If you're thinking Phoenix is just a little too much of a stretch for your travel budget this year, you're selling yourself short. Airlines have sales every day of the year to destinations where load factors are low or where another airline is treading on their turf.

The answer? A sporadic fare war that could be over shortly after it has begun. And that means within hours.

I remember when my wife and I flew from Atlanta to Albuquerque for a rock bottom $68 roundtrip. Three months ago I flew from Atlanta to Seattle for $150 roundtrip. How? By positioning myself to be ready for a sale and when it was announced, I pounced. As the saying goes, if you snooze you lose.

If you want to go to Phoenix, get permission today from your supervisor and then be ready to purchase that ticket. If you wait for the sale to get your permission, the sale will most likely be gone before you get approval. Today the fare between Atlanta and Phoenix is $325; last week for one afternoon it was $199. If I don't want to pay $325 but plan to get a rental car for the trip anyway, the site even tells me that I can fly into Tucson 127 miles south and get the fare for $154 and have a beautiful drive for free.

All cities do not have similar sales, but thats where the power of the Internet comes into play. To be sure you get the lowest fare, go to a site such as Travelocity and sign up for the free FareWatcher service. It's incredibly simple; just list the city pair you are interested in, the price point you would like to pay -- make it reasonable -- and once it hits that point (no guarantee) you will be notified by e.mail. Then you can either purchase the ticket from that or go to the airline's own web site and nail down the fare before it evaporates. There is no obligation on your part to do anything.

Try it. And I'll see you in Phoenix, April 16-20!

Let's begin with a little review and a clarification. In the last installment I dwelt heavily on the need for getting "real world" experience rather than trying to cut to the head of the line in the denomination without adequate experience. I know some in my profession who had a natural, God-given ability to be very articulate and who have gone far without much initial training. They truly had the gift of communication or an eye for design or photography and worked very hard to learn their craft.

But I will quickly add that those individuals are the exception and if everyone were so gifted we would not be having this discussion. Being a "self-made man" worked great on the frontier in the early days of our nation. But from what I have observed, most instances of being a "self-made man" in today's world are no more than testimonies to the horrors of unskilled labor.

Now for this discussion, let's talk about something that has never been very popular: delayed gratification.

"Delaying gratification is the process of scheduling the pain and pleasure in life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live."

If that sounds a little "text bookish," it is - it came right out of one of the most influential books I have ever read (Baptist Disclaimer: Of course, next to the Bible and anything by C.S. Lewis). I may not agree with everything Scott Peck wrote in "The Road Less Traveled" but he's dead-on with a lot of his observations of human nature.

Let's take a brief review of where we are in this discussion. If this is your first introduction to my blog, please go back and start at the very beginning or you will not understand the foundation I have been laying.

In a nutshell, we have been talking about how to advance on the career ladder through a process of working for a variety of employers. Experience is the greatest strength on any resume, and a variety of experiences will equip you to handle most situations that life throws at you. If you have not prepared yourself for that dream job down the road, you can't blame anyone but the person in the mirror if that job gets handed off to someone else who has prepared for that golden day.

Here's how the professional life-cycle works. You use your early years building up experience from which you will draw on the rest of your career. When you do, you progress through several jobs, receiving nice raises along the way, and then when you get into your mid-40s you note something extremely strange beginning to occur - the job offers become fewer and farther between and the raises become marginal. You have reached your top earning potential and employers are beginning to look beyond you to those younger, leaner, hungrier folks who will work for substantially less.

It's too late to wish you had laid the foundation for advancement.

That's another reason to get as much experience as possible under your belt while you are young. As you age your expenses continue to increase but your salary begins to stagnate or barely keep pace with inflation. You need to be sure you have positioned yourself to be content in a salary range that will carry you from your 50s to your retirement years. If God has called you to be a career staff writer/web designer/graphic artist, be the best one you can be. But it can get rather difficult to raise a family or provide for your future as a single adult on a salary that is low on the ladder. The good salary you have in your 30s will not carry you very far in your 50s.

