Roger Kovaciny
I spent some sabbatical time in a theological library on Cape Cod. The most interesting thing I found was an unpublished dissertation on the subject of this essay.
The holy ministry is a calling, but it is also a profession–much more than a job. But we should distinguish the Christian ministry from, say, the rabbinate, where it’s a profession but also a job. What does a rabbi do when he retires? Whatever he wants, because the rabbinate is different from the ministry. Among the Jews, the rabbinate is like law, medicine or accounting. One doesn’t enter it because one feels a call or wants to convert people. Jews don’t seek converts; in fact they usually discourage them. One enters the rabbinate because somebody’s gotta do it and the pay justifies the education.
The rabbinate pays better than the Christian ministry. That’s because pastors study for the ministry when they feel a call, want to convert or convince people, or have intensely spiritual reasons of their own. So pastors don’t expect to be paid as well as other people who don’t have those motives. And since pastors are expected not to have vices or a lot of time for expensive hobbies, why pay them like people who do?
Anyhow, rabbis are paid better than pastors. A rabbi who retires might spend six days a week at the golf course. Retired pastors are unlikely to do so. But what DO they do?
Almost all keep pastoring, somehow.
The ministry is a greatly varied profession. It’s hard to get bored for long, because you keep changing from one kind of work to another–all day, every day. Yes, there are the deadlines of getting a bulletin out each week, which means that you need to have all your organizing done, the sermon title and the hymns picked; but you go from study to hospital calls to administrative work to teaching. And then there’s counselling ….
If I was back in a parish, I’d commission a plaque to be hung in my office. It would say “You’re not interrupting me. Your problem IS my ministry.” (You might think from that that I was a good counsellor. Who knows? I gave a lot of advice. Nobody ever took it. But they were glad they talked to me because it helped them think of their own solutions from the Scriptures, facts and insights I brought up.)
Since the ministry is such a varied type of work, there will be aspects of it that you don’t like or do poorly. And that’s a hint to the answer of this question. A retired pastor keeps pastoring, but now he’s free to do the parts of the ministry that he likes and is good at, and to dump the parts he doesn’t like or isn’t good at. (I wish I could dump administration.) In other words, he keeps on pastoring.
If a retired pastor keeps pastoring, why does he retire? Economist Ron Blue pointed out that the ministry is like your kids’ allowance. He said that allowances should be linked to chores, like a paycheck, and that you don’t get 90% of your paycheck for doing 90% of your job, you get 100% of your paycheck for doing 100% of your job and zero % of your paycheck for doing 90% of your job.
A pastor retires when (a) he can do less than 100% of the job and (b) he wants to give up significant parts of it. So he leaves the rest of the job and the paycheck to the actual pastor. He may still drive to church five times a week, go to conferences, counsel, and publish articles for church leaders. But he feels free to pick and choose. (As rabbis do; they may spend their retirement years studying the Talmud.)
So the research showed that when a pastor retires, he keeps on pastoring but he doesn’t get paid for it. Which is probably just as well, since by age 70 most of us simply can’t put in the hours we used to. (You’re slower, weaker, have less energy, less initiative, less stamina, can hardly work evenings, and have to spend a lot more time just staying healthy enough to function–and doing what your wife put off for HER retirement for the sake of your ministry. Helpful hint: don’t count on having the time for the things you’re putting off till your retirement, because you may not have any more time then than you do now. Instead, prioritize. Do a little less of everything now so you can do some of what you want to every week.]
You may find yourself so busy doing ministry that you’ll wish you could retire from retirement. When I was a busy pastor I only managed to write one column a month. Now that I’m retired, I can write … twelve columns a year. You do the math.
One other thing a retired pastor may do is interfere with the new pastor, if he stays in the same parish. It might be a good idea to attend somewhere else for six months while the new shepherd gets established.
As for your wife, she’ll have twice as much husband and half as much money. That may bring challenges of its own. And it’s a good reason to get your finances in order NOW–including learning how to live without luxuries–so that, when you need to retire, you can still keep on pastoring. Because you wouldn’t want to give up your whole way of life.
Roger Kovaciny is a retired missionary living in Waunakee, Wisconsin.
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