Years and years of putting your feet up is the lifestyle of the sluggard.
To be a sluggard is a so called ‘deadly sin.’
The concept we now know as retirement is a 19th century invention and not a Christian concept.
Former Missionary, Bible College lecturer and principal Mike Raiter says the idea that we should stop work at 65 and enjoy 20 or 30 years of rest is not biblical.
How should we think about the stage of life that starts at 65. What are the ministry opportunities available? What are the sins and temptations that the over 65’s are prone to?
And how can younger pastors speak to those who are older?
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/growing-old-mike-raiter
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
Years and years of putting your feet up is the lifestyle of the sluggard.
To be a sluggard is a so called ‘deadly sin.’
The concept we now know as retirement is a 19th century invention and not a Christian concept.
Former Missionary, Bible College lecturer and principal Mike Raiter says the idea that we should stop work at 65 and enjoy 20 or 30 years of rest is not biblical.
How should we think about the stage of life that starts at 65. What are the ministry opportunities available? What are the sins and temptations that the over 65’s are prone to?
And how can younger pastors speak to those who are older?
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/growing-old-mike-raiter
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
It is the pastor's heart and rethinking retirement, to avoid the sin of the sluggard with my crater. Years and years of putting your feet up, that is the lifestyle of the sluggard. To be a sluggard, well, that is a deadly sin. The concept that we now know as retirement is a 19th century invention and not a Christian concept. The idea that we should stop work at 65 and then enjoy 20 or 30 years of rest it's just not biblical, says my crater. But how should we think about this stage of life and what are the ministry opportunities available and also the sins and temptations that the over-65s are prone to? And how should those of us who are pastors aged under 65 minister best to those over 65? Mike Rader is over 65. He spent years in pastoral ministry, primarily in leadership roles at theological colleges in Pakistan and Sydney and Melbourne. He now spends most of his time training up younger preachers and is partway through a book or writing book called Growing Old Mike, let's jump right in and afford questions.
Speaker 2:We've just lost all your overseas over 60s with a viewing audience with an opening quote.
Speaker 1:What is old and are you old All?
Speaker 2:right. Well, isn't that a good question. The three ways you can describe being old, the one we use, which I think is probably the most unreliable, is chronological, that is, you've got a date on your birth date which says how many years you've been around on this earth. How do we measure it? I think more reliable is that. Secondly, it's biological, that is, there are some people who might be 70, and we both know, we'd all know them who look 50, 55. They still got their hair still dark, they're no wrinkles, they're still intellectually and physically vibrant. They're going to genetically. They're just younger. And then you've got functional. You often ask how old do you feel?
Speaker 2:I read about a guy called Emile Ratlbrand, who's a Dutch journalist who, 65, felt 45, and tried to get the date on his birth certificate changed legally so he'd be legally 45. I identify as a 45 year old. Yes, he lost the case, but the point being is, yes, I have gray hair, I have wrinkles, but I feel and I think this is me, dominic I feel. I think I feel 50. I've got lots of energy, lots of passion, enthusiasm. I mean I'm taking more pills than I used to, but my health is sound. So I think that's a more reliable way to measure how I should think about my future. And then looking at my birth certificate. We just look at the birth certificate and we see the magic number there 65, that, oh great. Now I can change my lifestyle.
Speaker 1:So are you retired.
Speaker 2:If I had a dollar for every time I'm asked that question, I could retire and live somewhere very, very expensive. No, I'm not. I'm not retired. I work full time. I've no and you're way over 65. No-transcript and I have no plans to retire. I hope that retirement is forced on me Well, in the sense that I'll reach the stage where physically, emotionally, I can't do it anymore. The day will come when the phone stops ringing, the email stops coming. My dear wife says to me honey, I'm sorry, I heard your last sermon.
Speaker 1:And even I feel asleep, and even I feel asleep.
Speaker 2:it's all over. So that's gonna happen, I think I suspect, and I'll be wise enough to accept that. But I can't see any reason. I can see lots of reasons not to retire but to keep on serving the Lord while he gives me the strength to do so, and not by we talk about retirement, not by what the world says to us, which is you earn the right to retire, you earn the right at 60, 65, to put your feet up and now just do what you enjoy doing. I just can't find that in the Bible. I don't think it's good for you, it's not good for the gospel or the world.
