A Pastor's 4 Questions for Naming What This Season of Work Is For

A guy from church sat in my office a couple years back and told me he'd turned down a promotion the week before. He wasn't looking for congratulations. He wanted to know if he'd made a mistake, because his wife thought he had, his boss thought he had, and he'd spent four nights that week lying awake running the numbers on what the raise would have meant for his kids' college fund.

I asked him one question before I said anything else: what do you think this season of your work is actually for? He didn't have an answer. Not because he hadn't thought about his career — he'd thought about almost nothing else that week — but because nobody had ever asked him that specific question. He'd been asked what he wanted. He'd been asked what he could afford. Nobody had asked him what the season itself was for.

That's the gap I keep running into, in that office and in my own life. We're good at setting goals for a season of work. We're bad at naming what the season is for before we set them — and those are not the same question. A goal tells you where you're trying to go. Naming the season tells you why you're standing where you're standing right now, which is usually the thing you actually need to know first.

Barna's research on Christians at work found that 64% of employed Christians say it's clear to them how their work serves God or a higher purpose. Flip that number over and it says something worth sitting with: more than a third of employed Christians who go to work every day can't tell you why theirs does. I don't think that's a knowledge problem. I think it's a naming problem. Most people have never sat down and actually worked out what a specific season is for — they've just kept moving through it, one goal at a time, hoping the purpose shows up on its own.

It usually doesn't show up on its own. You have to go looking for it, on purpose, with real questions. Here are the four I use — with people in my office, and with myself.

1. What did God actually put in front of you this season, not the season you keep planning for instead?

Most of the guys I talk to are living two seasons at once. There's the one they're actually in — the job they have, the boss they report to, the hours their family currently needs from them. And there's the one they keep mentally rehearsing instead: the promotion that hasn't come, the business they haven't started, the role they're sure is coming next year.

You can't name what a season is for while half your attention is on a different season. The man in my office was so busy grieving the promotion he didn't take that he hadn't looked at the job he actually still had. Start here. Not with what you wish was in front of you. With what's actually there.

2. What's being formed in you here that couldn't be formed anywhere else?

Some seasons exist to produce an outcome — a launch, a promotion, a finished project. Others exist to produce a person. Most people only look for the first kind, which means they read every slow, frustrating, seemingly-pointless season as wasted time.

I ran a store for two years that never hit its numbers no matter what I tried. I used to think that season was a failure I was waiting to escape. What I can see now, and couldn't then, is that it's the season that taught me how to lead people through a loss I couldn't fix for them — which turned out to matter more, later, in a pulpit, than any turnaround ever would have. Ask what this season might be building in you that a better one wouldn't need to.

3. Who's watching how you carry this, whether you asked for the audience or not?

As a manager, I found out how much this mattered the hard way — from the other side of it. People on my team weren't just watching whether I hit budget. They were watching how I acted during the stretch when we weren't hitting it. That's discipleship, whether you call it that or not, and it happens whether or not you signed up to be watched.

You likely have a version of this audience right now and don't fully register it — a newer coworker, maybe your own kids. Naming a season honestly includes naming who's learning how to handle a hard one by watching you handle yours.

4. What would you regret not doing while you had this specific season, once it's over?

Seasons end. The job changes, the kids grow up, the assignment gets handed to someone else. Most of the regret I hear about in my office isn't regret over the decision itself. It's regret over a door that was open during a season and quietly closed once the season did, without anyone walking through it.

This one is deliberately the most concrete of the four. Not "what's my purpose in life" — that's too big to act on this week. Ask instead what's available to you right now, inside this specific season, that won't be available once it's over. Name that, and you have something to actually do with your next ninety days. Not just a feeling to sit with.

Quick recap

Name the season you're actually in, not the one you keep rehearsing instead. Ask what's being formed in you that a different season couldn't build. Notice who's watching how you carry it. And name what's only available to you right now, before the season closes and takes that door with it.

Closing

None of these four questions will tell you whether to take the promotion, stay in the job, or make the change you've been putting off. That's not what they're for. They're for something that has to happen first: knowing what you're actually standing in before you decide what to do about it.

That's the piece a SMART goal can't give you and a career plan usually skips. It's also the whole premise behind Built on Purpose — a framework for setting goals that starts with naming the season honestly, before it asks you to write down a single target.

I never did find out if the man in my office made the right call turning down that promotion. I don't think that was ever really the question. What's the season you're in right now, if you had to name it in one honest sentence?

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