Now to the point of this entry.

As you exit college saddled with heavy student loans you are tempted to take on even greater debt to keep up with unrealistic expectations of society. You want a new car. You want a nice apartment. And soon you want a mortgage.

Whoa, Nellie, as my grandfather used to say when stopping his beast of burden at the end of plowing a garden row.

A car is a necessity, but it doesn't need to be new. A place to live is a necessity but it doesnt have to include a mortgage. And, an apartment will do just fine for your first 10 years.

That's shocking in today's "gotta-have-it-now" world because college grads are being sold on the idea of the need to stop throwing their money away on rent and start building up equity. That's OK if you plan to remain in your town for most of your career due to family or other connections. But it flies in the face of logic if you plan to relocate several times to build your resume with a variety of professional experiences.

Ask yourself this hard question: "Why do I want to buy a home?"

The stock reasons young people (under the age of 30) are given is that a mortgage is necessary to a.) build up equity and get a tax deduction and b.) stop throwing away money on rent. Those are both good reasons&but not while you're building your career and need to be mobile. I would not encourage anyone to tie himself or herself down to homeownership until they are at least 30 years of age and have two or three employers on their resume.

Of course, if you live in a major city with a lot of employers in your job market that allow unlimited advancement, you can chuck that advice. But if you are in a small town it would be better to first exhaust all of your local options and then move to a couple of larger cities to continue your on-the-job training. If you're aspiring to end up in Baptist agency life due to the variety of career options, you will find yourself on the Nashville/Atlanta (Alpharetta)/Richmond circuit and state convention offices around the nation. It's difficult to move every few years when you have a mortgage.

That's why developers have come to your "rescue."

When you are young it's extremely difficult to come up with the down payment for a home; in fact, it's the single greatest obstacle to making that first purchase. Sensing this, a few years ago shrewd developers began building townhouses, condos, and zero-lot line homes (otherwise known as duplexes) at half the cost of a traditional single-family home aimed squarely at your demographic. You were their new "people group" and they were your evangelists.

They effectively flooded the market with more affordable housing so everyone could enjoy the American Dream decades earlier than their parents. But "affordable housing" in this instance does not always mean the same as a sound investment that builds equity - the primary reason for purchasing a "home" in the first place.

Single-family homes are far better investments than condos or town homes. I've never known anyone who purchased a condo or town home who came out with a profit in six years or less...the average time frame for when Americans relocate. Those items are two of life's largest purchases - superceded only by the purchase of a new automobile - that depreciate the minute you purchase them. (Disclaimer: I am talking about what is occurring in much of the nation's housing market, not in areas such at New York City or San Francisco where condos and town homes have established themselves as good investments.)

The vast majority of young home purchasers these days are being taken advantage of by professionals who want to sell them a domicile. What the sales agents don't tell you is that you will need to stay in the property at least five years for it to appreciate enough just to pay their commission when it comes time to trade up. And many times that means there is little equity left over for you to use for a down payment.

When the young person realizes they cannot afford a single-family home - which should cost no more than 2-3 times the amount of their gross income (before withholding), they are directed to a more affordable alternative such as a condo or town home. And that's where the problems begin. The individual making $50,000 soon discovers he or she cannot purchase much of a house for $150,000 - but as soon as they are directed to a new condo/town home for $135,000 or less there is no turning back.

What they don't realize is that appreciation is very slow, mostly due to the tremendous overbuilding in the market. The new owner realizes, too late, that few people want to purchase their five-year-old property when the builder down the road is offering a new, similar new product for $5,000 less with new paint, carpets, and spectacular landscaping. They learn that they can never compete in a resell market when they have developers subsidizing the purchase and attracting new buyers with enticing incentives - similar to those used to lure them in just a few years earlier.

A home purchase is a similar problem with a slightly different twist. While it is a far better investment, it still takes time to unload your property if you need to move on short notice. And in the early years of your career, let's face it: you live on short notice. As I write this I am thinking of a friend in an adjoining state who has been trying to sell her house for a year, forfeiting one lucrative career move as a result.

