Preparing for Retirement

Saying good-by properly is one thing. Starting a new life is another. But both are part of preparing for retirement.
—Ed Bratcher

Retirement is a good-news/bad-news story. The good news is that retirement provides time to do many things we have had to put off through life. In this sense, retirement is a life-giving experience. The bad news is that much of life as we’ve known it is lost. In this sense, retirement is a deathlike experience.

And sometimes it feels like both simultaneously. Upon my retirement, a friend wrote about his of two years: “As I look back, I must say that the relocation, the complete change of lifestyle, and the economic adjustments have been dramatic, and these changes continue at a pace that keeps me constantly running to catch-up.” My friend’s advice to me? “Good luck!”

Jesting aside, I believe we can do better (and my friend would agree). In fact, the better we prepare for retirement, the more we’ll experience resurrection through the grief of retirement and joy in the new life retirement brings. In particular, I found it helpful to prepare in two distinct ways: I had to prepare to leave and prepare to live.

Preparing to Leave

Before I can begin retirement, I have to retire. That means leaving a church family I’ve grown to love. Preparing to leave, then, means preparing the church for my departure and saying a proper good-by. I found a variety of tasks to attend to before leaving.

• Give the church good warning. I officially announced my retirement seven months in advance, but I had informed our board of deacons five months prior to that.

I found a year’s notice to the church leaders to be about right. The deacons then had time to prepare themselves and the church for my departure. And the seven months notice to the congregation gave my wife, Marjie, and me time to say good-by yet without dragging it out.

• Let the board lead. I felt the board was primarily responsible for preparing the church for my departure. I could give guidance and encouragement, but the board needed to take initiative. They needed to outline steps that would be taken, and they had to keep the congregation informed. Soon I wouldn’t be around, and they’d have to fend for themselves while searching for a new pastor. Better to let them get their wings while I was around.

Fortunately, our deacons didn’t hesitate to assume this leadership. By the time of my public announcement, they were ready to appoint from their group a Pastoral Transition Committee. After a few weeks of study this committee then recommended the congregation form three committees: the Bratcher Celebration Committee, the Interim Pastor Search Committee, and the Pastor Search Committee.

The board was on its way.

• Give guidance to the board. Even though the board must take leadership during the transition, I gave guidance to the board and the committees it had established. I offered suggestions about what to read, what to do next, and who to contact for further advice.

One book I recommended they read was Roy Oswald’s Running Through the Thistles: Terminating a Ministerial Relationship (Alban Institute). I gave my copy to the Pastoral Transition Committee, and the committee took its recommendations to heart, including my margin notes and underlining! This made the retirement procedure a tailor-made process for Marjie and me.

Yet after getting things started, I felt it best to adopt a hands-off policy. I tried to show I had complete confidence in the board and congregation.

• Remember the congregation. The board should be particularly sensitive to the congregation during the transition. And the depth of the congregation’s anxiety depends in part on the length of the retiring pastor’s term.

For example, at Manassas we soon realized that 60 percent of the congregation had joined the church during my pastorate. That meant the majority of the members could not remember the previous pastoral change. As a whole, these members were more anxious and needed greater reassurance as to what to expect.

In light of this, the Pastoral Transition Committee held two “listening sessions.” At these Wednesday evening two-hour sessions, the committee explained what they were doing and why; then they listened to the questions, suggestions, and concerns of the members.

Not that all suggestions were automatically enacted by the committee. For example, some members felt that the only task was finding a new pastor, and that this should have been started yesterday! The committee believed, however, that a period of “grief” was in order, that the church should unhurriedly say good-by to me before they devoted themselves fully to finding a new pastor. They explained this to the congregation and then proceeded in light of it.

• Protect the staff. The retirement of the senior minister also puts pressure on the church staff. Many church members assume that if there are two or three full-time associates, they will take over the duties of the senior minister (with the possible exception of preaching). This assumption implies that the other duties of the associates are relatively unimportant.

The staff, however, can become resentful about having to sacrifice some of their responsibilities. In addition, they are concerned about their future, wondering about their ability to work with the future senior pastor, or simply the security of their jobs.

The concern about job security I had tried to settle earlier. During the last five years of my ministry, the Manassas church called two associates. In each case, I spoke to the personnel committee about these calls beforehand. I recommended, and the committee agreed, that these ministers be called by the congregation, and that their positions be in the hands of the church, not the present or future senior minister.

(If that hadn’t been the case, I would have spoken about my retirement to my staff well in advance of the board. I would have worked closely with the board and the staff to insure that their needs, especially for relocation, were given priority.)

In addition, the chair of the Pastoral Transition Committee invited the staff to meet with the committee regularly. There the staff could discuss the transition from their perspective, airing any grievances they had.

