, and maintain truly amazing connections with God and with other people. Those forty years of study did include lots of formal education — after receiving my engineering degree, I went to seminary, became a United Methodist pastor, and later went back to school to get my PhD in psychology.
However, my real education began after that. For the past 30 years, I have had the honor of teaching, counseling, and mentoring thousands of people, each of whom taught me something about the art of living in relationship.
Because I am an avid learner and a scientist at heart, I have taken careful note of all that I have learned from those thousands of clients and students. I have striven, constantly, to apply those lessons to my own life and then to teach others all that I have learned. In that process, I have come to truly understand the mistakes that we all make in relationships, the reasons why we make them, the steps we need to take, in order to overcome them, and the incredible joy that we all experience, when we do.
For that reason, you will notice that all of the things that I will teach you will be clear, personal, and from the heart — my heart and the hearts of all of the people who have allowed me to be in the struggle with them.
May those lessons be a blessing to you and to the people you love.”
-Rev. Dr. Glenn Pickering
About The Mission
We truly believe that the game of TAG has utterly destroyed millions of marriages, families, businesses, and ministries that otherwise could have thrived. Like an acid, it eats away at relationships from the very inside out, step by step, until nothing is left but the empty shell and the grief of a marriage, family, business, or ministry gone terribly wrong.
What’s even worse is this – unless the people whose lives are destroyed learn to interact in a radically different way they will continue to make exactly the same TAG-related mistakes. And so the trail of destruction continues in their wake. Until the pattern changes, the same results continue to pile up – broken homes, broken churches, broken businesses, and a broken world.
The good news is that it simply doesn’t have to be like that. Once our students become aware of TAG, learn to eliminate it, and then replace it powerfully right relationships, miracles begin to occur. True intimacy flourishes, families thrive, churches prosper, and the world becomes a radically better place.
Our mission is to help people to create radically different relationships, which will allow them to impact their world in amazing ways.
That’s what we want. We believe that it’s what you want, too.
So let’s get started!