{"id":3038,"date":"2021-11-27T20:34:31","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T02:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/?p=3038"},"modified":"2021-11-27T20:34:31","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T02:34:31","slug":"retirement-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/2021\/11\/retirement-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement \u2013 Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I retired from the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in 2007, I said to anyone who would listen, \u201dI\u2019m retiring from a position, not from a calling.\u201d\u00a0 Since then, one of the things that has kept me busy fulfilling my calling is serving as \u201cSpiritual Life and Leadership Mentor\u201d for the WestCoast Baptist Association (metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada).\u00a0 Now, due to a combination of age, health issues, family concerns, and decreasing financial resources related to Disciple All Nations, Inc. (from which all my ministry travel is paid), it is time to retire . . . again. \u00a0Once again, I am retiring from a position, not from a calling. \u00a0I frequently said to my students, \u201cThe word \u2018retirement\u2019 is not in the Bible.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget the day a student brought me some new translation (more likely a paraphrase) that I had not seen before and showed me the word \u201cretirement\u201d in the Old Testament.\u00a0 However, it related to the retirement of the Temple Prostitutes, but it was there.\u00a0 So, I had to adjust my comment to say. Depending on your translation (or paraphrase), the word \u201cretirement is not in the Bible.\u201d\u00a0 Either way, even if the word is there, the call of God has no such retirement date.\u00a0 So, I will keep on preaching, teaching, traveling, writing, mentoring, serving, etc. as circumstances and finances allow. My current guide passage is Psalm 71:17-18 &#8211; \u201cO God, You have taught me from my\u00a0youth; and to this\u00a0day<em>,<\/em>\u00a0I declare Your wondrous works. Now also\u00a0when\u00a0I am\u00a0old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to\u00a0this\u00a0generation, your power to everyone\u00a0who\u00a0is to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I retired from the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in 2007, I said to anyone who would listen, \u201dI\u2019m retiring from a position, not from a calling.\u201d\u00a0 Since then, one of the things that has kept me busy fulfilling my calling is serving as \u201cSpiritual Life and Leadership Mentor\u201d for the WestCoast Baptist Association&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3039,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}