I Was Made for Advancement

By Robby Larson

Vice President of Advancement 

In Western culture, “advancement” often refers to the upward movement of society, our careers, and our incomes. Progress! It’s the American Dream. But that kind of “advancement” is idealistic at best and debilitating at worst. It’s no secret that what we do for a living, the success of our businesses, and our personal incomes are often tied to our feelings of self-worth. It's how we introduce ourselves. When we meet people for the first time, we ask, “So, what do you do for a living?” Then we use their answers to compare ourselves to one another and measure up. Our careers are often a way to gain a sense of validation, contentment, or security.

When I left home for college, all I wanted was to live “the good life.” For me, that meant climbing ladders and making millions of dollars in corporate marketing. I assumed that I would give some of my money to charitable causes that I cared about, but I would use the rest to enjoy a secure, happy life. The trouble is that God has a way of steering the course of His children’s lives to help them discover what they are made for. Spoiler alert: we usually get it wrong the first time we think we know what we are made to do. My goal was “the good life,” but God had other ideas about what would make my life good.

I grew up in northeast Portland with supportive and loving parents who modeled a life of showing up, investing in those around us, and participation. My parents demonstrated that when you get involved with something, you should really invest yourself and find a way to make a difference through that involvement. We weren't the type of family that would show up to church and sit in the back row. In fact, our regular pew was right up front every Sunday. My parents were the kind of people who didn’t just participate, they assumed leadership roles. With our youth group, at our church, and on the PTA at my school, my parents were opportunistic in the best way possible; when the opportunity to serve presented itself, they would always rise to the occasion. They were also generous in their contributions of both time and money. We were a family that gave. Every Sunday when I was young, I would take whatever coins I had at home to give as an offering in my Sunday school class. Giving and serving were part of the rhythm of our lives.

Growing up in a family where participation and leadership were priorities, my sister and I were always involved in numerous things. We played sports, we were involved with our youth group, and we participated in school activities, clubs, and many other things throughout middle school and high school. I was involved with leadership from very early on. As a second-grader, I helped start student government at my elementary school because we didn’t have it—that was just the type of person that I was. From my sophomore year in high school, I knew that I wanted to major in Marketing and International Business, and, after graduation, I went to college at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington to do just that. I set a goal to get elected Student Body President by my senior year and to eventually graduate and become a marketing executive for a Fortune 500 company.

I was fortunate enough to have mentors, friends, and people I looked up to who encouraged me and called out the positive qualities they saw in me. All of my mentors were administrators or people who worked in roles on the periphery of the student experience, like the President of the university, some Vice Presidents, and the Director of Alumni and Parent Relations. They came alongside me and said, "You've got what it takes to be a leader," and they weren’t the only ones. One day during my freshman year of college, the Student Body President at the time came up to me and said, "Robby, I just want you to know that you'd make a great Student Body President someday." She didn’t even know that was a goal of mine, but it was something she saw in me. Like so many others, she acknowledged my potential and reinforced what I could become.

As I got ready to graduate from college, I was contacted about a job opening in Student Life at a small private university in Southern California. At first, I wasn’t interested in the position, but they dangled the carrot of free graduate school in front of me. I knew that if I was going to be a corporate executive, I needed to get an MBA and probably a law degree. This presented an opportunity to complete the degree debt-free. Additionally, I loved my time in college, so the idea of working in the college environment again was pretty appealing. I figured that it would take two years to earn my degree, and then I would return to the Northwest, grasp that corporate ladder, and start climbing. So, I took the job and moved to southern California. I was a Hall Director or, as I liked to call it, a “Dorm Mom” for one-hundred-and-eighty, eighteen-year-old college freshmen.

After my first few months in that role, I realized just how much I loved what I was doing and that I was good at it, too. For the first time, I started to see higher education as a potential career field, not just a stepping stone to get me into the corporate world. I still loved business, and going the corporate route was still my goal, but living and working among those college students made me question that goal. My job in Student Life brought together what I enjoyed and valued the most: leadership and service in a way that actually makes a difference in peoples’ lives. For the first time in my life, the idea of “vocation” started to make sense. I started to see what I was uniquely gifted for. I continued to work in student life, I got new positions, I advanced in leadership in my department, and I loved it. I worked. A lot. What I thought was going to be a two-year stint at the school to finish my MBA ended up being seven years.

Eventually, my desire to move back to the Pacific Northwest became undeniable—I mostly missed weather and seasons—so I started to look for jobs at universities that would get me back home. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a school here in Oregon as the Director of Alumni Relations, which involved connecting graduates back to the university after they completed their student journey. The heart behind that role was to support and invest in graduates and help them pursue their passions by connecting them to the resources of their alma mater, rather than just expecting them to figure out life on their own. I worked in that role for five years. Eventually, I transitioned into a fundraising role as a Gift Officer, a natural next step because of the relationships I had developed with thousands of our alumni.

Six years later, after eleven years of working at that university, I transitioned into my current role as the Vice President of Advancement at Multnomah University.  My job involves getting to know what is most important to our alumni, parents, and friends, and then connecting them to the important work happening at Multnomah. There are a lot of very generous people that continue to invest in this place and our students by making charitable gifts to the university.

