A few years back it was announced that the Paris Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld had called it quits after 10 years at the helm of the world's number one fashion magazine. Her years as the top editor were marked by "constant growth" both in terms of circulation and advertising.
Like those high profile people within the more visible fashion industry, many other areas of necessary, but not so public, high pressure 'top of the tree' positions have huge demands upon the people who work in those specific areas.
British Vogue said that Roitfeld had "decided to concentrate on personal projects" while the New York Vogue said she had told them she "had decided to do something different".
Although she may have seemed formidable as a thin woman with extremely high heels and often a fashionable trench-coat type of outfit, she had a reputation for being friendly and approachable.
She pushed the content of Paris Vogue to the limit of respectability, compared with the more puritan US counterpart, some of her recent spreads seeming risqué even by more traditionally open European standards.
In the area of Christian ministry, Reverend Dr Rowland Croucher of John Mark Ministries has made a life time study of Christian Ministers who have found themselves in such 'positions'. It is no less a feat to establish a Church or Christian ministry that has captured the imagination of many people, and to continue to see it expand and grow.
Rowland Croucher over many years has spoken of Christian Ministers who after highly visible and remarkably distinguished ministries have moved on from that particular ministry to another.
The late Reverend Dr Gordon Moyes AC perhaps for many years Australia's most distinguished Christian minister and Churchman moved from Superintendent of Wesley Mission to a NSW Parliamentary role.
Reverend F P McMaster MBE (the late) after twenty nine years at the Canberra Baptist Church moved to the role of ACT Baptist Churches Superintendent.
Reverend Dr Rowland Croucher moved from the largest Australian congregation (Melbourne) of his era to establish a specialist ministry to Ministers going through a difficult period in their ministries, John Mark Ministries.
Reverend John Edmondstone AOM moved from the Superintendency of NSW Baptist Churches, in what has been described as the greatest period of Baptist Church expansion, to a media ministry with Radio 2CH.
Reverend Norm Nix moved from a rural NSW congregation where church growth was remarkable and where he served as a Deputy Mayor of the Shire Council, to NSW Baptist head office to establish a Church Growth Department in that same great era of Baptist life.
Such examples in Christian ministry abound. Therefore it is not only in the very public arena, such as the editor of Paris Vogue, where people who have given their professional lives to improving their own area of business or ministry, realise it is time to hand over the reins to people with (hopefully) even greater and fresher ideas to take their passions forward into the next generation.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children. Dr Tronson writes a daily article for Christian Today Australia (since 2008) and in November 2016 established Christian Today New Zealand.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html