by Dr. Richard Blackaby
In March 2006, I was in my office at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary. My calendar was filled with people who needed to see me. At that time, I had served as the president of the school for almost 13 years. Overall, they had been good years. We had added numerous buildings to the complex as well as significantly increasing our student body, endowment, staff, and faculty. There were ongoing challenges that had to be faced, but I had a good leadership team and the strong support of my board of trustees. Furthermore, my family had grown up in that beautiful town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and we had a great church. Life was good.
My last appointment for the day was with a student. He had earned several degrees at our school and had often come by to seek my advice or mentoring as he developed his sense of God’s call on his life. This day he seemed unusually nervous. In the next few minutes he explained that God had given him a strong sense that my time at the seminary was done and that I needed to go and work full time with my father Henry, sharing the truths of Experiencing God with people around the world.
His message shocked me. For one, I have not received messages from God in that manner. This was a first. Second, I respected this man’s walk with God. I had never known him to deliver such a message to anyone before and I knew he would not do so unless he was certain he had indeed heard from God. Third, the thought of leaving my seminary position to work full time with my father (who had been officially “retired” for five years) had never crossed my mind. Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, as soon as my visitor spoke those words, my heart began to race and my spirit became exceedingly agitated. As much as I wanted to brush off his comment as ludicrous or unfeasible or impractical, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I sensed I had just heard something that would change my life.
The following month I announced my resignation and ended my service at the seminary that July. I began serving as the president of Blackaby Ministries International. That next year I flew 200,000 miles in speaking engagements and submitted six book manuscripts for publication. My life was swept up into a brand new role that would challenge me in fresh, new ways.
I have reflected much on what happened. This is what I have concluded:
1. We are called to grow, not to hold a comfortable position.
I had grown comfortable in my job. It wasn’t that there weren’t ongoing challenges to raise money and recruit students every year, but after 13 years, I knew what to do. It was work, sure, but work I had learned to do successfully. I had a good, and important job, but I was no longer growing in it. The areas where I had been growing were in the endeavors I undertook with my father. I was writing books and speaking to new and diverse audiences. I also had begun discipling Christian CEOs of major companies in corporate America. It was the first discipleship I had ever conducted where some of the participants flew in on company jets! To say I felt challenged to be at my best is an understatement!
Our natural tendency is to seek a job that is comfortable and stable and to begin putting in our years until retirement. Yet such an approach to life is anathema to our Creator. He designed us to grow. When we stop growing, we start dying. Unbeknownst to me, I had begun dying in my role as president and, when leaders start dying, so do their organizations. I clearly needed a fresh challenge if my life and leadership were to go to another level.
I need to insert a caveat here. You can grow and go to another level in leadership, yet remain in your same church or organization. I just think it is more difficult to do. I had naturally surrounded myself with staff and faculty with whom I could work well. My trustees liked me and supported me. I had good relations with our denomination. It was just too easy to coast on yesterday’s success than to achieve fresh, new ones. For me, I needed to move on.
2. After ten years leaders must reinvent themselves.
When I had been president of the seminary for about eleven years, I was asked to speak at a national gathering of Campus Crusade leaders in Canada. One of the staff was driving me back to the airport and he made an intriguing observation. He noted that in his estimation, after ten years, leaders have probably made their greatest contributions to their organization. That is not to say leaders cannot continue to work hard and to contribute. However, their most important contributions, a fresh vision, new ideas, innovative approaches, are generally made in the first decade. After that, leaders tend to transition into maintenance. At the time I remember musing that this man’s theory did not apply to me . . . Yet looking back, I realize that my greatest contributions, and arguably my greatest successes, came in my first decade. Of course, if after ten years you have not made a significant impact, odds are high that you won’t ever do so.
Again, this dos not mean that people cannot stay for two or three or even four decades in the same organization and make enormous contributions. But such leaders only do so when they are constantly growing, innovating, learning, and maturing. If you don’t keep growing in your role, your organization will outgrow you.
3. Our calling in life is to glorify God and abide in Christ.
The American dream is to build a large retirement account, pay off your home, and enjoy your golden years in style and comfort. Your measure of success is how high you made it on the organizational chart during your career. Not so with God. His desire for you is that you develop an intimate, growing, transformational relationship with Him. He calls you to abide in Him continually (John 15:5). He wants to keep us in a position of utter dependence upon Him that leads us to live a life of faith. For, without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
I remember when I first walked in to the seminary as a thirty-two-year-old president. I was the youngest person on the entire staff! People were concerned that I was too young and inexperienced to handle the job. I knew every eye was watching. I was keenly aware that if I failed, I might bring the fledgling institution crumbling down upon my head. So I prayed! I read. I sought counsel. I attended workshops. I worked hard! But, after thirteen years, I had built a strong team around me. Rather than being the new kid on the block, I had hired most of the staff. I was the veteran, with a track record of success. However, Scripture declares that without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). It wasn’t that I still didn’t need faith. I just didn’t need as much! (Or so I thought). Unknowingly, my success and leadership team had caused me to rely on them for some of what I should have been relying upon God for. So God removed them from me. Once again I was in a position where I knew how much I needed God if I were to experience continued success.
Summary
In recent days I have been struck by how many people are experiencing some degree of transition. Some have been laid off, due to downsizing as a result of a volatile economy. Others have been asked to leave by management. Some of simply felt that their time in their current job had come to an end and something new was coming. I’ve never seen as many people in transition as I have in recent days. Why is that?
In some cases, people had grown complacent, or even lazy. When the economy tanked, the first people to be laid off were the ones who were no longer making significant contributions. It was a wakeup call that there is no such thing as a lifetime job any more. People must keep growing and enhancing their ability to contribute.
For others, I believe it has been God moving them to a new level. By providing new challenges, God has forced these people to grow, to develop new skills, to depend more on Him. For many, this has been invigorating. While no one likes to go through the pain of job and income loss, or relocating, or uprooting family, or having to learn new skills, it has at the same time, awakened people to the thrill of personal growth. Our problem is that we often have no idea how stagnant we have become, until we have our lives shaken.
I also believe that we are clearly nearing the end times. The muscular secularism of today is seeking to force Christianity out of every corner of society. Terrorists are fervently seeking nuclear weapons with which to bring about a global holocaust. Violence and hatred seem only to increase as society becomes more educated and modernized. Could it be that in such times, it is an affront to our Creator to remain comfortably where we are, and who we are? Could it be that God is shaking up many of His people so they are divinely nudged into becoming all He designed them to be?
I don’t know what your current status is. Perhaps you are one whose job has been lost or significantly changed in recent days. Or perhaps you are in the same role, but you sense that God wants to do more through your life than He has of late. It may be that your past success doesn’t cut it today. If that is the case, let me urge you to be sensitive to the fresh new thing God may be introducing into your life. Don’t fear it. Embrace it. Life is too short to play it safe.
Behold the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them . . . Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 42:9; 43:18-19)