Retirement…

People ask me, “When did you decide to become a pastor?”  My answer is a bit unusual. 

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a pastor.  In our country vernacular, we called it being a “preacher.”  When asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my response was always the same: “I want to be a preacher.”  Sometimes I added to my aspirations: “I want to be a preacher and a cowboy;” “I want to be a preacher and a garbage man;” “I want to be a preacher and a policeman.”  Preacher was always at the top of my list. 

I preached sermons to the cows when I was six.  I gathered my friends together during Vacation Bible School and preached to them.  Mark, Teresa, Harold, Audrey, and Denise were my first congregation.  When the fifth-grade Sunday School teacher didn’t show, I was the substitute teacher. In junior high school, I wrote my first real research paper on Billy Graham.   

Somehow, that inner call never dimmed.  I preached my first sermon at age sixteen.  The chairman of deacons came forward to ask for prayer; my sister rededicated her life.  I was licensed to preach thirty days later.  I preached at my home church for “Youth Sunday” and whenever the pastor needed a break.  

I went to Samford University because they had a reputation for being a good place to learn about ministry, and they had a program that allowed ministerial students a chance to go preach every Sunday.  I learned to preach in those small Alabama country churches in Bug Tussle, Oneonta, West Blocton, and Geraldine. The sermons weren’t that great, but preaching just felt natural. 

I went to Southern Seminary in Louisville, determined to get a Ph.D.  I took a year off to stay home and pastor my first church, thirty of the bravest people God ever put on the face of the earth.  I went back and finished my master’s degree.  I got into the Ph.D. program.  I was halfway through with my degree when I realized I was not cut out to be a scholar.  Scholars tended to argue over things that didn’t seem to matter to me.  I went ahead and finished the degree, and it certainly opened some doors for me.   

While doing my Ph.D., I pastored two churches.  The first was a rural church in Finchville, Kentucky.  The community was transitioning; the dynamics were complicated.  I never seemed to measure up to the previous pastor’s performance.  I was once told my preaching wasn’t deep.  When I asked why the person thought that, she replied, “I understand your sermons.  I never understood the previous pastor; now he was deep.”  I got out before I was let go. 

My third church was in inner city Louisville.  Located six blocks from Churchill Downs, the church was hampered by location and lack of parking.  Still, God blessed, and it was in that church that I learned how to lead. 

My degree in hand, I was ready to move on.  God, however, said, “Wait.”  I watched my classmates move on to pastor “First Baptist” churches while I languished in Louisville.  I interviewed with thirty-two churches and almost gave up when a church with a strange name, in a place I had never heard of, said they would like to talk to me.   

I called a previous pastor, and he said, “Alice Drive is a good place to go and stay three years and move on.”  I stayed three years and then another twenty-eight.  God was at work.  The church grew, then outgrew our building.  We had to move services over to the University auditorium.  We voted to relocate.  When we were a church of 400 attendees, we voted to build a building that would hold 800.  People with much faith joined together, sacrificed, and took a series of leaps.  God blessed.   

We weathered downturns in the economy, some poorly executed decisions on my part, and people kept coming.  COVID came, and it felt like we had to start all over.   

My age started to tell on me.  I tired easily.  People under thirty didn’t get some of my illustrations, like “dialing a number on a phone.”  I realized time was coming to step aside. 

I remember driving to Durham to see my grandson, talking with my wife.  In the midst of that conversation, I heard from God.  I have never heard God audibly, but I heard a message in my soul: “It is time to step down.”   

Now I am a few days away from stepping down as Lead Pastor of Alice Drive Baptist Church, after thirty-one years of service, and a total of forty-one years as a pastor.  I have many emotions.  One is relief.  By my count, I’ve attended over 480 Deacon meetings.  I’ve gone to over 2,000 committee meetings.  By God’s grace, I will never have to go to another Baptist meeting. 

On the other hand, I will miss the people.  I work with the finest team I have ever seen.  I will miss walking with people through the most important moments of life: birth, coming to faith, baptism, marriage, and death.  I’ve enjoyed the preaching, but preaching means writing a new term paper every seven days.   

People have asked what I will do in retirement.  I hope to coach pastors, tend to my cows, manage the ranch, and have time to invest in friends.  Spending more time with my grandsons goes without saying. 

One thing I have noticed is that God seems to really use people in the last third of their lives.  Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus all have the peak of their stories in the last third.   I’m entering the last third.  I think I’m not really retiring.  There is a new adventure out there, and I am eager to see what God has in store.  I think God’s guidance for me is the same as it was for the first two-thirds of my life: Find my next step, and take it, for it brings me one step closer to Jesus.