If God opens a window for you to relocate to another city to continue your career, you could easily find that you have to turn the offer down because you cant be there in two or three weeks...and you can't afford both a mortgage payment and apartment rent in your new locale. That is the great danger to your career and why I advise against taking on such debt. A home is a wonderful investment if you can afford to put down roots; it can be your worst nightmare and a real albatross when you need to move on. And if God should call you to the mission field as an appointed career missionary, that frequently means being totally 100 percent debt free.

Regardless of what you have been told, home prices do not always go up. They will not always cost more tomorrow than they do today, as many homeowners are learning in the fallout of the sub-prime housing market.

Purchasing a home too early in your career falls into the same category as spending your summers at the beach working on a great tan...regardless of the warnings of skin cancer that occur later in life. Did I do both? You betcha! Would I do it again? Not on your life, in spite of the peer acceptance that maintains both are acceptable and expected.

Poor financial decisions, like sun-damaged skin, can wreck havoc later in life. Thousands of dollars lost in poor home purchase decisions are not available later for upgrading to a nicer home.

Now I will close on one very conflicting note. I don't expect many, if any of my readers, to take my comments seriously. I can't say I am a role model on following every one of these points in my earlier days. But I did follow some of them and they have paid off handsomely.

However, our national economy largely charges ahead and is entirely dependent on the foolish mistakes of youth - my early years included - which stimulate the economy. As a nation we would be in dire straits, indeed, if we saved more, lived within our means, and reined in our emotional purchases. Buying perfectly good used cars instead of new vehicles would destroy Detroit. While our government preaches the virtue of saving more, it knows it would drag our economy into recession. Of course, there is no real danger in that occurring. So go ahead, change your lifestyle and be one of the few in your group to build a secure future.

Today we will continue with the career path discussion and explore ways to build a successful employment record. Then the next entry will move into an overview of personal finances that includes a discussion on why to delay 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.

Now, let's begin at the beginning with what I feel to be a very important door through which we need to walk:

You must learn to embrace one of the hardest truths that young people have to learn: life is not fair - especially in denominational life. In advancement or daily office politics, do not expect to be treated with what you perceive to be fairness. Inequity happens. Sometimes there is a good reason and sometimes not.

Many times management has to make decisions it would prefer not to make because of reasons far above your pay grade to understand. But in most instances the decisions are fair in the big picture to which you have no access. It's incredibly easy for youth...and I mean those under 30...to be quickly offended in the workplace and to feel self-righteous.

Maybe I'm telling on myself, but I remember that in my younger days I had pretty strong opinions of how I thought my workplace should operate (though I kept my thoughts largely to myself). I felt that I had a very good grasp of what was right and what was wrong; life was very black and very white and there was little room for shades of gray.

That's important to remember because sometimes when life...or promotions...don't go our way we get so worked up we decide to leave our employer to "show them" as an act of personal revenge. That's rarely a good move.

Abuse should never be tolerated and sometimes you may have a good reason to move on. So be it. But be cautious when you think the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Sometimes you think you are seeing sweet, tender Kentucky Bluegrass only to discover it's really AstroTurf. Every job has its share of "crud" (a great word from the 60s) and many times you're just changing the name on the "crud" when you jump to another job.

Be sure to think through the reasons for why you want to change employers. Maybe you feel mistreated and taken for granted. Sometimes feeling taken for granted is mistaken for not having enough experience to be taken seriously. Your experience is what you use to barter for promotions and advancement. A lack of it takes the trump card out of your hand and places it in the hand of your employer.

While all of us believe we are worth our weight in gold, most of us in our early years are only worth our weight in bronze. Perhaps the best time to decide to leave an employer is when you have thoroughly mastered your job to the point where it becomes predictable and is no longer a challenge. You can try to negotiate for more money, but that rarely works because your job is listed at a particular level (maybe just above entry level) on the pay grade and the salary cannot be increased.

