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GUIDANCE PHILOSOPHY
The wisely planned high school experience will prepare teens for life and give them every advantage for their future development. God has called each Christian teen to a life of influence for His glory.
1. Does
Anyone Out There Know How To Give Career Direction To My Teen?
By Rodney Marshall
2. A Mission That Motivates Teens By
Rodney Marshall
3. Biblical Principles of Career Planning
for Youth By Rodney Marshall
4. Pull Your Load! Harnessing the Power of
a Christian World View through Career Planning By
Rodney Marshall
Does
Anyone Out There Know How To Give Career Direction To My Teen?
By Rodney Marshall
“My
son desires to influence public life for Christ through a career
in politics. Shouldn’t we confirm this direction before
marching down a path which may not fit him?”
“My daughter loves the animals God created and wants to
become a veterinarian, but my son has no idea what to do with
his life. Can you help us?”
“Like his uncle, my son wants to become a computer analyst,
but I think he is too people oriented to succeed in such technical
field. How do we sort this out?”
“The work world my children will enter is more fast paced
and variable than the world my wife and I entered. How do we assure
they enter a successful careerpath”
“If my son is suited for pastoral ministry will a career
assessment confirm this?”
Christian parents and educators seeking careerpathing assistance for their teens have asked me dozens of questions like these. While some youths know what they should do from the earliest years others approach high school graduation without a clue about their future. Stewardship of time, talents, and finances dictates approaching the careerpathing process intelligently. Passive acquiescence could result in costly mistakes. I recommend pursuit of a process of career discovery or confirmation that is biblical in its worldview, respects the nobility of all kinds of work and is technically well proven.
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings to search out a matter.” Proverbs 25:2b. God has concealed a calling for each Christian teen. It is the honor of the teen to search it out and prepare to fulfill it by making wise post-secondary training decisions.
God reveals His unique design of a teen through his or her personality, and vocational interests, skills and values or work priorities. Examining all four of these factors using a comprehensive career assessment will reveal a unique God-given pattern. The Christian teen that finds a calling/career consistent with God’s unique design will produce the most good and exert the most influence with his life for Christ.
Let me show you what I mean. Jason and Megan graduated from high school, completed their post-secondary training and entered the workforce.
Personality: Jason is an outgoing young man with plenty of initiative. When confined to work in the next cubicle over from Dilbert crunching numbers and staring at gray partition walls, his youthful zeal and personal energy for life and work dropped to a record low shortly after graduation. He was grossly mismatched in steady, task-oriented work with little people interaction. Megan, a quiet, steady, conscientious young lady finds herself in a sales position that requires her to instantly strike up short term relationships with people of all types every hour of every day. Yikes! She did not want to rise in the morning and face the second day. Do these two lack a work ethic or were they mismatched in positions they were never created for? What if each pursued educational preparation at a high cost in order to enter their respective fields? Why not figure this out before college? A thorough career assessment administered in high school would have revealed these personality tendencies and helped with the directional process.
Interests: Quickly realizing the withering affects of his accounting position, Jason transferred into the sales department. He knew he could succeed adequately in sales but his interests drew him to a management position where he could build a team for long term effectiveness. Megan switched to the accounting field because her previous boss told her it would fit her personality. She found it dry and meaningless and began to dream of work in a science laboratory where she could seek a cure to a deadly disease.
Skills: Jason worked his way into a sales management position where he could set his own goals, train others, and influence upper management with his ideas. He found his people skills well used mentoring others into success. After a period of retooling, Megan prospered in a lab where her sense of focus and detail rapidly proved an excellent fit.
Values or work priorities: Jason enjoyed his fast paced work environment where he could make many of his own decisions, take a few measured risks and be responsible for their success or failure. However as he refined his life goals a pattern of desire to lead a business with more direct impact for the cause of Christ emerged. The outcomes of his work grew in importance when he thought about the legacy that he would leave the next generation. Eventually he was able to take his giftings into the Christian publishing field where he grew sales and distribution of quality books and software to a growing worldwide market. He saw the impact on a regular basis that made up for the moderately lower salary expectancies. Megan quietly progressed until faced with the decision about whether to enter a Ph.D. program. Although qualified, she decided to wait on further education since the lab allowed her to work part time enabling her to raise a family. The doctoral program would have required a commitment inconsistent with the values she held with her husband for that time in her life.
