That great American philosopher Yogi Berra once stated a universal truth when he said, "If you don't know where you're going, you might wind up someplace else."

In this and the following entry I'd like to give my two cents worth of how some of the younger BCA members, or even students just about to graduate and enter the job market, should look at their careers in the early stages. Disclaimer: This advice is for those interested in laying the foundation for a career track that will move them up the professional ladder, accumulating a variety of experience along the way. If you are content to remain with your current employer for 10 or 15 years due to family or other ties to your community, that is absolutely acceptable.

Here is my premise for these observations: life is full of opportunities as the Lord opens doors for advancement. You need to be as best prepared as possible to offer Him your dead-level best when those opportunities present themselves. There are exceptions to every rule and I will not be addressing those exceptions or this would become as long as a Wikipedia entry.

If other BCA members want to add their two-cents, I heartily encourage the dialogue. This installment on career advancement will be divided into two parts due to the breath of material that I feel must be covered. Now let's get down to brass tacks as the word count is building fast.

The most important observation I can make is this: consider your first job out of college (or your first job in your career path, if you wandered around for a while) to be a fifth year of college. You won't make the big bucks because, to be honest, you don't have much to offer your employer. But your employer is giving you something that money and a college degree cannot give - "real world" experience and that all-important first reference on your resume.

I don't want to be misunderstood and appear to be cruel on this next point, but if you're not changing employers...and fine-tuning your career path...every five to seven years you're selling both yourself and the Kingdom short.

That statement works against everything I tell my young staff because I want to keep them as long as possible because turnover is expensive. In addition, it took a lot of interviewing for me to weed them out from among other candidates and I have spent a great deal of time mentoring them and building a team that I want to keep in place. But I also know that for their own good, they need to move on if they want to progress up the career path and develop the skills necessary to impact the Kingdom.

Now let's chase a rabbit that we'll catch in a future installment on how to deal with financial matters.

If you're young in your career where you need to change employers every few years - and only, I stress, after you have gotten your feet firmly on the ground and mastered your current job - you are in no place to be buying and selling real estate. Put off purchasing that first house until you are at least 30 years of age. I know that is a lot to ask, but house prices do not always go up, regardless of what realtors tell you. I am making a point here between single-family homes and condos/town homes, which are vastly different animals. Young people, in my opinion, have no business purchasing any real estate in their early years...and especially not a condo or town home because of the illusion of building equity.

It is very difficult to sell a house these days, and far more difficult to sell a condo/town home if you need to relocate in a month or less. If you want a condo or town home, wait until much later in your career when you are settled and are not concerned with having to sell quickly when a career opportunity arrives. They can be wonderful at that stage in your life and the lack of maintenance is a dream.

Like the slogan for the old bread company, these are your formative years. They are the years of laying a solid professional foundation upon which to build your career. They are the years of delayed gratification and keeping a strong reign on your personal debt. Truer words were never spoken than those in Proverbs where we are told that it's the little foxes that spoil the grapes. Before you start throwing rocks at me for making such a tough statement, hold off until you read that installment where I lay a more broad rationalization for delaying a home purchase. Delayed gratification will pay off in spades down the road, I promise.

Now let's get back on track. Here's something that may sound a little contradictory, but bear with me. While I mentioned that you need to be changing employers every five to seven years, don't jump ship too soon or it will backfire on you. Those who move too quickly...an average of every two or three years...eventually find it difficult to get any employment because they have earned a reputation of not sticking with a job. While an employer knows he/she will not keep a good worker forever, neither does he want to be a doormat or just another rung on the career ladder.

As with many things in life, moderation is key.

If you can, locate a mentor - preferably inside your company - and learn as much from him/her as possible. Listen, with notepad in hand, and learn from their wisdom and as you hit some potholes in your career. They will be able to give you sound counsel as you evaluate career moves, seek additional education if necessary, and help you file off some of your rough edges.

Mentors can be tough taskmasters at times but you need to remember that they are pushing you to give your best. Learning discipline and how to work smart may be one of the most difficult lessons you will ever learn, but it will help you to develop the muscles to work circles around your peers down the road - and possibly result in your being first in line for a promotion.

Once you have a fairly good feel for your career path, note when the kind of job you would like to have becomes available, and who gets hired. This is easy to do through reading Baptist Press stories when new hires are announced denomination-wide. In my 20s when I felt I would like to work for a state paper (something that didn't occur until my late 40s) I began to read the resumes closely of those who were named to those positions and noted their ages. That gave me considerable insight into the training I needed to be acquiring. It also meant I needed to move between several states and agencies to gain that experience.

Now, sometimes the new employee didn't have any experience and it was a political appointment. There are times and places for such appointments but you can't base your career on that happening to you so don't build your career around a game of chance. Sometimes it was because the agency was struggling financially and couldn't afford the best candidate so had to settle for Number 2 or Number 3 on their list.

My point is this: do your homework, spend your time gaining insight into the lives of those who were promoted due to the years they spent serving in the trenches. Read their resume as outlined in the news story and model your own career path in a similar fashion. In these early years you need to be having as many different professional experiences as possible.

There's also another more effective way of gaining that same information: by becoming involved in BCA and attending the workshops. Face time and networking is all-important and there is no better way to meet the movers and shakers in the denomination's communications ministries than at the workshops. You'll be able to pick the brains of potential employers over dinner or a cup of coffee and gain precious insight into how they moved up the ladder and honed their skills for Kingdom work.

I would encourage you to go to the BCA workshop website right now and make your reservation for the Phoenix meeting. That's more than just an unabashed commercial to boost attendance; it's an endorsement of an event that I know will boost your spiritual and professional growth. I'll be there and will be happy to buy you a cup of coffee and answer any questions you might have; I know my peers will do the same.

OK, that's it for this installment. Check back by Friday for the next set of comments on this same topic. After that we will move into personal finances/making that first home purchase, and end with a discussion of why it's important to begin your retirement program today...and not when you reach your mid-30s.