That's how companies operate and it's not an entirely bad concept. Employers have certain jobs that are rated fairly low on the ladder and they save money by hiring inexperienced individuals (like yourself) to fill those positions. While they might like to keep you, you may grow beyond their ability to afford you and match what others may be willing to pay for your skills.

But when you do make that all-important move, be sure to negotiate for as much salary as you can get on the front end. It's tricky business but don't tell yourself that you can come in low and get bumped up later. It doesn't happen. You may think you're good, but you're not that good.

Never, ever, leave your employer in a huff. Don't get mad and quit, especially if you are being goaded by fellow workers who think you have been mistreated. Don't jump off that cliff unless they are willing to hold your hand and go down with you. Chances are they prefer to watch from a relatively safe distance and vicariously watch you "get back" at their shared employer, only to see you also jump to your financial ruin. That's what is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences.

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in below-the-radar office politics and get a buzz from the drama in someone else's life. I have seen this happen on a few occasions and have yet to see any of those still employed take up a collection to help pay the former employee's mortgage or buy milk and bread for his/her children. Those former friends evaporate like the dew on a hot summer morning. It can get very cold very fast outside the company where you have invested several years of your life.

Always leave your employer with a good taste in their mouth and a good memory of your work because they will be the one you use on your resume down the road. Burned bridges are very difficult to walk across. Remember that relationships are all-important in career advancement and even though you may have differences of opinions on how your workplace operated, you still need the goodwill of your former employer to help you locate gainful employment.

Be cautious with what you say in that exit interview because some employers really don't want to hear what they say they want to hear. It's sorta like your wife asking you if she is as attractive at age 50 as she was at age 25. I once worked for a highly respected Christian organization that conducted a very serious study into why company morale was low and getting lower. The result of the study was brilliant: after several months of crunching the data and feedback they announced that staff had a bad attitude and needed to develop a more positive outlook. Imagine that.

After you leave an employer your relationship does not necessarily end, and that's why it's important for them to continue thinking good thoughts about you long after you are gone. There was a day when employers could give very accurate and detailed information on a former employee's work ethic. Now, due to lawsuits, that information is severely restricted and sometimes is limited to simply the time frame of your employment. But don't take too much comfort in trashing your employer because you think his/her hands are tied from doing any damage to your career.

While former employers are somewhat limited on the kind of information they can share, there is one question - asked in a sort of code - that can be used to evaluate your work ethic and has the potential to sink your ship. That question is "If you had it to do over again, would you rehire this individual?" A prolonged reflective pause and a "no" or a "maybe" is all it takes to raise a red flag in the mind of the supervisor you are wanting to impress. An even longer pregnant pause can mean you are dead in the water and the former employer wouldn't touch you with a ten-foot pole.

You earn your salary between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and your raise after 5 p.m. That statement doesn't mean that you are a slave to overtime for which you will not be compensated; it means you are willing to go the extra mile when your employer's proverbial ox is suddenly in the ditch at 4:30 p.m. and it will take two hours to pull it out. If you remain behind to help with the pulling, your value to the company will increase exponentionally.

These days everyone is concerned about job security. About 35 years ago Pete Bird, the hardheaded city editor at The Jackson Sun newspaper where I was working fresh out of Union University, shared some valuable insight with me after deadline one day. He knew my job as copy boy was the lowest rung of the ladder and I wanted to be considered for a reporter's position whenever one opened up. Gosh, I needed to move up the food chain as quickly as possible in those years and I also wanted to avoid being laid off if the economy slowed.

Here's what Pete told me over a cup of coffee: The surest way to avoid being the first to be terminated is to make yourself so valuable that management cannot conceive of existing without you. Many times these staff reductions are made in a total vacuum and you don't even know when the evaluations are occurring. By the time the grapevine gets wind of impending downsizing the decisions have already been made and it's too late to put your best foot forward.

By following Pete's advice, you are basically building a force field around you and the all-seeing eye of Human Resources is deflected, instead, onto the person of less commitment and motivation.

