The Opening Letter

Dear Chris,

It is good to hear from you. Yes, I remember you — the classes you took with me in seminary and the conversations we had outside of class while you were a student. Those were good times. I confess that I am surprised to learn you are nearing retirement. Time passes quickly. I can only imagine how much God has used you for good during your years of ordained ministry.

I am grateful to have you reach out to me with respect to your retirement. You are wise in paying attention to this transition in advance of it. To postpone consideration of retirement can make us more reactive than responsive, which only increases the likelihood that we will not make our best decisions. I commend your foresight.

Chris, I am glad to learn that you and your spouse are talking about your retirement together. You will find your spouse's wisdom to be foundational and motivational in your own deliberations. Jeannie has been, as always, my best guide and supporter as I have moved into retirement. I hope you will also reach out to others for counsel, because there is no one-size-fits-all pattern for retiring. I trust you know folks who have retired well. They can give you additional important perspective. But I accept your invitation to be of whatever help I can be.

I like your phrase "a spirituality of retirement." My own experience, combined with others I know, shows that both the consideration of retirement and the early living into it is a profound phase of the Christian spiritual life. You are on target in bringing your whole self to retirement, and that includes family dynamics and everything else, for that matter.

As we exchange letters, please know that I am not prescribing a one-size-fits-all plan for you. Life doesn't work that way, and neither does retirement. Instead, I hope to be descriptive, not prescriptive. My story will not be your story. But I agree with Frederick Buechner that our individual lives manifest universality.

Chris, thanks for getting in touch. I am looking forward to reconnecting, walking with you, and learning from you. Abundant living is ahead of you, as it always is.

Blessings! Steve

It's in the Bible

Dear Chris,

I am not surprised to learn that some have responded to your planning to retire by saying that the Bible doesn't teach it. Thankfully, most you talked with responded lightheartedly, but even underneath their touch of humor there may at least be confusion about where retirement fits into the Christian journey. Let me use this letter to tell you what I think.

I must begin by agreeing with your critics, up to a point. If they take retirement to mean a withdrawal from vital living and adopting a kind of passive life, then I think they are correct. God never calls us to become disengaged, and retirement, as I am going to write about it, is not a call to "hang it up" and coast through the remaining years of your life. What I will be pointing to in this series of letters is an ongoing journey of significance and purpose — a journey lived under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, just as all your previous years have been. Retirement is not the cessation of activity, but only a change in it.

But having said that, I must disagree with your critics. I have found that some folks use the "it's not biblical" response as a license to keep on going through a series of reinventions of themselves. They may have quit one job, but they quickly find another one to give them a sense of significance. Simply put, they do not know how to let go. They falsely equate their role with their life and run the risk of defining it in terms of activism, and even worse, by status. This is a matter that will require further attention in our correspondence, but I mention it now because you may have fallen prey to some clergy who think that the abandonment of their professional role is tantamount to the loss of their personhood. This is a serious error.

Instead, I want you to consider some things about retirement that are in the Bible. First, the Bible does teach specifically about retirement, and it does so with respect to religious leaders. In Numbers 8:25-26, the Levites are told that at age fifty, they are to retire from their service. They are no longer to perform their previous duties. Doubtless, this prescription was related to the fact that these people were considered to be "old" in that era. In that context, the verses make it clear that these leaders were to do two things: (1) move aside so that younger people could perform the duties, and (2) support those younger persons as they did so.

The longer I ponder these two verses, the more convinced I am that they are a deep well of wisdom. For one thing, they acknowledge the aging process — something those who resist retirement often are failing to do. Second, they teach that we have our particular generation of service, and when it is passed, we should get out of the way so that younger people can have theirs. Not to do this is to create a "clog" in the pipeline of servanthood that delays younger people from having their day. Finally, these verses make clear that we do not cease serving, but rather we serve in a new way — especially through our becoming supporters of those who have moved into their time of leadership.