Put the Pattern together: Putting the pattern together after entering the workforce presents challenges that don’t always have such rosy results. Why not seek to discover the pattern in high school, choose appropriate post-secondary educational preparation, and ramp up into the right career field and position from the beginning. Begin when a student enters the teen years. The Youth Exploration Survey YES!, an appealing Biblically based early teen life and career exploration survey will help the Christian teen start moving in the right direction. Later the more sophisticated Career Direct Guidance System will provide direction or confirmation for high school juniors and seniors and college students before making or completing post-secondary commitments. If you choose these instruments they will support your Christian values while giving needed career direction.
A
Mission That Motivates Teens
By Rodney Marshall
“Three, two, one, we have lift off of teen shuttle.” “Houston, this is teen shuttle. We have a problem.” “ Teen shuttle this is mission control, Houston. What seems to be the problem?” “I know I’m in a space craft. In this great adventure, I must be headed somewhere. But where am I going?” “Teen shuttle, we’ve planned this mission for years. We’ve trained and prepared you. You are the best-qualified astronaut we have, but you don’t know where you are going? You don’t know your mission?” “No sir, I don’t. Just where am I going? How do I find my mission in life?”
This quandary probably fits someone you know. It may even fit one of your own teens. You’ve willingly toiled long to provide quality Christian education. You’ve concerned yourself with character, and academic content. You anticipate completion of graduation expectancies, and yet your teen may not have a sense of calling. Mission control, God, created and designed each teen for a purpose. He has a mission, career, or vocation. Our responsibility as parents and educators includes helping each teen find and fulfill this God given calling.
All over the world I have spoken with parents and educators about the need to instill a sense of calling in youth. While team preaching with my teenage son graduate, at the European Student Leadership convention in England, I found students hungry for meaning and purpose in life. The same need emerges from Manila to Maine. Many of us share a passion to help youths find their true mission in life. God calls some to church ministry as pastors and evangelists. The calling of most will lead them to godly impact in the broader society through education, law, public policy, medicine, technology, management, entrepreneurism, the arts, various trades, and so on. Each calling or career is equally noble when performed before the face of God. How can a youth find his mission in life? How can you help your teen find the career prepared for him? Start by teaching God designed a mission to motivate, master, and move him.
God motivates
teens with a sense of mission.
He designed them to accomplish a positive and worthwhile work
in His overarching plan. The teen that finds a mission finds an
assignment, charge, duty, task, aim, objective, goal, purpose
or calling from God. This calling will unfold in a career, occupation,
profession, vocation, forte, passion, or specialty, for which
the teen develops a strong impulse or inclination. The teen motivated
by a sense of his mission in life will embrace the work and overcome
the challenges inherent in any significant accomplishment.
God wants
to master each teen with a godly philosophy of mission.
Any touch of fatalism will result in a passive acceptance of some
undiscoverable plan and a loss of motivation. Many teens wander
in lethargic aimlessness, rooted in existentialism. Humanism places
the teen at the center of the teen’s life. Most teens struggle
daily with this selfishness. Don’t feed it! We need teens
mastered by a mission to serve God with the understanding God
has printed a calling into the depths of their beings. This kind
of teen will seek to discover and fulfill His will. This teen
will do good and transform civilization little by little and day
by day. This kind of teen will do God’s work and say with
Paul at the end of his life, “I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course?” 2 Timothy 4:7.
God moves
each teen by his mission to love God, love his neighbor, and fulfill
his unique calling.
Jesus quoted the great commandment to describe this first mission
in life when he said; “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God?”
Every teen is called to live hour by hour loving God rather than
self or other contemporary false gods. Fulfillment of this mission
provides the basis for the next. Each teen moved by God will do
as Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Jesus went about doing good his entire earthly life. He provided
the ultimate example by loving his neighbor to the death. Youth
who simply do the maximum good their lives can produce will fulfill
a major role in transforming this world. God will also move the
teen to fulfill his unique calling. The creator designed him for
a specific purpose. “For we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10. Each teen
has his specific work to accomplish. God designed him to use his
God given talents, in God chosen settings, for the purposes God
deems most important. As the teen discovers his unique mission
he will move into positive, godly Christian action. Much of this
action should find effective expression as the teen develops in
a God given careerpath.
