Hitting My Stride in the Third Phase of Life and Ministry
November 7, 2018 Roland Kuhl 0 Comments
I am sixty-three today. Received a ton of Facebook greetings, connected with some old friends and family from all over – Canada, Australia and the US. Turning sixty-three means that I am beginning my 64th year. As I look ahead, maybe I have got another 30 years or so to live out the third or fourth phase of my life. That means, as I approach retirement in a little over a year, I have about as many years ahead of me as the ones that are behind me when I started out in ministry.
When I began in ministry, I looked to Timothy as a model and Paul’s encouragement to him for not letting anyone look down on him because of his youthfulness, but rather to set an example in speech, conduct, in love, faith and purity (cf. 1 Tim 4:12). Then I hit by 50s on my way to my 60s and I realized that I was getting to old to look to Timothy for my example – Moses might be a better fit, who at the two-thirds point of his life, when he thought his best years were behind him, discovered that God was not done with him yet.
Yet, whether I look to Timothy, or Moses, I realize that I am as much part of God’s Story and Vision as they were. My own wanderings, wonderings, doubts, and hopes together with my own faithfulness, successes and failures in ministry and in being a parent and husband, these are the basis of my own messy spirituality. In ways unique to me, I, therefore, seek to exemplify what it is to walk discerning the Spirit, and hopefully, as I discern how, where, and in whom the Spirit is active, participate in God’s redemptive mission in the world.
Over the years I have gone through different phases of life and ministry, in which I have discovered that pastoring is not about my exerting control or casting vision, but walking alongside people and helping them attend to God in their lives, and in so doing, together we make space for the Gospel in our neighborhoods. It is in our walking and ministering together that we speak life into each other’s lives – we mentor one another, we exemplify Christ to one another – we live submitting ourselves one to another out of reverence for Christ (cf. Ephesians 5:21). In fact, the Timothy’s and Moses’ in our lives are all around us – each who is in Christ seeking to reveal Christ Jesus through their lives.
So, as I embark on, perhaps, the last phase of my life and ministry, the ones who show me the way are the ones with whom I walk together, do life together, speak life into one another’s lives. These are the people who touch my life every day – family, friends, colleagues, students, and people the Spirit brings into my life. The next 30 years are going to be better than the first 30 years, and the second 30 years.