On January 1, 2011, 100,000 Baby Boomers reached age 65. Every day since then, another 100,000 Boomers turn 65. Many of them retire at that age or shortly thereafter.
That’s a lot of retired Boomers. Among them are a lot of retiring pastors.
So, we recently asked a number of retired or retiring Boomer pastors what they planned to do in their next stage of life. We received five common responses among them:
- Boomer pastors are not retiring from vocational ministry. We received that message loud and clear. No Boomer with whom we spoke was planning a life of travel and rocking chairs exclusively. These pastors had definitive ideas, some concrete plans, about what they would do next.
- The most common path was to become an interim pastor. Slightly under half of the respondents had this ministry as a clear path. Many of them had interim pastorates waiting on them when they retired. One pastor who retired six years ago has already served in seven interim roles, almost without a break.
- Some Boomer pastors will serve on church staff in a different role. Most of them chose not to serve at the church from where they were retiring. But it was not unusual for some of them to return to a church they served in earlier years, this time doing ministry in a part-time or full-time staff role. We are also watching a growing trend among retiring pastors to serve in church revitalization and replanting roles.
- It is not unusual for a Boomer pastor to mentor other pastors in retirement. Indeed, most of these pastors…
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