In 2004, I left a good job in the city (thank you Tina Turner) to come work full-time for the church my wife and I love. Specifically, I was hired to lead the weekly production for a large singles gathering.
So I spent the next four years learning how to lead a great team of volunteers, how to find my voice expressing creative ideas for our series, and with a few hard knocks, how to produce a weekly live event. It was awesome! The volunteers were incredibly talented. Our staff team was like family. And every week we were speaking into the singles culture of Atlanta. For this season, God allowed the best of my talents and passions to be gathered and focused into one job/opportunity. How great!
However, seasons change, and in 2008 our small team felt led to shut the doors to the singles gathering for all the right reasons. We spent our final three months appropriately saying goodbye to our volunteers, casting vision for the work that still needed to be done in the city, and beginning the process of mourning the loss of a ministry and the dissolving of our team—all of which was done incredibly well due to the leadership of our director.
Ultimately, one of the questions our team had to face was, “What’s next?” As I saw it, God had spent the past four years of my life revealing and refining three specific arenas that I had been hardwired to thrive in: leading a team, thinking creatively, and producing/creating something on a consistent basis. Clearly my next job was going to build off the strengths he had just revealed to me, right?
No. And thank God the answer was no. If my next job had perfectly united all three of those strengths again, it may have delayed my learning of the fundamental lesson. The question was not would my WORK have those three strengths present in it. Rather, the revelation was that my LIFE must have each of those God-revealed strengths present in it. It may have required the death of that ministry to give birth to such a new reality for my LIFE.
And that is where I am now. My current job, which I feel uniquely suited for, is not the perfect storm of all three of my God-given strengths. It does provide a fantastic outlet for my creativity. However, my other two areas of strength are currently being met outside of work. My desire to lead next generation leaders is now met through leadership coaching. My desire to produce and create is met through working with two local ministries several times a year to help with their live events. Ahhh—balance. Not perfection, but balance.
Ephesian 2:10 tells us that we are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” What I now realize is that God had been preparing a Beautiful Collision (thank you David Crowder) of the skills he gave me. The history of my “work life” and “volunteer life” were to prepare me for an awakening, a new reality that has shaped me ever since. This reality allows me to live a life that is on purpose and in balance – to live out of my BRAND.
I encourage you to find your gift. Find that outlet where time passes by quickly, where you feel alive, passionate, and smile more often than not while you do it. Your hardwired gift most likely will NOT be discovered by reading, but will be discovered by doing. So, just start! Find a team to coach, find a ministry to volunteer in, find an outlet that allows you to be you. Until you find your sweet spot, keep looking and keep praying. God is preparing beautiful collisions for all of us. It is our responsibility to make ourselves available to be hit.
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