Good afternoon.  If you haven’t been with us, we have been taking a look at an Andy Stanley DVD series titled, Take It To The Limit.  And in this series we have been trying to find out how to get the most out of life.  Each week, we have been encouraged to create margin in different areas of our lives.  Margin is simply the extra space we have that keeps us back from the edge of disaster.

Our culture pushes us to the edge.  It tells us to spend all of our time, it tells us to spend all of our money and then some, it pushes us to the edge morally, and today, we are going to see how our culture pushes us to the edge professionally as well.  Today, we are looking at our jobs.

Now what we are going to look at this evening, should sound familiar to you, because we just took a look at it in December.  But Andy has an interesting way of sharing this passage with us today.

Before we get started though, let me ask you a question or two.  First, what do you think it looks like to have professional margin?

And secondly, do you feel that you use up too much of you off time, worrying or working on things for your job?  Explain?

Well, before we take a look at Andy’s message today, allow me to open our time with a word of prayer.  Let’s Pray!                    (PLAY CLIP (it is about 35 minutes))

Now, as we come back together, I am going to do our review and discussion a little differently today.  Usually I share a lot of what he had to say, and we do some discussion questions as well.  But today, we are all tired after eating, some of us have plans for this evening, and some of you may be sticking around for cantata practice, so I will be brief with tonight’s discussion time.

The question that this lesson asked was, “How do we restructure our time at work, in order to get more done in less time, to have less stress, and to ultimately make more money?”  I mean those are the goals of everyone probably no matter what their job is.  One, they want to accomplish more, but they want to do it in less time.  Two, we all want to have less stress added to our lives because of our jobs.  And three, we all want to be able to make more money!  So how do we do that?

The passage that Andy shared with you today is a principle that can be found both in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament.  Let’s go ahead and take one more look at that text that Andy used today.  Exodus 18:13-24.  If you remember back, I used this passage of scripture the day that we began some of our new committees.  Anyway, in this passage, it says in Exodus 18:13-24, “1”

Now, Andy said that you would be tempted to argue with this point, but, he says to listen to this message with a target in mind.  This is not something that will happen right away, but it is something that we should all work towards professionally.

We learned tonight that focus is the main thing.  The idea that less is more.  Sometimes, if we delegate the right people, we can actually do fewer things and accomplish more.  What we need to realize is that productivity does not mean busyness.  We need to begin playing to our strengths and delegate our weaknesses.

And in order to do that, he gave us 3 things to do.

1. Answer this question:
   1. What defines success for the person who does what you do?
   2. What is the thing that I make sure I do well?
   3. What is the one or two thing that I have to do well in order to succeed in this profession?

So, answer those questions for your career.  What defines success for the person who does what you do?  And what do you need to make sure you do well?

2. Write the ideal job description with these parameters in mind:
   1. Success for the person in your position.
   2. The mission or your organization.
   3. Your skill set  here (and that is what I was designed to do).
3. Present it to your employer:
   1. As something to work toward.
   2. As something to try for a pre-determined length of time.

Now, just as a reminder, the key to professional margin to focus.  We should lean to work toward what we are good at, which means improving our strengths and delegating our areas of weakness.  When we learn to do less, we can actually accomplish more.

Now, as we begin to wrap things up for today, I want to end with about 6 discussion questions.  So here we go, finding our professional margin.

What are some of the ways people do “whatever it takes” to get the job done?

What are some of the professional tasks that you do that don’t really add to the bottom line?

Professionally, what are some of the things that you do better than anyone else?

What are some ways that you can marry your skill with specific needs to make yourself indispensable?

Describe the ideal job situation for leveraging your strengths and delegating your weaknesses?

What is one step you can take this week to begin the process of moving toward such a professional situation?

Now, before we close for this evening, does anyone have anything that they would like to add about finding margin professionally?

Well, if there is nothing else, I will close us with a word of prayer, and then we will have a closing song.

Let’s Pray!