Retirement is more than golf, gardening and travel. Once someone finishes work, they enter a new phase of life. Philip Hayes (EV Church, Erina), a retired eye surgeon, thought about what would happen if we used this as a great opportunity for the gospel. He’s developed a great ministry to help others transition to this new stage of life.

Phillip talks about:

  • The life of a retiree is not what you think
  • Retirees work better together. How do we get them together?
  • Realigning their hearts to their new life stage
  • Helping people to look back as well as looking forward
  • What retirees can do in ministry

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TRANSCRIPT:

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

G’day.I’m Pete Hughes and welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid, practical tip for Gospel Centre ministry.Every week.The One Thing’s brought to you by Reach Australia, and we want to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches all over our country.We are currently looking at a series on demographic transitions, moving people from one stage of life to another, and the ministry stages that need to take place as we go through this.

Today we have a great guest.I’ve got Philip Hayes with us from EV Church on the Central Coast.Thanks for joining us, Philip.Good to be here.Now, before we get into the episode, what what’s what’s one thing you think God is teaching you right now?Only one.

Only one.Gee, I seem to seem to learn something every day.The well, I heard something on the weekend which which I’ve been working on and he, he was talking about moment by moment, godliness and holiness.And he, he said every day should be love day.

And that was that sort of stuck with me.I think that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s doable.So actually reframe reframing my day a little bit through the eyes of love day, you know, and that movie goes everywhere from, you know, cups of tea for your wife to, to, you know, going to you all.

So there’s only I just think it made it a very manageable way to get holiness, the positive sides of doing doing being a holy and godly person and the fruits of the spirit moment by moment.So I thought that was that was every day is a love.Day I want to dig into that, but I can’t because we’ve got to do an episode.

So you press for the moment, you press play on the one thing and we’re looking today at helping workers transition into retirement.Today’s podcast is brought to you by the Ministry Training strategy.MTS is a network of gospel workers who share the vision of winning the world for Christ by multiplying gospel workers through ministry apprenticeships.

To find out more, especially on how to start an apprenticeship, head to mts.com dot AU.And now back to the podcast.OK Philip Retirements.It’s not a term that comes up in the Bible.

And yet you know, a lot of Australian workers are working hard to get there and you’ve developed something for retirees in at your church.But let’s start with your story.How did you you were working in the medical profession and you moved into retirement.Tell us a little bit about what you were doing and how you transitioned and what you’re doing now.

Yeah, well, I’ve had an amazing career and and so until recently or five years or so, I was an eye surgeon working on the Central Coast in public hospitals and private hospitals operating.Absolutely fantastic job.You can’t get a better job than helping people keep their sight or gain regain their sight and gratitude every day for doing, you know, cataract surgery and stuff.

So loved it, did it for 25 years and it was fantastic.And, but towards the back end of the career, a few things sort of came together.I, I noticed that a lot of my patients were passing away.

And so you look at their files at the end of the day and find that, you know, they’ve got great vision, you know, but they did, you know, and so you sort of think about the existential questions about what am I really, I’m giving, it’s great.What better thing can you give people than their sight?

And there is something better.And so then I’m reading John Chapter 9 and Jesus is heals the blind man.And, and it kind of really resonated with me that Jesus heals this blind man.And of course there’s all the political fallout and get kicked out of the synagogue and the rest of it.But then Jesus goes tracks him down and he sees Jesus for the first time and then he worships him.

So it’s sort of like the second miracle.He gets his eyesight back and then he gets his spiritual eyes open.And that just, it still gives me tingles because I think that is the narrative of my life.And so I thought, OK, is there something in here?So I investigated what that would look like, how to do that, and decided to take early retirement and to try and hand most of my time over to gospel type ministries.

So what was your first step in doing that?The first step was my first step.Well, firstly I’d do the figures.My first step was to check am I am I, is this absolute lunacy.So I’m I, I used to have quiet conversations with my financial planner and then I had a conversation with my wife and, and, and I also took my, I took my pastor to lunch and said, is this madness right?

And anyway, so that was so there was a, there was a bit of a trying to get my brains trust to, to give me some sort of security that there’s something that this is right.But and and yeah, so that was, but then it was a case of having conversations with what would that look like with different people at church and different and trying a few things on and having a few, you know, there was a few not crashing burns, but you try a few things out and your dad didn’t work and then you start.

But but but it was an iterative process of what would what would it look like for me to to give more of my time intentionally in one of the pastors said to me, I don’t want you to do a job that’s not helping me.What?What do?You mean by that?I want you to multiply yourself.

I mean, that’s red.I want you to, if you could get 5 people thinking like you do, how much better would that be?And how, what are the?And so that was actually challenging.So that then started me thinking maybe I didn’t think that retirement was an issue.Like I thought it was just my problem.And then you start to think, or maybe there’ll be some other people coming along the track a little bit later.

And maybe if I could.So that was part of the thought originally.It started as, oh, let’s do senior MTS.Sure.Yeah.And that still may be a thing yet, but that’s biting off too much.We needed a, a smaller target to start with.So that’s some of the stuff I was thinking about.

OK.We’re going to come back to what you actually do in terms of the ministry and how you’re doing that to multiply yourself in a moment.Just get me in the head of a retiree for a moment.So you know, on one hand, you’ve you’ve, you’ve, you’ve worked hard, you’ve got the retirement, you’ve got the superannuation payout.

Everything is everything you work for is sort of coming to fruition.You may be tired, you perhaps you’ve got grandkids on the side, but it sounds like it’s like I’ve got 1 long holiday.Is that really what it’s like to give me, put me in the head head mindset of a retiree?Some of it is a bit like that.

I mean, they’re they’re let me just talk to address the tiredness piece.Sure, right.Yeah.People who are tired are not tired.They’ve never been as well slept in their whole lives.People who are working, people who’ve got kids that they are tired, they are they are tired all the time.

But once you retire, you don’t.There’s no excuse for you to be tired.You can go to bed early and you can get, I actually choose to get up early, but you don’t have to.But I think there is a fatigue element too I think people are tired of.I think people are tired of the boredom of work because when you’ve done it for a long time, they know what Monday is going to look like and Sunday is a shocker because they know what Monday.

They’re tired of boredom.They’re tired of dancing to other people’s tunes, which aren’t particularly aligned perhaps to their own hearts needs and things like that.I think they’re tired of sometimes responsibility and, you know, owning stuff that maybe it isn’t their responsibility, but they’re made to feel responsible and all that sort of stuff.

And I think they’re tired of the discipline of the five days or sometimes 6 or whatever it is.And they just want, they just want a break.And that’s why I think this sense of I want a really long holiday is what they see.

They see that as freedom and anything would be better.And then you add a few things like travel and golf and, and, and all of a sudden it starts like, Oh, that’s what I want to do, right.And at the same time, those things are, they’re great.And that’s why holidays are good, because it is that that break.

And I encourage people to, if you’re going to, you know, you need to have a good break after you retire to mark, to mark the, the transition to recharge the batteries.But travel and golf and gardening are not going to be a sustainable long term venture.

You run out of countries, you run out of new things, you become.I’ve known some people who are not Christians but who we meet to on our travels.