“Mission control, I think I’m getting the idea. You designed and prepared me to accomplish a specific purpose with my life. Now, how can I discover and fulfill this mission? What do I do now?” “Next you need to learn biblical principles involved in the idea of finding and fulfilling a calling/career designed by God. Then we will match your God given personality, and vocational interests, skills and priorities with the your calling/career. We will continue our pursuit of a mission that motivates!”
Biblical
Principles of Career Planning for Youth
By Rodney Marshall
Each teen is a unique creation of God. Psalm 139: 13-14. "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." God has intelligently designed each Christian teen for a purpose. Each teen should stand in awe of the creator and in excitement to submit himself to God for the purpose of forwarding His plan in the earth.
God blesses each person with work-related talents. Romans 12: 6-8. "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us…” Although this scripture specifically relates to ministries in the church it effectively teaches the idea each person is gifted differently to accomplish a work for God.
We are to be excellent in our work and an example to others. Excellence comes from development of our God-given talents. Psalm 16:3. “But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” Daniel had an excellent spirit. In fact his excellence resulted in exceptional educational opportunities and a career of political leadership. The Christian teen should prepare for his providential placement in God’s world through development in excellence. Oh that they would hear this call to excellence that in the next century Christianity would regain the upper hand in western civilization through application of God’s gifts to every arena and department of life and work.
Our larger
calling includes impact for Jesus Christ in the broader society
through our work. Matthew 5:16 “Let your light
so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven.” This impact can take
many forms. An eighteen-year-old in Durban, South Africa who told
me he planned to develop his life as a farmer. Please understand
many people in Africa do not have enough to eat! Thank God this
young man has heard the call to meet this basic need for his countrymen.
His light will shine before men. What need will your teen meet?
Biblical Roots of Career Satisfaction. Work is part of God’s
nature.
Genesis 1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.” “And by the seventh day God completed
His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from
all His work which He had done.” Much of modern culture
seeks to work little and play much in defiance of God. As image
bearers we should seek to imitate God in our work.
Work
was part of God’s original design for mankind.
Genesis 2:8, 15 “And the Lord God planted a garden toward
the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of
Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” Even after the fall,
work is described as a gift from God. Work is leftover from paradise
to bring meaning to our lives and improvement to our world. When
my eleven-year-old son, Andrew, mows the lawn with no skips and
neatly aligned parallel cut lines he says with great satisfaction
as God did, “it is good.”
God has
created each of us with gifts, abilities, and interests.
His will is for us to discover our talents and gifts and
use them to His glory in our work.
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship created in
Christ Jesus unto good works which he hath before ordained that
we should walk in them.” There is no perfect job or
career that can substitute for a dynamic relationship with Jesus
Christ. “And he answered and said," You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” Don’t
expect work to meet all your needs. You are designed to fulfill
God's will not for God to make you feel great about every aspect
of your life.
God uses
work-related issues to spotlight sin in our lives that need the
Master’s touch and our repentance.
Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things
to work together for good to those who love God, to those who
are called according to His purpose.” “Stop talking
on the job, Steven, and get to work,” said the supervisor.
Steven grows in God by submission in the employer-employee relationship.
We represent
Jesus Christ in our place of employment.
2 Corinthians 5:20 “Therefore, we are ambassadors for
Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on
behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” Work is a
mission field. “Rachel, we come in for ice cream so we can
see you and enjoy a lift during a tough day.” This seventeen-year-old’s
ambassadorship glorifies God and lightens the heavy load of God’s
creatures.
We shall
be held accountable for what we have done with the talents entrusted
to us.
2 Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the
judgement seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for
his deeds in the body, according to what he as done, whether good
or bad.” We have been gifted to fulfill His purpose.
Jonah sought to avoid the gift and calling of God in his life.
God made sure he fulfilled his purpose non-the less. Thousand
of people were saved from God’s wrath through his oratory.
How much more should we seek to express our talents in the line
of our duty to God.
