Starting over

Most people I know have had to start their careers over at some point. Sometimes these moves are voluntary, like when someone wants to make a major career shift late in life, but often they aren’t. Living here in Michigan, where the job base is shifting away from manufacturing and unemployment is high, I know [...]

You can quote me on this.

Ever notice how often quotes get used in business language? Business talks and PowerPoints are peppered with quotes from modern day business gurus like Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, Malcom Gladwell and Bill Gates. Most are used to justify a key point, but every once in a while they just seem to do a great job capturing [...]

Work – life balance

This is an outta-whack week for me. My work schedule is packed, I’ve got two meetings at a nonprofit organization that I work with, and I’ve got three different church meetings/events that I need to be at. A few weeks of this is okay, but if I was this busy for an extended period, I’d [...]

Fireproof bridges

Did you ever have that girlfriend or boyfriend that you just couldn’t seem to stay broken up with when you were younger? Well, I’m beginning to see a parallel in the workplace.
I got talking with a friend who leads some of our new-hire training today and he mentioned to me that when we lose new-hires [...]

Legacies

 
Ever stop and wonder what is it that we’re really trying to accomplish as individuals in the workplace? Better jobs? More authority? Nicer titles? More money? Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and evaluate where we’re heading and why.
This week I’d like to use some great Christian songs from recent years as inspiration for my posts. [...]

The risk and rewards of Christian enterprise

 
Most of my blog posts are about what it’s like to be a Christian in corporate America, but today I’d like to touch briefly on something even more specific – Christian companies. There are a small number of entrepreneurs that have started these organizations - companies that have explicitly Christian missions - who try to balance profits with purpose.
I’ve [...]

Daydream(ing) Believer

I suspect that our daydreams can tell us a lot about the condition of our hearts. They can reveal our motivations, our dissatisfactions, our hidden desires, our idealistic aspirations, and sometimes our corrupt nature.
Today I caught myself daydreaming about what it would be like to manage the brand of a small, creative company. I suspect that I [...]

The gift of perspective

 
Today wraps up our week’s discussion of job insecurities, but for those of you who are struggling with job transitions or unhappy jobs, it need not be the end of this opportunity for spiritual growth. Today’s topic – the gift of perspective. There’s something about not having reliable income that jars us into taking stock of [...]

Minister, redefined.

As part of the pre-marriage ministry that my wife and I lead at our church, I occasionally perform wedding ceremonies for couples that have gone through the class. I can’t help but laugh thinking about meeting the father-of-the-groom before the first wedding I performed. I can’t remember the conversation verbatim, but it went something like this,
“So you led [...]

Is This Where God Wants Me?

Have you ever been sitting in your cube at work, or been in the middle of a boring meeting and wondered, “Is this really where God wants me spending my days?” Or perhaps you’ve been looking for a new job and thought, “Does God really care about which of these companies I work for?”
God’s will [...]