By Boyce Bowdon*

11:30 P.M. EST Sept. 8, 2010 | OKLAHOMA CITY (UMNS)

Retiree Morgan Green, center, leads a mission team in prayer near Lake Charles, La., before heading out to repair homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Green discovered a zest for mission work following retirement. UMNS photos courtesy of Boyce Bowdon.
View in Photo Gallery

At 57, Morgan Green retired from his job as a salesman and spent his first year of freedom doing two things he loved — gardening and fishing.

“But then January came, and I had nothing,” he said. “All my friends were still working, so I was fishing alone, and fishing by myself was not fun — especially when the fish were not biting.”

Green is one of a growing number of Americans who knows how it feels when the newness wears off of retirement.

According to the U.S. Census, during the next decade 70 million baby boomers — nearly one fourth of the U.S. population — will reach 65. Many will retire from their current lines of work.

But research indicates that many retirees struggle to grasp a new identity apart from the “somebody” they used to be.

Finding a new calling

Green found the identity he was seeking at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City.

“I was listening to another layman tell how a mission project our church was doing in Mexico was having a powerful impact on people,” Green recalled. “He said volunteers were needed to help with the work, and when he described what the volunteers would be doing, I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’”

Green and his fellow mission team bless a house that they built. In their blessing, they ask God to help the occupants remember that God loves them and lives with them.

That moment, Green said, was the beginning of a big change in his life. He went from being a “chronic pew sitter” to active missionary.

Now 70, he estimates he has been on about 25 mission trips during the past 11 years. He has worked in Antigua, Honduras, Venezuela, the Holy Land and has made 16 trips to Mexico.

More churches should be intentional about inviting retirees into ministry, said the Rev. Richard Gentzler, director of the Center of Aging and Older-Adult Ministries at the United Methodist Board of Discipleship.

He said many older-adult church programs focus on “meeting and eating.” While that kind of fellowship is important, Gentzler said, retirees often want to be involved in activities that give them a sense of purpose.

“Churches have a role in helping older adults connect to meaningful fulfillment,” Gentzler said. “They want to grow spiritually and serve their neighbors.”

He suggested that churches offer opportunities for retirees to tutor elementary-school students or for empty nesters to serve as “foster” grandparents to local youngsters.

People are living longer and more active lives. As Green discovered, purpose-giving ministry also can include the excursion of short-term missions.

More than a holiday trip

Contrary to what some people think, a mission trip is not a vacation, Green said.

“It isn’t a whole lot of fun to pay your own way to Venezuela, sleep in a hammock, eat boiled fish and get dirty digging ditches in the heat,” he said. “But you get back way more than you put in it.”

Morgan Green volunteers his skills
working on a senior citizen center.

Green says his involvement in mission work at his church has given him opportunities to:

• Invest his gifts and experience in a worthy cause. “One of my responsibilities has been to recruit people for mission teams. As a salesman, I was accustomed to asking people to do things, and it didn’t break my heart when they said no. So, now I don’t mind asking people to join a mission team.”
• Build rewarding relationships. “Almost all the people who volunteer for missions are really neat. We travel together and work together and support one another. Even after we get back home we feel special bonds.”
• Be a Christian influence on people in need. “When we go on missions, we not only improve the health and living conditions of impoverished people, we minister to them spiritually by expressing the love of Christ in concrete ways.”
• Ease his anxieties and appreciate his blessings. “When you spend a week with a family who lives in 12-by-18-foot house with cardboard walls, a tin roof and a dirt floor, and who have barely enough to eat, you come home realizing you have plenty to be thankful and no reason to be deprived even if our economy is shaky.”
• Grow closer to the Lord. “The more I have shared the love of Christ with others, the more my love for Christ has grown.”

Being involved in the church, Green said, is enabling him to enjoy his retirement years to the fullest.

He encourages Christians who are struggling with the losses that retirement sometimes brings to become more involved in a church.

“If mission work is not your thing, you can find something that’s just right for you,” he said. “There’s all kinds of stuff you can do around a church that will ease the staff’s load and extend the church’s ministry. You can find a place of service that can transform your life and the lives of others.”

*Bowdon is a freelance writer based in Oklahoma City and retired director of communications for the Oklahoma Annual (regional) Conference.

News media contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.