Ministers Transitioning to Retirement

We’re going to talk about the discussion of moving out of a senior pastor’s role into other forms of ministry as ministry changes as a minister moves towards the end of their career.

And I have two wonderful guests to discuss this with. Ken Horton, who has ministered in Fort Worth for a long time. How long were you in Fort Worth?

And Dr. Hal Halbecker – I keep wanting to put that L in there – Habecker, who has been – you ministered in the Dallas area, right?

Darrell Bock: That sounds great. I’ve got all kinds of personal questions I want to ask you, but I will refrain from doing it now. Hal, what about your experience? When did you graduate from seminary?

Hal Habecker: I finished here in 1978. Met and married my wife here in the middle of my third year. Spent five years on staff at First Baptist.

And then I just left a year ago this week actually. And we’ve launched a ministry called Finishing Well Ministries. It’s focused on older people, an older generation. Number one, staying on the cutting edge of their spiritual life. We don’t check out as disciples, growing in grace, and staying on the cutting edge of the local church. The local church is focused intensely on younger generations, and older people seem to have been forgotten in many ways. So I am just focused on older people, what’s God’s purpose for you, what’s his mission for you, and step up and let’s do it.

Well, let’s dive in here. Let’s talk about moving towards transition, which would kind of be phase one. So you’re in ministry, you’ve been there in many cases for several years, more than a decade in one place, that kind of thing. And it begins to dawn on you that maybe you’re not here forever. Explain that thought process. Because I have in mind here for this podcast not just the people who have already made that decision, but people who may be wrestling with making that kind of a decision.

Ken, what did you go through in thinking through the transition? You said it took eight years, so obviously you spent some time thinking about it.

For me, I knew I didn’t want to be a pastor into my seventies. So I went to the elders and told them that we could do a regular transition, a traditional transition. I would finish and when I was through, they could find somebody, or we could do an intentional transition. They chose the intentional transition. And we spent four years considering different people that might be a possible candidate to be the pastor. We found a fellow who over time proved himself to be that person. And so I left right before I turned 60 with the excitement of starting a new ministry hopefully for the next season of ministry.

Hal, what about your situation?

I am somewhat back in the church, but I’m preaching other places.

So in listening to you I’m hearing two things on the one hand. And in both cases it sounds like there came a time when you realized that in terms of being able to minister to the church in terms of where it needed to go given the nature of its makeup and to some degree its demographics, you realized the church could probably be more effective with having a younger leader.

And then the second thing that I’m hearing is thinking through what’s the best way to do that without being too disruptive to the local community that I’m a part of. Am I missing anything in that?

We had a good experience. The elders were very gracious to help us get started in our new ministry. And so that was a very positive thing. But I think you need to work on communication and make sure you understand what that’s going to look like and not assume that you know what’s being talked about. It’s just about practical things regarding is it going to be best for me to stay or to go to another place. What does that look like? We were in agreement on that. But if you weren’t in agreement on that, that would be an important thing to be clear about.

And I think the guys that I’ve noticed that have a great experience are ones who are excited about something in the future. When they’re living with their eyes in the rearview mirror about what used to be, for them or for their wife in particular, that can be a very difficult experience.

So I find myself in that same transition to a new ministry. So I’m experiencing what I’m talking to other people about. Reassignment; not retirement. Reassignment.

So I’m thinking all along, what’s God doing in your life, how do you process life, what do you see yourself doing in five years, ten years? So somewhere in your fifties you really need to be thinking about this. So my encouragement to any pastor or any church leader in any capacity, what is God taking you towards as you age? I think it’s a critical issue. And if you don’t do that, I would think a pastor may be no different than anybody else who doesn’t ask those questions for himself or herself.

And there is relational cost. Both of our wives worked through the issue of not being able to be around the people that they had given 25-plus years to. And my wife struggled with it for a while. But she loves one-on-one discipleship. And when she began to pour her life into four to six women every week – and the men take about an hour and 15 minutes to work through our conversations; they take about three hours to work through their conversations.

Ken Horton: I would just say that there is no transition that’s perfect. And so everybody in a transition has caught an elbow that they weren’t expecting to catch on the way out. Even the most positive ones. But in one where there’s been real hurt and real woundedness, to stop and to face that directly is going to be a critical part of the transition. Because as long as you’re looking back, sort of sorting through the anger of the wounds that you’ve experienced, you’re going to be neutralized for anything that’s going to be fruitful and joyful in the future. So I think for that person to say this is an important issue for you to work through. You’re angry, you don’t feel like you were treated well, you don’t feel like you were appreciated the way you should have been. And so this is an important first step for being able to enjoy whatever future God has for you. So you can’t carry that with you and expect to have a fruitful final season of ministry.

