The Uncomfortable Opportunity of Transition

The Internal and External Work of Preparing for Retirement from Ministry

Roadmap to Retirement: A Case Study in Thoughtful Preparation for Retirement from Ministry

Pitfalls in Retirement Planning (and Things to Consider Early in Your Career)

Deep Gladness, Deep Hunger: A Guide to Living your Vocation in Retirement

Intercultural Perspectives on Retirement Planning

Don’t Do It Alone: Why Community Matters for Retirement Planning

Creating a Timeline: A Month-by-Month Guide for the Transition to Retirement from Ministry

Financial Issues: Mapping Out a Money Plan for Your Retirement

Retirement Guidance from the CRCNA Church Order

When to Announce Your Retirement Date to Your Congregation

Equipping Your Church Leadership for Your Retirement

Preparing Your Congregation for Your Retirement from Ministry

Collaboration Is Key: Engaging Those Closest to You as You Prepare for Retirement

Where Will I Land After Retirement? Questions for Discernment

Your Emotions Are In for a Ride: Prioritizing Emotional Health in Retirement

Setting Healthy Expectation for Yourself in the Transition to Retirement

Attend to the Accumulation of Traumas: Retirement as an Opportunity for Healing

Navigating the Experience of Diminishment in Retirement

Anticipating the Joy of Refreshment in Retirement

Your Final Months of Full-Time Ministry

Exploring Your “New” Identity in Retirement

Not “To” or “For” but “With:” Exploring New Relational Dynamics After Full-Time Ministry

You and Your Spouse in Retirement

Exploring New Roles after Retirement from Full-Time Ministry

Slowing Down Is a Gift: Retirement as an Invitation to Rest

Guidance for Church Councils as Your Pastor Approachs Retirement

Guidance for Church Councils as Your Congregation Encounters the Pastor’s Retirement

It is important to note that while the concept of “retirement” is familiar to people in many Western cultures there are some cultures, such as many Eastern and Indigenous cultures, in which there are no expectations that a worker will, at some point later in life, bring one’s work to an end. In the Navajo language, for example, there is not even a word specifically for “retirement”.  In such contexts there may be less awareness of the need to prepare for retirement and less awareness of the freedom and flexibility that typically come with retirement.

In this resource we want to be sensitive to all of these cultural realities. For example, we will sometimes use substitutes for the word “retirement”, phrases such as “what comes after full time employment” or “the time of slowing down”. We will also give sensitive thought to the situations faced by those who, for a variety of reasons, find themselves in financial difficulty even after years of diligent work in church ministry.

The guidance in this resource emerged from two projects funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.

The first project involved a small group of Christian Reformed Church (CRC) pastors in West Michigan who met monthly for a year, beginning in 2004, to think together about their upcoming retirements. They observed that there was little guidance for such ministers, and so the group gathered to share their later career/approaching retirement wisdom with one another. They then created a booklet called “Closing Well–Continuing Strong” (published in 2006), built on three key ideas:

• Planning for retirement is best done in community.
• Planning is a process that should be engaged intentionally.
• The process often brings anxiety.

The second project funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., called Thriving Together,  began in 2019 as the staff of a CRC agency named Pastor Church Resources (now Thrive) began to think deeply about transitions in pastoral ministry, including the transition from later career into retirement. Work was done, over the ensuing four years, to gather thoughts and perspectives from pastors across the Christian Reformed denomination who were experiencing this transition. The gathered material was then combined with key wisdom from the “Closing Well–Continuing Strong” publication to produce this resource, “Retirement from Pastoral Ministry: Guidance for a Healthy Transition.”

We are deeply thankful for the many Thriving Together pastors whose insights and experiences provided much of the content for this resource. In addition, Rev. Zach Olson was the supervisor for the grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. that underwrote this project, and Rev. Dave Den Haan served as the lead writer. Rev. Dr. Cornelius Plantinga provided his expertise in the area of Christian vocation, and Rev. Dr. Mark Roberts gave advice and counsel from his perspective as the founder of the De Pree Center’s Flourishing in the Third Third of Life Initiative. Rev. Pedro Aviles, Rev. Mary Stegink, and Rev. John Terpstra joined Dr. Roberts on the resource’s review team.