Speaker 1:Well, some people try to find it in the Bible, in Numbers 8. They try it out there. Yes, I'll give you the verse and then you can. This applies to the Levites. Men 25 years or old or more shall come to take part in the work at the tent of meeting, but at the age of 50, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer. They may assist their brothers in performing their duties at the tent of meeting, but they themselves must not do the work. This, then, is how you are to assign the responsibilities of the Levites.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple of musts there, isn't there. So what do we draw from that? Do you say, okay now, young people, until you're 25, don't work. Once you're at 50, stop work. The Bible says, well, that's clearly not the case.
Speaker 2:Being a Levite involved taking down the temple and then coming up again. It was hard, rigorous physical work. So God says to those over 50, stop that work. That particular kind of work You've got to say. It doesn't say have no more to do with the temple. You can still take part there, but the physical work of having moved that temple is no longer your responsibility. He's not saying then go back to your tribal clan and sit on your vine and fig tree and just enjoy the sunshine. Then go back to their tribal clan and they'd work the field. They did what people did back then. They didn't retire, they kept working until they no longer could work. That's a command for the Levites for their particular work of taking up and down the Tabernacle. It's not a perpetual guideline or even mandate for when you should start work or end work. It's a requirement for then those people at that particular time and that particular job.
Speaker 2:So really that's about physical restraints, physical restraints, and it's a good command and the application is still today.
Speaker 1:You reach a point where physically, mentally, emotionally, you just can't keep doing what you're doing Yesterday in our staff meeting we finished our staff meeting, we booked a council cleanup. One of the couches needed to be thrown out and I said, well, can a couple of the strong young men.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We know that you're raised doing your back in and ruining things. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now what about rest in the Bible? Because that's a big thing going through the scriptures, causing me to look forward to rest, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's of course when you read Hebrews, for example our rest is in the age to come. That's our great hope as Christians. But even now, I don't think it means non-work. We are in Eden. We work. I think we are working beings and I imagine some way we work in the age to come in a way that workers delightful.
Speaker 1:I love my job. You get that in Luke 19,. That take charge of many cities. Exactly, take charge of many cities.
Speaker 2:It's a parable show. It's a picture of some kind of joyful labor in the age to come. But it'll be refreshing and delightful, that kind of thing, but that's the age to come. In that same parable in Luke 19, the master gives the servants minus 10, 5, and 2. Then he says one version says engage in business until I come.
Speaker 1:Until I come, not until I'm 65.
Speaker 2:Until you're 65. But when I've come, then take charge of 10 cities until I come. And I say I'm a bit cheeky here. Two men do that and one man buried his one in the ground. I think that man was probably retur he took retirement, I suspect I never do?
Speaker 1:I mean, I've read that parable and I've preached on that parable. But I've read it and thought about it from the point of somebody as a 40-year-old or as a 50-year-old and thought I've got to apply that to myself. How do you, as somebody who's 70, preach and teach that parable to your peers?
Speaker 2:Or the same way you apply it to yourself, I apply it to my peers. I spoke in a term in Brisbane some years ago on that parable. At the door a man shook my hand. He said it was 60-something. I've been retired for 24 years. I said, oh really, what have you been doing? His words were and I'll never forget this God just drifting for 20 years and I thought to myself my dear brother, one day it won't be me who asks you what have you been doing? He'll be gone. I gave you 20 years of fairly good health.
Speaker 1:You had a no money. I'd work at 40-something.
Speaker 2:And what did you do with that minor? It's worrying, I think it's worrying so to be in the fear of the Lord. I want to keep on working as best I can Now. Of course, depending on our health, things will change, we might cut back and all those kind of things, but if I'd been given breath by the Lord, it's to serve His kingdom. So my question is to be provocative how did deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me, become, indulge yourself, put down your cross and put your feet up for five, 10, 15, 20 years? I just can't find that in the Bible. I think we have a responsibility to work as the Lord enables us and, of course, to bless the world, glorify Him and, of course, bring delight to ourselves. Work should be incredibly satisfying, and work for the kingdom is that.
Speaker 1:So that's my concern, because so you must look at a lot of your peers and say what are you doing? You're wasting your life.
Speaker 2:I get concerned for people you know, my contemporaries, I think. And the other thing, dominic, is the world has changed. We're living like it's still 1950. And this is the first part of my book. People are living longer, much longer.
Speaker 1:I mean the percentages of 28% of Japanese people are over 65. Yeah, that's just 18%, I think here in Australia that's right.
Speaker 2:And that will.
Speaker 1:Well, we might, I mean maybe, even longer still and they're healthier.
Speaker 2:All the stats show people are healthier and more productive and actually happier at that age. So it's a great age to be. The hardy years are the 40s. They're the stressful years. I say to the 40s don't worry, 60s are around the corner, it'll all be much better by then.
