Managing Yourself

In Marc Freedman's outstanding book, Encore, he makes the point that with today's lifespans, people's working careers are lasting as long as 50 years. "Today, knowledge workers in particular 'are not finished after 40 years on the job, they are merely bored.' (quoting Peter Drucker) To Drucker, the talk about midlife crisis for the professional worker is mostly about boredom. He wrote that most individuals, by age forty-five, are good at their jobs, 'but they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job'. Nontheless, they face another two, three, or even four decades of work."

(Click on this link to view video clips of Marc Freedman regarding Encore Careers) www.encore.org/more-videos

According to Drucker, the ones who will actually break out of this boredom and begin second careers are those who learn to "manage themselves".

For motivated people wanting to make a difference with their work and with their lives, this sort of boredom or plateauing on the job causes them to launch into a new career. Some won't have the courage to change the trajectory of their career. They will just gut it out until they can retire and then do whatever they want with their time. Many will recognize the disonance they feel between what they are giving their best hours of work to and the yearning they feel inside to do something more significant. They will break out of the boredom and launch out in a new encore career.

I wonder a lot about how many people in our churches are at or near this place in their lives. In what ways can these churches offer them ways to recareer themselves to help expand the kingdom of God in new ways? Are the opportunities for them to serve in the church just too narrow and too insignificant to engage the best efforts of men and women who want to launch out in new careers? Might this be the place to find new full-time, part-time, or volunteer staff for a visionary, missional church? A friend of mine believes that many of these people are saying to their churches, "Use me or lose me." What they mean by this is that they want to make a difference in the lives of others in their church and in their community, and they would prefer to do it with and through their own church. But if the church has no place for them, they will find a place somewhere else where they can make a difference.

I think that the forward thinking churches will recognize the huge numbers of people in this phase of life. They will engage them in the process of managing and even reshaping their careers to make a significant investment in the lives of others in the church, in the community, and in the world. Isn't that what we are all about?