For years, when I meet a new person, I’ve struggled with trying to answer the inevitable question, “So, what do you do for a living?” The strange thing is that once I tell them I help Christians design their will or trust from a biblical perspective and also help Christians make complex gifts of stock, real estate, or business interests to their church and other ministries they love, they never have any follow-up questions. They rarely say, “Wow, that’s fascinating! Tell me more about that.”

What I’ve come to realize is that people rarely like to talk about estate planning or charitable giving. So, when I attend a social gathering, I feel like people are whispering, “Stay away from that guy over there. He deals with death and giving for a living.” Yes, I’m kidding, but there’s some underlying truth too.

This makes the world more beautiful by providing things like clean water, food, and medical care for the poor. It helps send missionaries to remote areas of the world to lead people to Jesus.

From now on, maybe I can change the conversation to be more inspiring and exciting like this… My new friend John says, “What do you do for a living Guy?” Then I’d say, “I’m blessed to work for a ministry that helps make the world a more beautiful place.” Then John says, “That sounds amazing! Tell me more.” Now here’s my chance to share my passion, so I say, “The ministry I work for, Orchard Alliance, helps people make gifts of non-cash assets to support their church, The Alliance, and other ministries they love. This makes the world more beautiful by providing things like clean water, food, and medical care for the poor. It helps send missionaries to remote areas of the world to lead people to Jesus. It helps plant new churches here and abroad. It provides disaster relief for those devastated by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes. It gives hope and help to the homeless, and drug addicts. It encourages new moms to keep their babies. It helps stop human trafficking. All of these things bring incredible beauty to the world for God’s glory, and I’m so blessed that He lets me play a small role in all of this by inspiring and facilitating Christian generosity.”

Hopefully, by explaining the impact of what I’m blessed to do for a career instead of the details of how I do it, people might be more interested to engage in conversation with me.