Advice for Retiring Pastors

I retired a year ago. My situation has been different in at least two ways:

1. I retired after serving 39 years in the same church (43.5 years total pastoral ministry), and thus I gave a year notice to the elders and 9 months to the congregation. We wanted to get a pastoral selection committee going early in the process, so we had to let the people know why we had such a committee.

2. My son — who was not interested in returning to ministry at the beginning of our search process — became my successor.

It has been a year now. We are just beginning to attend dinners and cookouts, and I have filled the pulpit several times when he was ill or on vacation. I attend elsewhere (a good distance away), and now will begin attending services at the church from which I retired about four times a year. If it become problematic, we will cut that down or eliminate it, but we are hopeful that will not be necessary.

I occasionally fill the pulpit elsewhere. I do not advertise my availability, but have thus far always responded positively to (and enjoyed) invitations. I have a lot of interests, and have no trouble with boredom at all. Still too much to do, but I take life slower, and it is really nice. I am still serving the Lord, but differently. I know other folks who have not enjoyed retirement at all.

I might be open to interim work someday, but after one year, I am enjoying the freedom that retirement brings — and catching up on all the things I could not do before.

You don’t know what it will be like until it is your turn, and your experience might be very different from mine.

Part of the produce of my retirement is the Christian fiction book (a light murder mystery) called “Too Many Secrets.” When you love to write and you love to cook, every day is a party of sorts.