To paraphrase a biblical admonition from Amos 6:1, "Woe unto them who are at ease in Zion." That poor worker bee sitting in the cubicle next to you never saw what hit him. The fly swatter just came out of the blue and did its work.

Now let's touch on something I mentioned in the previous post, which brushes up against the temptation to take a shortcut to the top.

A few times a year I get a phone call from someone who genuinely senses a call to enter Christian journalism and asks how they can get a job. The vast majority of the time they mean well but have no experience. I share with them the need for professional training in journalism (preferably a major degree) and then urge them to get some secular experience by working at a newspaper or related kind of publication to learn the discipline of the profession - specifically developing a tight writing style and working under the tyranny of the deadline. Only then, I maintain, should they seek the sweet succor of the denomination.

Unfortunately they want to go straight into denominational life with no training or having paid their dues. They own a computer and have a couple of opinions, so they view themselves as a writer. They innocently expect their High Calling to suffice for an absence of years of practical experience. I don't look kindly on hiring someone as a staff writer, regardless of how low on the ladder they may be, if they don't know what an inverted pyramid style of writing is and never heard of the legendary "Five W's and the H."

After a lengthy conversation I begin to sense that the individual believes I am asking too much. I don't think I am taking scripture out of context when I say that even Christ, in Luke 16, talked about the foolishness of building a tower without first counting the cost. While His ultimate lesson was about the cost of discipleship, we in the communications discipline should follow His lead in expecting ourselves and our peers to maintain the highest professional standards. Anything less than preparing yourself for your profession, regardless if it is to be a pastor or copy writer, requires commitment and discipline. If we are ultimately working for Christ, we need to give Him our very best.

If you want to pastor a church, you go to seminary. If you want to be a writer, or photographer, or designer, you go to college and receive the necessary training. It's that simple.

Be sure you don't follow such an easy path with promise of great reward. If you are just graduating, get that all-important "fifth year of college" I discussed in the previous entry. If you are already in the job market, choose employment opportunities that will give you the foundation you need to be your very best...even if, on occasion, the career move is lateral. Lateral is OK if it rounds out your resume and gives you experience you can't get any other way.

When you have solid experience under your belt you are holding a key that will unlock doors much faster than if you took short cuts with lesser experience.

Your career can either be a game of chance - relying on the generosity of employers willing to take a chance on you with a lack of skills (and their consequently offering a much lower compensation package) or a well-executed path with advancement carefully chosen.

Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean that you should not be willing to pay your dues like those in the secular marketplace. You will always be rewarded based on your skill set, and that is the way it should be. There is no short cut to the top, just a series of detours that result in a dead end when someone more qualified enters the competition. You can be sitting on top of the world until your worse nightmare walks through the door and joins your agency - someone with half your age and double the experience. It's your choice.

Career shortcuts are rarely advantageous in the long haul. As individuals with lesser skills creep up the career ladder and find themselves in management they frequently discover they are supervising employees with far better skills who earned their advancement the hard way - by performance. I could (but won't) give you the names of some denominational co-workers who played the political advancement card to the hilt, only to have it backfire on them with a vengeance. They were great folks; they just didn't do their homework. They spent years calling their employer's bluff until someone more qualified came into the picture.

How did it happen? When they were downsized or their job outsourced they suddenly found themselves outside of the warm denominational cocoon in which they had made a very comfortable life. They woke up one day in their 50s with a three-month severance package and discovered they did not have any job skills that they could use in the real world. With no skills, they were virtually unemployable. They may have been department heads or vice presidents, but without real-world skills no one wanted them. It is a situation that is entirely preventable.

To some degree the denomination shares in the tragedy by offering employment to such individuals in the first place and giving them a false sense of professional security. But that is rarely acknowledged and is of little comfort when an individual finds himself or herself suddenly unemployed with no "real world" skills.

While it is a fact of life that some individuals advance up the ladder with marginal job skills, why settle for such a move in your own career path? Ultimately the more skilled you are, the better the chance for advancement.

The field is crowed as it is with incompetence; why settle for being just another member of the pack?

