The Last Year

You sit there thinking about the last year and all of the changes that you have made and have been forced to make.

Just under one year ago you lose your job due to the poor economy. The company that you worked for is heavily reliant on the manufacturing industry. With the cutbacks all over the country companies have not been able to purchase the equipment that the business that I worked for manufactured. Your boss says that your position is gone. Management has decided to split your responsibilities among the other men in the office. This doesn’t bother you too much, as you have been expecting it. The other guys tried to say that they wouldn’t do away with your job as you did all of the administrative work in the office. You knew better; they could easily do it.

During the months before losing your job you had started working with a local church doing work in the community, and had been trying to figure out a way to get more involved. This opened up that door for you.

Over the next few months you work with the existing team at the church trying to bring it together under one vision. While you are at it, you attend a few seminars on the Church’s role in the community and Asset Based Community Development. This work focuses on the skills of the people in the community, not their needs or weaknesses.

It is early in the year. Your wife is worried that you will get into the work so much that you forget about making a living and paying the bills. You also notice that she is afraid that she will lose you to something she doesn’t understand. She isn’t bothered by the work in the community, but the Church’s role disturbs her. She has seen examples of families living in hardship when the husband uses “Faith” as an excuse not to go to work and make a living. In most of those cases, there is no plan, or even mission, just the man’s desire to not work for someone else. You keep this in mind focusing on ways to ease those fears and try to include her in your decisions. While working with the church and denomination you try to build a position at the church so that you have an income when the time and need arise.

 As the summer starts, things get bleak. Most of the team you have been working with gets frustrated as they do not see the vision of community. They decide to leave the team. At the same time, the pastor is going through his own rough patch. He is working too many hours, and trying to help everyone at once who is in crisis. At the same time there are some hurtful things said to him that he takes personally. Being a man who cares for both his congregation and the community, it is hard when things seem to be falling apart.

You start to think that if the pastor, who is the only one who seems to share the vision with you, is about to break down, that it isn’t worth it. Your wife is worried about you and you start to wonder if you are really meant to do the work or if you are deluding yourself and are afraid to look for other work in the poor economy.

While the pastor is on vacation getting recharged for his mission you start thinking of ways to make it work. You realize that your target is too big to start with, that you have to focus on your mission. You start writing articles about community to be published in the local newspapers. When the pastor is back, you work with him to bring the vision to the congregation in small easy to understand chunks.

 As the summer is drawing to a close, you realize that the church and the denomination cannot support a position. You would have to spend more time fund raising than would be productive. As you come to this realization, you get a letter in the mail stating that the President is trying to make it easier to go to school and retrain if you are unemployed. You go to your career advisor and work out a plan to retrain. That fall, for the first time in thirty years you start your first semester in school. You haven’t given up on the work; you are just focusing your mind on learning the skills needed to make it successful.

 You are now coming upon one year without a job. Some of the fears about the community work are still there, but you have a plan. That makes it easier.