• Don’t call attention to yourself. I have seen congregations become anxious when the retiring pastor started marking the end of his ministry with remarks like, “This is my last Thanksgiving service” and two weeks later “This is my last Communion service” and soon.

Besides creating undue grief, this seems like a form of exhibitionism. It draws too much attention to the pastor. I feel that, especially when I’m leading worship, no matter the circumstance, the attention should be on God. So even my last Christmas Eve Communion service, a moving service held a week before my retirement, I celebrated as we had year by year.

• Visit the particularly needy. Before I retired, I tried to make calls on two types of people: the home bound and those with whom I had strained relationships. I felt the home bound needed to be reassured they were not forgotten. And I wanted to make every effort to settle disagreements with those from whom I was estranged—for their spiritual welfare and mine.

For example, I visited one family who had not been active for about five years. They were not comfortable with some of my views and had been attending other churches (although they maintained their membership at Manassas). After exchanging pleasantries, I acknowledged our differences, mentioned my respect for their views, and asked if we couldn’t at least part with a measure of graciousness. I am happy to say they accepted the invitation and have since renewed their ties to the church.

• Work like a healthy duck. Conventional wisdom has it that when pastors announce their retirement, they immediately become lame ducks. On the contrary, I felt that if I didn’t act like a lame duck, I would not be treated as such.

In administration and long-range planning, of course, my leadership style had to change. If I wasn’t going to be around to experience the effects of decisions, I didn’t think I should participate in making them.

For example, the church at Manassas was well into a building program when I announced my retirement. While the building committee continued its work, made presentations to the congregation, took votes, and put out plans for bids, I was nowhere to be seen. My absence from these business meetings was a way of saying that I had confidence in their ability to move ahead without me.

Besides, I had more than enough to do. In fact, during my last seven months I couldn’t get it all done. Each day was full of opportunities, frustrations, victories, and defeats—like every other day of my ministry. Preaching became a time to focus on the great themes of the gospel. Evangelism and outreach took on an even greater urgency for me. And counseling became a process of making appropriate referrals before leaving—no small task.

And on my last Sunday, I preached, conducted a baptismal service, received new members into the church, and said my good-bys to a fifteen-year pastorate.

Frankly, I didn’t have time to be a lame duck!

• Say good-by well. Based on my reading of Roy Oswald’s pamphlet, I felt that my good-by should be a time of celebration—celebration of the good things that had taken place between the people and me.

The deacon committee at Manassas Baptist agreed and appointed a subcommittee to accomplish this end—the Bratcher Celebration Committee. Their goal was to celebrate my fifteen-year pastorate at Manassas as well as the forty-two years of ministry Marjie and I enjoyed.

The celebration was built around three services. The first was held on a Sunday evening, which happened to be my birthday. We enjoyed a time of worship built around my favorite anthems and hymns, and then we followed with a reception.

The second celebration was held on the Sunday before Marjie’s birthday. That service, held at the conclusion of morning worship, focused on thanksgiving for Marjie’s ministry. A reception also followed.

The third celebration was a retirement banquet held after morning worship three weeks before I retired. There were several brief speeches by members of my family, church members, ministerial colleagues, and denominational executives. A special surprise was the main speaker—an Episcopal priest who for many years had been my closest colleague in Manassas. Although he had since moved from Virginia to Florida, the committee had paid his expenses to bring him back!

Gifts and mementos were presented, including a book of letters and an album of photographs. Included were photographs taken, table by table, of all 350-plus people present at the banquet.

• Prepare your spouse. In some ways, retirement can be more traumatic for the spouse than for the retiree. Furthermore, I didn’t want Marjie to simply tag along at my retirement festivities.

So I encouraged the celebration committee, upon the advice of a friend, to have that special celebration for her. I called friends in each of the churches we had served and asked them to write letters expressing appreciation for Marjie’s unique contributions to our ministry. Portions of these letters were read at her celebration service.

In addition, we spent many hours in deep conversation, sharing our feelings, hopes, dreams, and fears about retirement. We knew that retirement would be a challenge and that we needed each other’s support.

Preparing to Live

Saying good-by properly is one thing. Starting a new life is another. But both are part of preparing for retirement. To help us set out on our new life, we did advance preparation in at least five areas.

• Moving. I feel that a pastor should move away from the church’s community upon retirement. The pastor and congregation need to make a complete break with each other. Otherwise the next pastor will have to deal both with the memory and the physical presence of the former pastor—and one is hard enough.

Sometimes, of course, it’s not possible to move, at least immediately—if, for instance, the church gives the pastor and spouse the parsonage as a retirement present. In such cases, pastors must set clear guidelines about their future relationship with the church and its new pastor. Even then, the retired pastor might consider moving after two or three years.