Speaker 2:But that's the world we live in. We're having today an ageing revolution across our world and we are ignoring it. It's as big, I think, as a sexual revolution or the digital. It's the ageing revolution where far, far less younger people, far more older people. That awful song by Whitney Houston about me the greatest lovers that love yourself. The first words are I believe that children are our future. No, whitney, they're not. All people are our future, all people. We're living longer. The stats are far more. People are ageing far less people, getting married later, having less kids, far less young people. And of course that means for governments a massive problem with retirement and they're going to pay a high price in a few years' time for having less people now who are earning income to support those the vast number now who are yes, who are using that income for retirement.
Speaker 1:Now I live and minister in a busy part of Sydney and as I look at our church, all of them the vast majority are super busy and I realised, as I was reflecting, I don't think I've ever preached against the sin of slothfulness.
Speaker 2:I can't recall a sermon on the sin of slothfulness.
Speaker 1:And yet I think you're saying the sin of slothfulness is a problem for our retirement.
Speaker 2:It may be. I don't want to be judgmental, I don't want to say it's between the retiree and the God.
Speaker 1:This is what you were saying.
Speaker 2:But it is, I am concerned. Proverbs is mocking of a slugger Mocking, and they're alongside the wicked.
Speaker 1:Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the slugger to those who send him. 1026. The slugger buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth. 1924. How long will you lie there, o sluggered? When will you arise from your sleep? 69?. I passed by the field of a sluggered, by the vineyard of a man-lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns. I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. 24, 30.
Speaker 2:And I hear people say oh Mike, I'm very busy in my retirement. I play golf twice a week and we join the bridge club a tennis on Friday afternoons. We go to the movies once a week with our cheap tickets and every month we take off on our camper van and da-da-da-da-da-da. That might be a bit of a strawman, a bit of a caricature. This is the busy life of the retiree. It sounds a lot to me like the life of the sluggered, a life of self-indulgence. That's not what we're called to. We're called to fight the good fight until the very end, to be involved in the work of the kingdom to the very end and not listen to the world that you have this right at 65, to down tools, listen to the word, which I think you endure, to the end, as best you can, to serve and build the kingdom using the gifts God's given you. We think this entirely, I think because of the changing nature of our world. I did a conference recently and a lot of young pastors there, including your associate pastor, and they're encouraged to go back to their church and tap on the shoulders of the young people in the church. But uni students, young workers who show gifts for ministry and say think about Bible college, think about ministry. Now that's terrific. Now we have a thing in Sydney which I might enormously call youth works. I love youth works. I was now to stop tapping older folk on their 50s on the shoulder. So you've got 20, 25 years left. Go to Bible college, get involved in ministry. Let's start an old works, a place to equip people to reach the vast and growing numbers of old people in our society who are facing their mortality and reaching out to them. My daughter, lauren, is 28. She's about to go to Spain with CMS. She spent two years as a trainee with OFS, worked part-time with a youth worker for a church for a year A bit of experience. She's going there, though fairly inexperienced, but with passion, zeal. She'd be terrific, terrific and she learned on the job.
Speaker 2:Someone who goes there at 58 with 30 years of experience in life, ministry, wisdom, skills, how much, how much to offer I mean mission, should be knocking on people's doors saying come, give us 10, 15 years. We just got to start rethinking. We've got this vast, I think, this vast untapped resource of older people with all the come to the age he hasn't got. Quite a proverbs that gray hair is a mark of splendor. It's gained by the way of righteousness. Again and again in the Bible it's linked with wisdom, the older, wise, and so we had this. Hopefully, this was great resource of people who are wise, skilled, experienced.
Speaker 2:Back in 2004, harvard Business Review had an article. We should retire retirement, said Harvard Business Review. There's all these companies with men and women in their 50s, lots of experience, skills, wisdom, being allowed to leave the company and they say it just doesn't make sense economically to lose this resource of gifted people, encouraging them to stay at least, say, part time. Don't let them go. Think of this thing called retirement. If it's true for that, it's for the world of economics, it's true for the work of the church. Don't let them go. Hang on to them, train them, equip them and send them out to do the work of the gospel, to use their gifts for the kingdom. Now, sure, take time to relax and take time. It's important to care for your grandkids. That's really important. It's important to grow the garden. They're good things to do, but if you've been given gifts by God, which you have, they're to use for the kingdom and to build the kingdom and to build into people's lives for eternity.
Speaker 1:So you've got an application there for the layman as well as for the pastoral worker. Give us the two different applications.
