{"id":696097,"date":"2020-01-20T02:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomrainer.com\/?p=696097"},"modified":"2020-05-19T13:16:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T17:16:26","slug":"the-retired-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-retired-pastor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Retired Pastor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i>By Thom S. Rainer<\/i><\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tens of thousands of pastors and other church staff members are becoming retirement age each year. We have not seen anything like this phenomenon. These church leaders are reaching retirement age, but they still have many years of active ministry and life left in them. How will they respond? How will churches respond?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are watching this trend with fascination at Church Answers. Let\u2019s look at some of the key issues unfolding.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Some churches are fine with older pastors remaining in their roles. Others are not. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We see many churches where the members don\u2019t think twice about having a 60-something or 70-something pastor. They see their pastors as fully capable and fully energetic to continue leading. Other churches are ready for the older pastors to move on. This latter disposition is exacerbated when the church is struggling and\/or in decline.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Too many retirement-age pastors don\u2019t have options because of financial realities. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u2019ve addressed this issue in an earlier post. Though my observations are anecdotal, well over half of the pastors with whom I have conversed are woefully prepared financially when they hit their mid-60s. It\u2019s usually a case of churches failing to care for pastors and pastors failing to plan for themselves.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The most common option for pastors leaving their role is to become interim or part-time pastors in other churches. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The opportunities for this ministry are increasing regularly. At any given point, we could have over 50,000 churches seeking an interim pastor. Indeed, we created Interim Pastor University to train and differentiate those pastors moving into these roles.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>More pastors are moving into the role of church consultant or coach after leaving their pastoral roles. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some of these pastors have 30 to 40 years of experience as a pastor. Their wisdom and experience can be incredibly helpful to churches. Our fastest growing ministry at Church Answers is Church Consultation University, created to train and certify leaders in this new role.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>It will not be unusual for pastors to retire from their churches and have 20+ years left of vibrant ministry. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">These pastors may have chosen to go a different path, or their churches may have forced them out. Don\u2019t let life expectancy numbers fool you. Once someone makes it to 65, the likelihood of them staying active to 85 is good. These can be some prime years of ministry for these former pastors.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The timing for this wave of \u201cretired\u201d pastors could match well with the need for part-time, interim, or revitalizing pastors. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The demand could meet supply <\/span><b>IF <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">churches would look beyond the traditional profiles. Of the roughly 350,000 Protestant churches, about 349,900 want a pastor who is 35 to 49 years old and has 30 years of lead pastor experience (sarcasm intended). It\u2019s time for many churches to look to the growing supply of older pastors who can still lead well.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The trend of retiring pastors who are not retiring from ministry will continue to grow. It will be fascinating to see how churches respond.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Thom S. Rainer\u00a0 Tens of thousands of pastors and other church staff members are becoming retirement age each year. We have not seen anything like this phenomenon. These church leaders are reaching retirement age, but they still have many years of active ministry and life left in them. How will they respond? How will&#8230;","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,177,191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-lead","category-mind-body-and-spirit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Retired Pastor - ThomRainer.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tens of thousands of pastors and other church staff members are becoming retirement age each year. We have not seen anything like this phenomenon.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-retired-pastor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Retired Pastor - ThomRainer.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tens of thousands of pastors and other church staff members are becoming retirement age each year. 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