These scriptures provide a simple study to back up your godly pursuit of the careerpath designed by God for you to fulfill. Do not bifurcate life into the sacred (church) and the secular (work). See life as a whole to be lived fully for God. God has designed you with a purpose. You will be happiest and most satisfied when working for him in your designated role whether it is easy or difficult, comfortable or uncomfortable. We need young people who will dedicate themselves to fulfilling a call from God to produce godly impact in the church and on the broader society. Find His will, prepare to fulfill it and do all to the glory of God.
Pull
Your Load!
Harnessing the Power of a Christian World View through
Career Planning
By Rodney Marshall
Gleaming in the early dawn two coupled six thousand horsepower locomotives roared from the station. Exhilarated as the newly built engines accelerated to a cruising speed of sixty miles per hour, the engineer turned his head to check his load astonished to see the one hundred twelve-car train unmoved a mile behind him. Now what? Personal computers destined for vibrant businesses, leather chairs ordered by inside-the-beltway law firms, microscopes needed by crime fighting forensics labs, paintbrushes for the master’s hand, all idle would never reach their destination because the engine never coupled with the load!
Christian youth have their God-given load to pull as well. They are responsible to carry out their call from God. How can you make sure your youth connect to and pull their load in life? What is their engine and what is in their train? An all-embracing biblical view of life gained through a truly Christian education will give them the visionary power they need to pull their load. Without this comprehensive view of life, why should they bother to work so hard? They might as well eat, drink and enjoy popular “Christian” amusements for tomorrow they go to heaven. Couple a Christian worldview with a specific God-given mission or calling and their lives will make a difference. Each of these youth will say with Paul at the end of his life “I have run the race I have finished the course,” if they learn to transmit the power of their worldview into a lifetime of practical Christian action. This practical action should take the form of a God-given world-influencing career. Then they will use dozens of hours each week to influence their culture for Christ in every department of life. Too often the locomotive and the load never couple to make a train. Too often Christian youth learn theory in academics but fail to apply it to life through practical career planning.
A truly Christian world and life view embraces all of life and every noble occupation as under the lordship of Christ. The Christian then lives out his calling through a career. When this career fits his or her God-given pattern of personality, interests, skills, and work and life values, the youth can focus on a career arena with potential for godly influence. The youth will indeed pull his load.
A powerful and all embracing Christian worldview envisioned Dr. Abraham Kuyper to deliver great strength to his labors in every department of life in the Netherlands. His own personal mission statement expresses an excellent pattern for young people seeking to influence their world with biblical principles through their work. His engine pulled with mighty strength. So can your youth when they grasp this kind of mission.
“One
desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive
has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. And sooner than that
I should seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon
me, let the breath of life fail me. It is this: That in spite
of all worldly opposition, God’s holy ordinances shall be
established again in the home, in school and in the state for
the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience
of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and creation
bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God.”
Abraham Kuyper, 1897.
Dr. Kuyper lived his mission statement indefatigably through his
professional life of service to God as:
The history of the Netherlands in church, in state, in society, in press, in school, and in the sciences around the turn of the twentieth century mentions his name on almost every page. During this period the biography of Dr. Kuyper is to a considerable extent the history of the Netherlands.
The twenty-first century world our children will inherit needs the individual and cumulative labor of every Christian with the favor of God to cause a positive shift in culture. Each youth needs to prepare for that life of influence God intends. Some are called to set pulpits aflame with the same truths that moved historian Alexis DeToqueville to conclude the greatness of America resulted from the effectiveness of her ministers. The calling of most will lead them to godly influence on the broader culture through law, politics, journalism, education, science, medicine, technology, architecture, engineering, the trades, the arts, management, entrepreneurism and so on. Each youth has a mission to fulfill. This purpose will energize each of them during the long years of preparation and the times of slow progress ahead. Like Dr. Kuyper they will leave their own footprints in the sands of time if they address life and career planning with a Christian worldview.
Christian parents
and educators,
We must invigorate the career guidance process with an all-embracing
view that considers a career as a venue for family provision and
cultural change. We must use the ideas and tools now available
to achieve a truly Christian approach to career planning for youth.
Only in this way will the Christian education they have received achieve its intended end. Ka-boom! Shaking the earth, the twelve- thousand-ton train gradually accelerated to cruising speed. Three thousand miles later, bell clanging, the load arrived at its destination. May our youth pull their load. May they change the world of their generation through their work.
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School-Parent
Responsibilities
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