Speaker 2:Well for the pastor worker. In my view, this nonsense that comes 67, you step down, whatever, seen him in this or whatever. Now, in some cases you should. I mean, I have a dear friend who's about to retire at 70. He's been a terrific pastor. He's worn down and it's right for him to step back and honour his health. And he'll keep working for the kingdom, but not full-time though he has. That's right and proper.
Speaker 1:But my goodness, and not with that same level of oversight. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:I mean, mike, have you retired yet? Well, do you think I should have? I gained evidence that it's all over? Well, no, I should think. I got on this trail in part because I was filling in for a church. We were looking for a pastor and I, for two months I filled in and it went pretty well. I was pitching each Sunday and over when I went to see a guy said to me oh, mike, you would make a good business here. Then he had the qualification.
Speaker 2:If you weren't so old, I should have said I'd make a good business here, brother, because I am so old, I would bring to your church the things I can't bring, like maybe the passion of youth, maybe, but I think I'm still pretty passionate. I'd bring to your church, as you said before, 30, 40 years of experience in leadership, in preaching and, to a degree of personal care. I think I have a fair bit to offer. But no, no, no, mike, it's over because you're now late 60s. Well, no. So I want to say to pastors and to churches if they're Dominic Steel, I still got what it takes. Don't let him go. Don't let him go. I mean, it has to go where it takes. Have that word to him that loving word to him brother, it's all over. Or step out, whatever it might be, but don't let them go when they have so much to offer. And the layperson I want to say you have so much to offer. You're probably fairly independent financially, you're probably in pretty good health and you've got to have caught a few years ahead of you. How are you going to invest them for the kingdom?
Speaker 2:I met a guy a while ago. He works. He's a retired London policeman, mid 50s. He'd gone to Afghanistan to teach English and talk about Jesus, having a terrific time. What a great love choice. I mean, can you speak English? Oh, you can good, can you talk about Jesus? Terrific, there are open doors there and in cultures. Dominic, where my hair is just the right colour, mm.
Speaker 1:Just think about that line in Two Thessalonians where people would stop to work and would mooch.
Speaker 2:Oh, give you back to being idle. Yes yes, that's what I'm mooching off the church. The Polish and yeah, I know it's made me think I and he says those who don't work shouldn't eat. In other words, while you can work and feed yourself, you should do it. So we don't mooch off the church. I want to.
Speaker 1:But what if I'm a self-funded retiree? I mean, I'm just pushing back on you, yeah, what if I'm a self-funded retiree? Is it OK now for me to have a long holiday?
Speaker 2:Yes, but not for 10 or 15 years, right? Ok, I'm happy you take a break. I mean, I'm not against good times. I'm not against rest and refreshment or recreation that's a gift from God as well, to be enjoyed. I'm not against that. So what I'm against is seeing your future, post-retirement, as a future to do what you want to do and indulge yourself.
Speaker 1:So let me be a Pharisee for a minute you can. So you're critical of the guy who has just wasted 20 years slouching around. There can be quite a few people watching who are thinking I wouldn't mind that trip around Australia in a caravan when I get to 65. How do you feel about that? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know we give people a long service leave. Take your year out. 进 de bay 사람�as opt off e A year. There are groups called the Christian-Goy-Nomads who do that, and on the way stop in churches and help and help. How much better to do your year around the country and see it as part of ministry. How much better and and satisfying is that. But even if you don't even, it's just to enjoy the delights of God's creation. Take it for a year, come back refreshed, rejuvenated, and think like now how do I spend the next 10, 15 years serving Jesus?
Speaker 1:Yeah, don Carson's dad, tom Carson, wrote keep me from the sins of old men. Any details, some of these sins a tendency to gravitate towards watching TV, a temptation to look backwards instead of forwards, sliding to self pity and easy resentment of young men.
Speaker 2:Yes, I got some of those in my chapter. He regularly, you know Ray has got a list of the temptations of old men and includes those kind of things and I think. I think that may be, that may be right Looking back on the good think, maybe the good old days and that kind of thing. But my main concern is, you know, as Paul says, it's just a warness about a life of idleness. If we can't move to the church, why is it okay to mooch off the government?
Speaker 1:So I.
Speaker 2:Can see I'm thinking this through. Yeah, I want to start a conversation Today, dominic, about this. Could we? Just, it's now unquestioning. The problem for the government is once you give people something, you can't take it back. Macron tried in France, impressive France. What are you doing? Well, retirement of 62. You try to up it. Do a demonstration in the streets. You can't take it back. They have to give us as committed as of now to retirement of 65, 67, and now they're facing an economic Catastrophe, yeah, and they can't take it back. So therefore, as a citizen, what's my responsibility, as a faithful citizen of this government, if I know I can still work and then an income and pay taxes, do I have a moral obligation to do so, apart from all the other stuff about, you know, building the kingdom, serving Christ here? But if I, if I do retire and then I want to use that time for for kingdom work, and then I think, what are you brainstorming that the layman should be doing in terms of use it?
