A change of mind and a new purpose
While clearly on a successful track at Kraft Foods, Naff started having nagging doubts about his career path. Some things he was hearing at church began to change his outlook; his worldview was shifting. “When you’re in a corporate job,” he says, “you want to get ahead. Everyone’s trying to see who has the most influence with the boss. I began thinking life had to mean more than that.” Something had to change.
The first order of business was to figure out what he wanted to do. Naff knew he did not want to become a pastor or a missionary in the traditional sense. He wanted to use his MBA to work on the business side of some Christian ministry. However, he also knew he needed to be careful about the decisions he made. After all, they would not only impact his own life, but also those of his family. He had to be certain he wasn’t misreading his feelings and motivations. “I was in my mid-forties then,” Naff says, “and I wanted to make sure this was a true calling rather than a mid-life crisis. Besides that, I had two kids in college.”
After job-hunting, and much soul-searching, Naff landed a position at Campus Crusade for Christ (today called Cru) in one of their ministries, Family Life, headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. When Naff explained his plans to his boss and workmates at Kraft, they thought he was crazy. They simply could not understand why he was taking what they considered a drastic career move. “If I had told them we were going to sell our house, buy a boat, and sail around the world,” Naff says, “it would have been a lot better received than what I was telling them.”
When Naff started at Campus Crusade for Christ, it was an adjustment in many ways. A sacrifice, too. For one thing, it meant a huge pay difference, about an 80% cut in income. On the upside, the family was debt free. The regional disparity in real estate prices helped as well; the sale of their home near Chicago provided enough equity for them to pay cash for a house in Little Rock. Also, Naff’s stock options at Kraft Foods were enough to pay for the kids’ college.