You are reading the FRACAT Blog Archive (also known as "FRACAT 1.0") for all posts prior to October 29th, 2007.
Who Are You Serving?
As I was in church yesterday, I was thinking about this week’s Monday “God In My Job” posting.
And before you get on me about paying attention, it wasn’t really daydreaming because it was directly related to what the pastor was talking about.
In any case, he touched on Matthew 6:24, where Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money [Mammon].”
And I thought to myself, “Self, how do you serve money?”
While I’m sure I don’t have a complete idea of exactly what serving money looks like, I’m pretty sure of what it looks like in job-seeking.
Are you sure you wanna see?
WHAT SERVING MONEY LOOKS LIKE IN OUR CAREERS
Obviously, from the verse above, if we’re serving money, it means that we’re not serving something else (for instance - and I’m just throwing this out - God). So, it’s pretty important to know what serving money looks like.
For a period in my life, serving money has looked like job hopping. Especially during the dotcom era, people would present me with a lot more money than I was making at my current position and I would go.
Was I unhappy at the job I was doing before? Not really. At least, not any more so than I would be anywhere else.
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Over time, I developed a question…: |
Was there something (besides money) drawing me to the new position? Something like advancing my career, adding responsibilities, getting better hours, or working for a better boss? Pretty much, no.
In fact, while the new jobs weren’t bad or anything, pretty much every job I took required more time, more hours, more of me. And, apparently, the only reason I was making the move was to get more money.
Over time, I developed a question to ask whenever I would be in this situation again: “If this new job were paying exactly the same as my current job, would I take the job?”
THE FINE LINE BETWEEN CAREER ADVANCEMENT AND SERVING MONEY
You’ve been in the situation before where there’s a tough choice to make. Do you take the new job with all of the good AND bad? With the extra pay, promises of advancement, travel, long hours, and working even after your home?
It is a hard decision. And I always advise prayer during these times. And you’ve got to dig deep in yourself and ask whether you’re taking the position for the money (and all of the “wonderful things it could do for your family”) or because it’s where God wants you to be.
Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with having money or earning more money. There is something wrong if you’re giving up important things (family, ministry, church, etc.) in order to get that money.
Feel free, however, to give up the unimportant stuff. If you’re torn between more time at work and getting to watch your TV shows, for example, go with the work. Between work and more time in the shower? Go with work. Between work and reading FRACAT? Well, that’s a different story entirely….
I know all of this sounds odd coming from a recruiter, but one of the big reasons that I got into this business was to help people find the right job where they’ll be happy.
For me, serving money today would look like doing the typical recruiter things to get people to move jobs whether they’ll be happy or not. If you catch me doing that, let me know!
Enjoy the Search…
-Dan
Photo by: maveric2003
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