Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Nov/92

Contributor - Arie Blok

Title - Retirement

Topic - Retirement

When our esteemed editor asked me to write an article for Pioneer Christian Monthly on retirement I was somewhat taken aback. After all, I know nothing about retirement since I am not yet retired. When I told my wife about Rev. Drost's request, she advised me, "Tell him that you can't do it." As she well knows, retirement and I are not always on the best of terms.

What retirement means to people depends on many things. To my father, retirement was a relief from many of the burdens of life. The Great Depression had been very hard on him. A bank failure had robbed him of a sizeable inheritance that he had deposited in the bank for safekeeping on the assurance of the banker that the bank was in sound condition. That was on a Friday. The next Monday the bank failed to open. This was such a shock to my father that he was never very able to cope with the problems of life afterwards. I am sure that today he would have been diagnosed as having had a nervous breakdown. In those days there was such a stigma about psychological disorders that the presence of any such condition was vigorously denied as long as possible. Retirement was a relief to my father. My mother said of my father in retirement that he became a different man, much more pleasant and relaxed.

I remember a neighbour of ours telling how his eligibility for a full retirement pension had changed his outlook on his work. "Before this I had to get up in the morning to go to work. Now I wake up and say to myself 'I don't have to get up and go to work unless I want to': so now I get up and go to work because I want to."

Some years ago, I watched a television special in which Barbara Frum discussed mandatory retirement at 65 years of age with senior citizens. Some of the seniors complained loud and long about it. It seemed to me that they were not willing to face the reality that all workers have to retire sometime. I decided then and there that I would not be one of those people who refuse to admit that they have reached an age for retirement.

I remember one RCA minister in the Chicago area who insisted that because he had accepted the call to the church he served before the RCA set a mandatory retirement age, he was not subject to that rule. When he was 80 years old, his consistory decided that he should retire. When he refused to retire, the Classis Pastoral Relations Committee was consulted. The Pastoral Relations Committee met with the pastor and the consistory and an agreement was reached that the minister would retire at the end of the year. When the time came, the minister announced that he had changed his mind. The consistory complained to the P.R. Committee. The P.R. Committee told them that their pastor's service had ended on December 31, and that they were now free to call a new pastor. The consistory told their old minister that his work was over and asked him to make plans to vacate the parsonage. He refused. They offered to rent or sell the parsonage to him to save him the trouble of moving. He rejected their offer, claiming that as their rightful pastor he had a right to live there free. The consistory later wanted to move their new pastor into the parsonage, so, when all persuasion failed, they obtained a court order for the eviction of their old minister.

When the old minister disobeyed the court order, it was enforced by the County Sheriff. It was the most miserable and pathetic mess possible.

I decided that I was not going to hang on to my position when the reasonable expectation of the church would be that I would retire, so I have decided to retire at age 65.

I have various things to deal with. I hate to admit that I am getting old and I like to refer to myself as "just a little past middle-age." My health and my wife's health is very good, and I still enjoy the work of the ministry. My mother's constant insistence that "the Lord put us here to work," and that we should always strive to be useful persons, may make me feel like a disgraceful idler in the earlier years of my retirement.

We are finding it hard to decide where to live in retirement. Remaining in Chatham has its advantages, but I would like to be out of a new pastor's way. Most of our relatives live in Western Michigan. Housing costs are lower in Michigan than in Ontario, and still considerably lower in Iowa, where we also have children, than in Michigan. However, in Iowa we would be out of contact with most of our relatives. Such things as rental costs and prices of houses are factors to be considered because, having entered the ministry at age 47, retirement will mean some drop in income.

A minister who recently moved from a parsonage to an apartment told me that one of the hardest things was to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. That is something else we will have to work through. I want to keep my library intact, which would take up a lot of space in an apartment.

I guess it all comes down to having to trust the Lord to work things out for us in retirement. As my wife points out, since I am always telling people to put their trust in the Lord, I should practice what I preach. Who knows, maybe I will actually enjoy being retired.

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