Speaker 1:the person who's spent their life in the office Spent their life as an engineer. You're saying do some theological study.
Speaker 2:I absolutely do some study, that there are churches, for example In our rural areas, crying out for pastors and they can't get them. I had a friend from a church in Sydney. He was a bank manager. He retired. He went to Bible College. I taught him. He then went out to a country church and served there as a pastor for a few years. A skilled leader able to teach or that might not be your gift teaching and preaching and leading but there'll be other gifts. But you go to Bible College, even just for a year, to be equipped to go back to your church and say to your pastor how can I serve more effectively? I want to, I want to reach out to older people. How can, what can we do to make this Our target group? Hear, these vast number of people facing death? What can we do to reach them? The great Unreach of our community?
Speaker 1:Mmm, I Can see you've both got energy and you've got a job that you've done, that you've loved, and so there's a. Is it just convenient for you to argue this? What if I'm in a position where I haven't loved my job and I Don't want to go? I just can't wait to get out of this Drudgery you know, and the difficulties of my job. Yeah, yes, look To a point. You know, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get out of this job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, look to a point. Yes, I know I do come dread the day when which will come, when I can't do this anymore, and that's I'm not alone about many people. You know it's been said that no one ever, ever died regretting they spent the day at work. Well, there's some will regret it. Yeah, they're more worker. They do find delighted their work. And if but if, if your work in the workplace is Unsatisfying and there is drudgery there, that might be a great moment to leave that and do work now, which has Value, eternal implications to build other people's lives. Some years ago my son, joe, bought me tickets to a Rodler over arena to watch my favorite rock stars. I went along to watch Paul Simon, who then was 74, and Fleetwood Mac McFleek was 72, I went to see Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1:The other eight a sprite 81.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I Must say, dominic, I found them inspiring. I think, paul, he sang for two and a half hours. It was amazing yeah yeah, and these guys sang for two and a half hours. They loved it. They said a terrific.
Speaker 2:And and he wasn't doing it for the money, absolutely not for this for the joy of the song she sings and the joy they bring us. And I, fleetwood Mac, have a song don't stop. And they haven't. Well, one of those dead, she stopped, but they haven't. I mean, I think I think they're retired now, but but I, they would beat me. Then poor Simon has a song about taking people to Graceland. That's what I want to do, dominic. So you want to tell me, people to the Graceland? Yeah, the ages, and I figure, if these guys who are singing in Paul's words, silly love songs, you can do that into the 80s, why can't I With the gifts God's given me? That might be just in public conversation, it might be an encouragement, might be an administration, whatever the gift might be, why can I sing the eternal song into my eighties, as Under the law gives me strength, and not stop singing it because I've got this, this kind of mythical level called 65 in retirement?
Speaker 1:mmm, it's really having the the same gospel that drove you to go and serve as a missionary in Pakistan as a young man, driving you in retirement to make the same kind of in principle decisions.
Speaker 2:You mentioned about numbers and the retirement of the priests. I'm preaching this coming Sunday on Philemon, and Paul describes up there as an old man.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'd seen that before. Actually, an old man who's probably writing from prison Will be set free from prison. Most. Most, most scholars assume and probably fulfill his dream as an old man To go to Spain yeah, to come back and presumably arrested and face execution.
Speaker 2:But Paul didn't see being an old man as a reason to down tools. He sure he was the apostle, but he's a disciple of Jesus and took with him other disciples to Spain. And maybe I should join my daughter in my 70s and go to Spain like the apostle. But that's the picture I think we're given. I've taken the example of Paul and, as long as God gives us breath, so he calls us home building the kingdom. And we've just, I think, stopped listening to the word and taken on board the words of the world. And we need to start rethinking that and having a conversation with ourselves, with our old people, to motivate this vast resource of people that God's given us, so that on the last day we're not found idle sluggards but are found faithful and are committed by God. Well done, faithful to the end.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in Pleasure my guest on the Pastors Heart, mike Rater. And look, let me encourage you to take this episode of the Pastors Heart and circulate it amongst the people over 65 and approaching 65 within your church. You've been watching the Pastors Heart, mike Rater. He is a former Bible college lecturer and principal and now he spends his time training young preachers and preaching all over the place across Australia. You've been with us on the Pastors Heart. See you next Tuesday afternoon.