Any move is difficult; it’s not only expensive but draining to make new friends, get established with doctors and dentists, change addresses, and so on. But I think moving after retirement is more difficult still. In previous moves, the pastor and family always had a host of new friends waiting for them, ready to help them settle in. Upon retirement, however, that is usually not the case.

Finances can also constrain the retirement move. The pastor feels a pressure to make the right choice of home and community, because few retired pastors can afford the luxury of moving a second time.

Consequently, Marjie and I started talking seriously about our move eighteen months before retirement. We purchased books on retirement communities where we might live. The books listed the cost of housing, medical facilities, cultural opportunities, recreational activities, and climate. We then listed our priorities and started the process of looking. Our final decision, however, was not made until the first month after retirement.

• Finances. Financial preparation for retirement is a life-long endeavor. Most denominations offer or require their pastors to be enrolled in a retirement program, in addition to social security. The equity of one’s home also works toward retirement.

Some pastors have to use parsonages and consequently can’t build any equity. But even that drawback can be worked with, especially if such pastors recognize the problem early and make wise investments in other areas.

Owning one’s home does not solve every problem, of course. It’s important, for example, to allow sufficient time to sell it. It took us nine months to sell ours. To help the church go about the task of calling a new pastor, we made arrangements to move three months after retirement. That gave us peace of mind, but paying for two homes for a time was difficult.

In terms of saving for retirement, we finally made our major push for retirement when I was about 50. At that point we had paid the bulk of our children’s educational expenses. We secured advice from denominational retirement planners and tax accountants on how to increase our savings programs. We had to cut back on our standard of living, but the sacrifices have paid nice benefits in peace of mind after retirement.

We wanted to enter retirement with a fairly new car—and paid for. So three to four years before retirement we began planning for the automobile we would need.

Immediately prior to retirement, we tried to plan for the first six months of retirement—months when expenses are heavy. For a change, we had to pay moving expenses, and they weren’t tax deductible. Furthermore, I found it was unrealistic to expect extra income from pulpit supplies and interim pastorates during this period.

All in all, we enjoyed many happy moments during the first six months of retirement, in spite of the changes in lifestyle. I am glad we had the financial resources to make those months relatively worry free.

• Activities. Marjie and I also found it helpful to plan what we would be doing with ourselves for the first couple of years of retirement.

For example, two of my goals were to research and write on the personal and professional needs of ministers. So I wanted to be near a good seminary library. Two or three years after retirement I wanted to start supplying pulpits and interim pastorates.

I also want to enjoy some fun activities in retirement. Unfortunately my two mainstays in this area—traveling and racquet-ball—are not as easy to pursue as I had hoped. I am finding that the high cost of traveling and my irregular schedule get in the way of those pursuits. So I am in the process of trying to develop other interests, such as reading fiction.

• Continuing ministry. I also have tried to prepare myself for continuing my ministry. First, I set clear guidelines about under what circumstances I would return to my last pastorate for weddings and funerals. Second, I found a new church home.

Frankly, I’ve found it hard to adjust to being a nonstaff church member. But I’ve made every effort to attend not only worship but business meetings, fellowship gatherings, and Sunday school classes. At these meetings I keep my opinions to myself, unless specifically asked, and even then I try to speak only a helpful word.

In addition, I’m willing to serve in these areas but only at the request of the congregation or pastor. I also try to do these things as a church member, not as a former pastor, and I avoid saying or implying, “This is the way I did it when I was pastor.”

• The first month. One of the areas in which Marjie and I had completely different views was on what to do the first month. My inclination was to plan nothing. While the months before retirement had been unusually happy, they were also extremely busy. I saw the first month, therefore, as a time to relax.

Marjie, on the other hand, felt we needed to leave town the first day and be gone for at least a month. Her rationale was that for both the church and us (more particularly for me) there needed to be a physical separation. That was the only way the reality of retirement would sink in. I finally agreed to go along with her preference.

So we planned a couple of trips that first month. But during the first two weeks of travel, I received three phone calls from the church office! Even my absence was not enough to make the break complete.

The fact is, one of the church members died, and people thought I should know. But the family finally decided—partly because I was away—to have the associate pastors officiate at the memorial service. That decision helped me and the members of the church begin accepting the idea that I had indeed retired.

Marjie was right.

Six months into retirement I called a friend, also recently retired, and invited him and his wife to have lunch with Marjie and me. He asked, “What day will be convenient?”

I replied, “Any day but Wednesday.”

He laughed and said, “It’s quite a change to have a choice, isn’t it?”

It is. And the more planning we do before retirement, the more choices we’ll have in retirement.