But that is not all the Bible reveals about retirement. We gain insight from the patriarchs and matriarchs. These men and women do not continue to do what they have always done. Rather, they begin to do new things. In the Old Testament, for example, we see older men sitting by the gate, making themselves available for conversation and counsel. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote to older men and women, exhorting them to fulfill the important ministries of setting a godly example and mentoring younger men and women (Titus 2:2-5). Paul took his own advice by passing the torch of leader-ship to Timothy and to Titus, understanding that he had served his generation and was now to become an encourager to his two young friends who were now called to be ministers.

So, far from not teaching about retirement, I believe the Bible has a lot to say about it. It challenges any who believe they should never retire. It constructs an active view of retirement. Most of all, it offers us a farther journey into abundant living. The God of life does not have a moment when we leave life behind. But God does have a phase of life when we live differently than we have in the past. God opens the door to another room of life. Don't let your detractors talk you out of it.

Blessings! Steve

Establishing the Vision

Dear Chris,

I am relieved to know that you look at retirement in a positive light and as part of the human journey. I will not write a lot about the aging process in general because it's not my expertise. There are good books that can get you started along this more generic, human development pathway.

I will focus our letters, exploring the several years leading up to retirement and the several following it, in relation to Christian formation. I believe I can be most helpful to you by doing this.

But you must be aware that my understanding of spirituality is comprehensive, not something restricted to the "religious" domain. Human development and spiritual formation are intertwined. Retirement is a whole-life experience. To be human is to be made in the image of God, and everything else revolves around that. Retirement is profoundly spiritual because it is another opportunity to become fully human. Older adulthood is sacred.

It is the fallen world that makes "youthfulness" appear to be the ideal stage, forcing children to look older than they are, and trying to keep adults looking younger than they are. This is an artificial, cosmetic understanding of life — not the one God wants us to have. Every phase of our life continues the life principle. I am so glad you see it that way.

This enables us to build a spiritual house regarding retirement. I have found the threefold formation paradigm proposed by Richard Foster in one of his books, Life With God and also in the The Life With God Bible. Foster believes that formation occurs in relation to three words: vision, intention, and means. I agree with him, and I will make use of these three concepts in the opening round of our correspondence.

Let's begin with the vision that gives rise to retirement. Fundamentally, it is the conviction that life goes on. I have already alluded to this, but I repeat it now as part of the necessary vision. It is the conviction that abundant living (John 10:10) is available all along the life path. E. Stanley Jones bore witness to this by showing how each phase of his life had been meaningful and how he was confident that the future would be as well. The formative vision for retirement is fueled by anticipation — by the conviction that until our final breath, we are made to experience things that no previous time of life has given us.

The vision for retirement continues in the awareness that life is lived from the inside out. We do not pit the inward against the outward, but we do recognize that the call is to be someone before we do something. Or to say it in the classical sense, character (virtue) is the foundation for conduct (voyage). John Wesley recognized this when he launched the early Methodist movement. He created Methodism's foundation with two documents: The Character of a Methodist in 1742, and The General Rules of the United Societies in 1743. In this regard, he was a classical spiritual guide, inviting people onto a journey marked by personal and social holiness — holiness of heart and life.

Similarly, retirement affects us inwardly and outwardly. Retirement is to be a matter of significant soul work — whole-life work that develops our character and designs conduct. Both aspects are developed in relation to the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). These constitute what Christians have often referred to as the virtuous life.

Retirement gives us the opportunity to engage these nine dynamics in new ways, and to do it through the ordinary routines of everyday living. This more natural, casual, and unhurried manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit helps overcome a production-oriented life that we can so easily become used to as clergy. We find that opportunities for holy conversation increase.

Chris, I have found this to be true in the early years of my retirement. I no longer live "by the clock," and I have almost no deadline-driven assignments. I am free to pace myself in relation to another rhythm of life. It is refreshing and flatout fun!

Blessings! Steve

Engaging the Intention

Dear Chris,

Thanks for affirming the vision I offered. You have always struck me as a person who never allowed yourself to become role defined, much less to live in the past. Using Foster's paradigm, we can now move on to explore intention.

Foster essentially means using our will to make the vision real and alive. I am pretty sure he inherited this idea from his mentor Dallas Willard, who emphasized the place and importance of the will in spiritual formation, thus preventing it from becoming a form of quietism and passivity. Intention prevents life from becoming overly conceptual or theoretical. John Wesley called it practical divinity.