Want to know more about how to succeed on the career ladder? Register today for the BCA workshop in Phoenix where you can pick the minds of veterans like myself. We love giving our opinions. Just be kind and tell us that we look as good today as you imagine we looked when we were your age.

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.

I recently heard an older successful businesswoman on National Public Radio discussing younger, more attractive counterparts who were subtly vying for her position within the company. She said that while the younger "competition" certainly had a better professional appearance due to a more youthful advantage, the "upstarts" lacked one thing: experience that came with 35 years in the profession.

In short, she summed up her situation by saying that while she could trim down, work hard to regain that flatter stomach (her words, not mine) and purchase a new wardrobe, they could never match her on one thing: experience. Try as they might to read business manuals and smooze with the "big boys" to gain a competitive edge, they would never be able to know where the landmines were laid in order to successfully bring the troops across the battlefield.

Intuition, she stated, doesn't come from a book but from the school of hard knocks. Then she drove her point home with exceptional clarity: at the end of the day, experience always wins over beauty.

It's funny how relevant that observation becomes as one piles on the years. While never a beauty myself, the years have begun to take their toll as the salt-and-pepper hair begins to win out over the solid brown coloring. I simply refuse to use Grecian Formula to roll back the decades.

When you're young it's difficult to see over the hills and valleys on the road you are traveling; as you age you can look back over that same road and know exactly where the hairpin curves are in order to slow down, and where the flat and wide open spaces will appear so you can rev up your engine and make up some lost time.

As outgoing BCA president in 2006 I made a few remarks in my president's address that ended up being better received than I ever dreamed. I have shared those comments with several others on their request in the past 24 months and decided it was time to post them on our website.

I decided to break them down into three or four installments to give equal treatment to each topic. They will follow a variety of professional advancement techniques that have worked for me and I have seen work in the lives of others, as well. I wish I had had someone to mentor me in some of these areas as I navigated life's career and financial decisions.

The point of my comments of two years ago was this: as hard as it may be, don't waste your early years piling up debt that quickly becomes handcuffs that prevent you from reaching your spiritual and professional goals. However, those comments were not just about financial freedom; they were very much entwined in other life decisions such as sensing your career path and finding a way to reach that goal.

Let me begin with a basic understanding so I don't need to keep repeating myself. I will be making these comments based on the assumption that the reader is seeking God's will for his/her life and factors that into basic career decision-making. These observations are not meant for the cold-blooded professional who is wanting to climb as high on the career ladder as quickly as possible, though such individuals could benefit from these observations.

These are just common-sense lessons that are easily accepted but difficult to apply. Unfortunately, very few individuals will follow these because peer pressure is just too strong, especially in American society with its materialistic emphasis. Been there, done that because I'm looking in the mirror as I pen these lines. Some of these guidelines I followed and did very well; others were learned after I decided to cut my losses and make a badly needed course correction. But let's give it a shot, nonetheless.

The installments will generally cover three areas and will be directed at the younger members in BCA: how to advance in your career, the importance of saving early for retirement, and an argument for delaying a house purchase before the age of 30. These are written from the perspective of a longtime denominational employee, a saver (certainly wish I had done more there, and earlier), and both a homeowner and a landlord. I will try to keep each installation to around 600 words (following the lead of other bloggers on this site) to make them easily digestible and not try to overwhelm you with too much information, too quickly.

Well, I've already reached my limit and exceeded it by 150 words. I hope I have piqued your interest enough with what is to come and that you will check back soon for the next installment. Most likely that will be as early as next week.

Until then, remember to go ahead and send in your registration for the BCA workshop in Phoenix. The team putting this years meeting together has done an exceptional job and it could easily be the most profitable trip of your year. It's not too early to make your room reservation, either, at the phenomenal rate of $115. Try to find a room at a Phoenix resort in high season for that pittance.

Trust me, you won't.

By Joe Westbury, managing editor of The Christian Index. The Index, which is now published by the Georgia Baptist Convention, is the nation's oldest continuously published Christian newspaper.