I think it’s important to have good friendships. Vicki and I had a strong core of five, six, close couples who walked through this entire process with us. And they held our arms up like Aaron and Hur held Moses up in the battle.

And the other thing, you need to converse well with your elder board. And that’s when a lot of hurts happen if the leadership teams are not on the same wavelength. But you have to keep working at that. That’s an annual, almost a weekly, daily process in the life of a pastor. How are you working through all these things? And if you get hung up at some point, the plane may crash and burn. And then you need friends, you need Jesus, you need time away, you need to get refocused and press on.

And it seems to me that thinking through different kinds of ministries that might need good volunteer, experienced help might actually be a way to help transition into a type of recovery by becoming useful again in ministry if you are willing to undertake that and look at that. Is that another way to think about completing a rough transition?

And so the thing that I discovered about going through hurtful times is that when you learn how to do that, when that becomes something that has a healthy outcome, you are prepared for ministering to a whole host of people, because everybody you know has been hurt. And the human response to hurt is anger. And so there’s nobody in your circle –

On this issue I think the more proactive you can be – even I’m thinking about you and what you would do after – you know, and moving into this role here. I’m sure you thought a long time about that.

I’m sitting here thinking – and this risks dating the podcast a little bit, but I’m going to go ahead and do it. I’m thinking about – and you don’t think of a spiritual example coming from this place necessarily. But I’m thinking of Rhonda Rousey, who just got beat in a famous match. And she did an interview yesterday in which she describes being in the locker room after she lost, having suicidal thoughts because she says if people don’t care about me because I’m no longer the champion, who am I?

And this is what you’re talking about. The identity placed in the wrong place. And so she was immediately dislocated by the loss. And the pain was so deep. And then she immediately transitioned, strangely enough, to what her future was going to be. And in thinking about her future, she transitioned out of the very scary place she was finding herself kind of unexpectedly having landed in. And I think that’s actually a very normal set of emotions in some ways if you get dislocated, to end up in that kind of uncomfortable space.

Well, that’s interesting. We could say here, but I do have one other topic I want to transition to. And that is, all right, we’ve thought about the transition, we’ve executed the transition, and we’ve even figured out, okay, we’re even going to have a support team as we move into the transition. What’s the transition like once you finally get to where this new place is that you’re going? What advice do you have for people who are headed towards or are thinking about entering into that phase of the discussion?

But I have loved it. I have loved not having the normal routine at the church where I’m thinking about the staff, thinking about the worship order, thinking about elder meetings. And I am focused on what it is that God has me doing. And I’m really free to do that almost 100 percent. I feel the creative things flowing as I haven’t felt in the past. And it’s just been fun.

Darrell Bock: Are you working with couples when you do this?

Now her role in our ministry now is a whole lot different than it was as a pastor’s wife. A pastor’s wife, you’re involved in everything together almost. There’s a lot of things that I’m involved in separately from her. But for example, last night we went out with a retired physician and his wife. And we had a wonderful evening, encouraging them together. She is very much a part of my life, very much a part of our ministry. But I think that’s one of the things we’re just praying about and really seeking God, how to really grow this ministry between the two of us together and make it stronger.

Darrell Bock: What are you still trying to figure out about the transition? Is there anything that fits into that category, or are you just pretty content with where you are? What does that look like?

So I would say that I have moved from transition to transition. I’ve transitioned out of the TCU football role. Did that for 20 years. Did it with another fellow for three years. And now he is doing it without my participation. So I am a transition –

I spoke at Baylor University a few weeks ago with some honors college students down there. And my advice to them when they went home for the next break, do me a favor and go pay attention to your grandparents. Just go sit with them. Have a meal. Ask them questions about their life. The generations are more disparate today than perhaps ever before. And I think the church is the great intergenerational organism that brings the body of Christ together. So if they pay attention to that, they will transition a lot better and those older people will start giving them better advice.

Darrell Bock: Yes. I really do think that the generational transition and ministering across generation, one of the greatest challenges of the church that also is a very, very important challenge. Because there are very few places today where you have the opportunity to get that kind of cross-generational input that is so helpful to balancing people out in terms of how they face life.