Honestly, though, there is an interesting dichotomy in my work because of my own relationship to money. When I began working in fundraising, I struggled with the temptation to immediately size people up based on my perception of their job or possible net worth instead of seeing them for who they are. It's something that I have to be mindful of, and I often remind my staff to do likewise. It's important for people to know that they are valued because they are inherently valuable, not because of the bank accounts that God has given them to steward. I consider it an invaluable aspect of my job to see the people I interact with as sons and daughters of God, not as mere checkbooks. While my core job is to make connections with people who might want to donate to Multnomah, I see it as something much deeper. After twenty years of advancing through my career, and now working in a department called “Advancement”, my perception of the word “advance” is no longer about monetary success or career achievement.

The word “advance” means “To move forward in a purposeful way.” I think that accurately captures what I was made to do. My job is to fundraise for the university, but that, in and of itself, is not an end. Getting a donation is not why I do what I do. I do this work so that those generous gifts can transform the lives of our students. By connecting a donor to a cause that they are passionate about, I help that donor to feel purposeful about their giving and connected to a larger community. As a result of their gift, I get to play a small role in helping students to discover their own passions by bolstering the institution they’ve chosen to educate themselves. My job also allows me to contribute and connect to the lives of young people on our campus. I get to make a difference.

I don't get to spend much time with current students in my day-to-day work; I mainly work with alumni, parents, and friends of the university. But the heart behind the work I do is to benefit the students, so I constantly look for ways to connect with them outside of the office. I make an effort to go to athletic games, eat with them in the cafeteria, and have conversations with them. I serve pancakes at the late-night student breakfast during finals week and I play flag football on the Faculty and Staff team in the annual Lion Bowl. As someone whose job it is to encourage others to invest in this institution and these students, I think it's important for me to model that investment.

My aim is to serve students, to connect with people, and ultimately to help move them forward. There's something about showing up, being present, and engaging with people in the place they are in. In my experience, the people who had the biggest impact on my life were the people who showed up and paid enough attention to my gifts to affirm me and encourage me to take the next step forward. I had mentors, bosses, and friends in my life who encouraged me and said, "You're doing a really good job,” or “You would make a great (fill in the blank).” I try to give that back to the students that I interact with now. It’s incredibly fulfilling to speak to alumni who have gone on to live out their calling and they tell me that, in some way, the time that I spent with them, my leadership, or some nugget of wisdom, helped them to find or understand their own calling.

I thought I knew what my passions were. I thought that I wanted a career that would lead to money, fame, and fortune. But I was wrong. God changed the course of my life and He redirected my desires. I have this career because of the circumstances, people, and mentors who helped me to discern that this is where I am supposed to be. For that reason, getting to know the students whose lives I am impacting continues to be one of the great joys of my job. I have the important and exciting opportunity to come alongside students and help them discern and pursue their callings—not to tell them what their passions are, but to help in the discovery process, and ultimately to know God better as a result.

Honestly, it took me a long time to get there myself. It took time to recognize that I was made for more than my work. I understand, theologically, that this life is temporary and eternity-to-come is far greater. I understand that, and yet, I've always been fairly focused on this life. The idea of being made for more than my job was not something I understood or focused on. Early in my life and career, my goal was still on earthly things; my desire to be a corporate marketing executive was about the pursuit of money and acknowledgment. I wouldn't have said this, at the time, but my hope was to be someone who was known by the world. I wanted to be important. Later, as my career in higher education began to take shape, I was, frankly, a workaholic. Even though the work I was doing was meaningful and in line with my calling, it consumed me, and my vision of a good life was still tied to this world. As I've gone through my life, I’ve found that living a really good life has little to do with worldly success.

God calls us to work. He designed us for it. From the earliest stories in the Scripture, God placed mankind in a garden. His design was for us to tend to that garden as workers. Work is a good thing and I believe it to be God-given, but, like anything else in our lives, it can become an idol and it can also become something that we use to pursue other idols. Although God made us to work, He doesn't strictly see us as workers. If your ultimate goal is success at work, you’re focused on the wrong thing. It is the task of every believer to ask themselves how their work can be part of an integrated life of growing in faith and walking with God. By the grace of God, I have been successful by the world's standards, but that's not the point of my life. My pursuit is not for success, it’s for significance that can only be realized in Jesus. Ultimately, no matter what we do for a living, even if it is meaningful, lifegiving work that ministers to others, it is important to keep work in its proper perspective. I know that I'm called to the work that I do, but I know that it's not who I am. I am a child of God.

I was made for advancement. I believe that God uniquely created me to move others forward in a purposeful way. I believe that the work that I do is significant and meaningful and aligned with the Kingdom of God. But I also know that my career path was paved by God. I could not have discovered this on my own. He placed those meaningful connections in my life and now I get to be a meaningful connection in students’ lives. He gave me every opportunity I’ve ever had. At the end of the day, the purpose of my life is to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ and rely on Him to move me forward in a purposeful way.