Career Ends But Calling Continues
The Last Day
Last December, I received a text from a friend on the last day of her career. Attached was a picture of her clean, empty office. The text said, “It’s official. And it feels WEIRD.”
She’s not alone. Over 11,000 Americans are turning 65 each day in 2026. Many of them are finishing their careers with an uneasiness about what’s next. We spend decades of our lives - an estimated 80,000 hours - in our careers.
Moving into something different can be very disorienting. But don’t we believe retirement is the end of work.
Retirement - which we are calling the Encore of life - is a graduation to a renewed definition of work.
Your career may have funded your retirement, but it was never meant to be the foundation of your purpose. Jesus is always inviting you into more calling.
Career vs Calling
Your career can end without your calling ending with it. Os Guiness says that we have two callings in life. Our primary calling is to follow Jesus with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is a universal calling, meaning every person on the planet is invited to a personal and thriving relationship with Jesus. Our secondary calling includes our professional lives, roles within our families, and our particular commitments and responsibilities.
Retirement can be challenging for everyone, even those who know their primary calling is to follow Jesus! But it is especially difficult for people who placed too much emphasis on their secondary calling (career) at the expense of their primary calling (loving Jesus). Too often our identity and purpose were too closely tied to career, paycheck, and achievement.
Jesus says in Matthew 7 that those who know and do God’s will are like those who have built their house on a solid rock. But if we have built our lives on unstable priorities, we are bound to feel the pain of our misaligned choices.
Eager for Calling
The Encore of life is another opportunity to recalibrate our priorities and to eagerly embrace our primary calling: to love Jesus and pursue what He wants. And knowing our primary calling in Christ gives us our greatest purpose and joy.
Philippians 1:20 says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.
We want to keep doing meaningful and impactful work in our retirement years, and honoring Jesus is the purpose of our Encore.
The finances that allow us to afford retirement are to be applied to kingdom impact. As Joel Malick writes, “The money you've accumulated to fund your [retirement] is nothing more than raw lumber that will enable you to build your purpose.”
Money may have allowed us to exit career, but now our desire is knowing what God wants to build into us and through us.
For most of us, the question in retirement isn't, “Do I still have a calling?” The question is “As I delight in Jesus, what do I sense He is inviting me to do?” And then we find our calling will take shape through our particular relationships, responsibilities, gifts, and opportunities in this season.
Achievement vs Fruitfulness
Career has clear scoreboards. Teachers finish another school year. Real estate agents close on another property. Retirement isn’t meant to be that way, even though some people quickly replace their career business with calendar busyness.
The Encore of life is not manufacturing more work to do. Instead, we are focusing our time and attention on delighting in Jesus and the desires He places in our hearts (Psalm 37:4).
Encore calling is not based on volume of achievement but by faithfulness to task. But how do we know what God has called us to do?
Articulate Your Purpose
Moving from career to Encore requires a definition of our calling. Knowing our primary calling in Jesus gives us freedom to pursue our secondary calling in our most critical commitments and relationships.
Take time to define your calling in a personal purpose statement. This should be broad enough that you can apply it anywhere but focused enough that you can evaluate if you’re doing it.
My personal purpose statement is, “To create margin of time and resources to live a Great Commission lifestyle.” This means that I want to push back on the clutter of life, and not be so selfish, so that God might be so gracious as to make disciples through me.
Having a purpose statement is a compass for your Encore, allowing you to celebrate God’s work in you, as well as recalibrating when you get disoriented.
Working Genius
Once we know our purpose, it’s helpful to know the kind of work you enjoy and you are good at. Doing work you love is fuel for the soul. It’s energizing rather than draining.
The Working Genius assessment helps you know what work is life-giving. It assumes that all work exists in six stages and that each of us gravitates to certain aspects of a work project.
Taking the assessment gives you three practical benefits:
Self-awareness of how you enjoy work
Appreciation of others' gifting
Understanding how to better collaborate with others
So while it’s popular to tell people to volunteer their time in retirement (and we should!), people can get frustrated when they volunteer in ways that don’t align with the kind of work they enjoy. When we debrief your Working Genius, you will understand the kind of work that gives you the most satisfaction.
Click here to take assessment - take it and debrief it with us!
Elevate Excellence
Once we know the work we are invited to do, we aim for excellence. Even after career, we commend to the next generation that excellent work is part of our faith.
Dorothy Sayers wrote: “The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”
Your career may end with an empty office, but your calling continues. Once we define our purpose from God, and know the work we most enjoy doing, we are eager to do excellent work for His glory.
Wherever you are in the process of thinking about your Encore, there are a few simple next steps to choose from:
If you’d like to talk one-on-one, I’d be glad to connect.
Or if you’d rather ease into the conversation, you’re welcome to join us for one of our weekly lunches.