But it is important to recognize that intention is not the same as function. That comes later in the formative process, even though we tend to rush to it in our activistic, performance-oriented, how-to culture. We are especially prone to this in North American Christianity where so much of ministry has revolved around programming and productivity. It is what Thomas Merton warned about when he called activism a form of violence. By contrast, living with intention is moving in congruence with the initial vision, with what the Bible calls an inclined heart (Josh 24:23).

When applied to retirement, it means we dispose ourselves toward the desired vision. We "incline our heart to the Lord" so that the vision can become a reality. Over the years, I have used three words to refer to the fundamental dispositions of the ministerial heart: learner, leader, and light. I'm not sure I ever shared this view with you, so let me do so now. This is not a conceptual detour, but rather signposts that guide our life journey.

Chris, I don't have to tell you about the phase of being a learner. I remember your love of learning. I am sure you heard me say more than once that, as a student, you should never apologize for being essentially in a learning phase. In fact, I'm sure you also heard me say that the word disciple means "learner." The ordination process included an emphasis upon it. We call it theological education. But the fact is, we never stop learning.

But we do move into the phase of being a leader. For you, it began even while you were in seminary, and it has been the focal phase of your life for decades. Perhaps you will recall that I always described leadership in more ways than our ministerial role. We also lead as a spouse, as a parent, as a community person, and in multiple other ways. This is your calling, but as I said earlier, when we come to retirement it can be an obstacle more than a blessing if we cannot let go of being leaders. But because this is not a problem for you, we can move on.

In terms of spiritual formation, it means we become lights. Thankfully, I have had good models for learning this. From them I have seen real-life examples of how important it is to become encouragers and supporters — of becoming those who bear witness to the reality of abundant living in older adulthood. Chris, there comes the time when we are meant to be lights for those coming along behind us. I cannot overestimate the importance of becoming a light, and I don't believe we have enough of them today. I have heard younger clergy verbalize their wish that they could connect with older ones to receive support and counsel. What Eugene Peterson called "the ministry of small talk" is sorely needed.

Chris, do not skip over or rush past this second formative principle. Engaging your intention opens the door to the many practical aspects of retirement. It does so by reminding us that we are doing the right thing — that there is life even after we take our name off the church sign.

Blessings! Steve

Enacting the Means

Dear Chris,

You raise an interesting point in your struggle with the phrase "finishing well." I believe Foster's paradigm helps us do this, but I do not believe that retirement is a finish, but is more nearly an altered continuation. I don't even view death as a finish. I believe that in ways we cannot describe, our lives here are a preparation for a life that is beyond time. If that is true, how could we ever see retirement as an ending? We are made for eternity! How we live here and now sets a trajectory for it.

At the same time, you are correct in recognizing that whatever we mean by "finishing well" it includes a host of details — some small, some large. And I think you are also correct in connecting this to our Wesleyan theology of practical divinity, where we must eventually turn theory into practice. This is what our Christian predecessors called ordinary holiness. Using Foster's paradigm it means that when vision and intention are in place, we can move into the third phase called means.

But I do want to use this letter to put the third of Richard Foster's elements into the picture — the element of means. We enact our convictions. I think we are in a good place to direct our correspondence in that direction. When a tree is rooted, it can bear fruit. When we are grounded through vision and intention, we can discern good means for living in retirement. But prior to any specific details, we must establish the basic design.

I believe we do this in relation to the two great commandments — loving God and loving others. Whatever else retirement brings about, these two elements must be in play. We are called to live in ways that glorify God and honor others. Through holiness of heart we glorify God, and through holiness of life, we honor others. I like to think of it in terms of breathing. When we inhale spiritually we "oxygenate" our lives with the love of God. When we exhale spirituality we "embody" that love for the sake of others. The attitudes and actions we use in doing this are many, and we will be looking at some of them.

For now, I want to make it clear that even the means are rooted in personhood, not performance. The people I know who have moved into retirement the best are those who carry love for God and others with them. In their retirement years they seek for, and find, concrete expressions to do both. Their lives continue to be engaged in the living out of this vision. These folks tell us that we do not have to look in the rearview mirror to find life.

Blessings! Steve