How to Enjoy Your Retirement

Titus 2:2-4 - Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women . . .

America is slowly graying as 10,000 Baby Boomers retire every day. Retirement is supposed to be a fun- filled time spent with family, a time to create joyful memories with grandchildren, travel to places we have always wanted to visit and engage in learning and service opportunities that we did not have time for when we were working. Regretfully, many Baby Boomers are finding retirement to be less fun, joyful and adventurous than they had hoped.

Time magazine reports in a May 23, 2016 article that a growing number of Baby Boomers have isolated themselves as they age.  This is a negative trend. It is harmful for retirees, but it is also harmful for our culture. Our culture needs the wisdom of the older generation. Laura L. Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, writes: “A large body of research shows that emotional experience improves with age. People are slower to show anger and more prone to see silver linings. They solve emotional charged conflicts more effectively and are more likely to forgive and forget.” In other words, they have a lot of wisdom and maturity that their family, friends, community of worship and local organizations need. When they isolate themselves during their twilight years instead of investing themselves in others, everyone suffers.

Another reason retirees need to resist this trend toward isolation is because it is not healthy for them. The Stanford Center on Longevity’s Sightlines Project tracked six age cohorts to see how well they are doing in areas critical to long term well-being. “There is ample evidence that social engagement has positive effects on health and longevity. Social isolation is as strong a risk factor for early mortality as cigarette smoking.” Just think about that. Isolating one self from the community brings early death just like smoking!

If the evidence is overwhelming that the community needs its seniors to be involved and that seniors need that involvement, why are today’s retirees  less engaged? Carstensen points out that “Boomers are less likely to participate in community or religious organizations than were their counterparts 20 years ago.” Their parents were the Builder Generation who built strong churches and healthy community organizations. And when they retired, they had built in connections to make those retirement years joyful and adventurous. But the Boomers rejected those institutions and preferred a more individualistic approach to life. Now, as the Boomers enter retirement, few of them have meaningful connections to churches or other community groups, and that is causing them to feel isolated and alone. The individualism they were so proud of when they are younger is now literally killing them.

The good news is that retirees can do something about this. There are churches everywhere! Find one and get involved in it. Don’t just show up occasionally for a pot luck dinner, or only for Sunday morning worship. Get as deeply involved as you can. Deep friendships can be formed with great people who can change retirement from a time of loneliness to a time of great adventure. There are many small non-profits in every community that could use a volunteer. Find one that needs your skills and start volunteering each week. It is amazing how it changes one’s perspective on life. And those kids who never call? The phone works both ways. Don’t sit and wait for it to ring. Pick it up and call a family member or friend. We are as connected as we want to be and in retirement, connections are vital for our own health and for the health of those around us. Shake off that isolation and invest yourself in others!

Lord, help us to invest ourselves in others during our senior years instead of isolating ourselves. Amen.

-------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Volunteering Our Time and Money Wisely

Galatians 6:10 - So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Many of us enjoy volunteering our time to worthwhile projects in our church or community. We often combine our volunteer efforts with financial donations. It does not take long before word gets around that we are generous with our time and money. Suddenly everyone is asking us to volunteer one day a week or make generous donations to their cause. It can be overwhelming. Since few of us can say yes to every need, how can we narrow the list to make our time and money count?

Lauren Bush makes these three suggestions in the April 25, 2016 edition of Time magazine:

1.       Get specific – pick one charitable organization where you can use your unique skills to make a difference. This allows you to meet specific needs with your specific skills instead of just being a general volunteer.

2.       Become a regular – try to volunteer more than just occasionally so that you become a real part of the organization. If we care about the organization’s purpose, then we can leverage our time to make a significant difference.

3.       Think about your time creatively – you may not be able to volunteer a whole day but can do an hour or two one evening on the way home from work, consider volunteering WITH your children so it becomes a family activity instead of taking away from it.

I think Lauren has some great advice on this topic. One of these things I have noticed is that sometimes people spread themselves too thin by volunteering for too many organizations or by trying to support too many causes financially. While we should practice a lifestyle of generosity, one $100 gift to an organization that we really care about makes more impact than ten $10 gifts to several charities that we know little about. Volunteering at the same place one time a week for an entire year can produce more long term results than volunteering randomly for different causes.

Though it might make us feel good to be involved in a lot of different things, feeling good should not really be our goal. (Read more about that here.) Our goal should be to make a difference. Focusing our time and money on fewer organizations so that we can do more for those causes will make a real difference.

Lord, give us wisdom to know how to use our time and money for Your glory. Amen.

-----------------------------------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author

in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY                               

Conservatives are More Open-Minded

Job 21:34 – How then will you comfort me with empty nothings? There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.

It was an eight word Facebook post carefully written to express a positive opinion without maligning those who held to a different opinion.  I had barely hit the post button before my newsfeed begun to fill up with the rants from one of my more progressive friends. She wanted to point out how narrow minded and bigoted I was for posting such a mean spirited statement. After letting her rant for a while, I asked her to go back and read my post and then read her own posts and tell me again who was narrow minded and bigoted. Seconds later, she defriended me.

There is a narrative told in our national news media that liberals are open minded, tolerant, well-educated and well-informed on the issues, whereas conservatives are just a bunch of narrow minded country hillbillies who barely made it out of high school. Though this narrative seems to be accepted by many people as fact, new research reveals that this stereotype is far from accurate. Time magazine reported in a spring 2016 article about Facebook and Politics that 51% of liberals got news on Facebook compared to just 34% of conservatives and 28% of moderates. Though Facebook is a great place for interacting with friends, it is not a reputable news source. If it is a person’s primary source for news, then they are not a well-informed person. This is even more important now that we know that Facebook manipulates their trending topics to drive a narrative of their choosing.

Clearly liberals are not better informed on the issues than conservatives and moderates. What about being more open-minded and tolerant? That same Time article reported that 44% of consistent liberals have hidden, blocked, defriended or unfollowed someone over a political post they disagreed with. Whereas only 31% of consistent conservatives have done that. Though both sides could learn to be more opened minded toward the other, clearly liberals are less open minded and would rather lose a friendship than hear a viewpoint that they disagree with. Another straw man collapses as we realize that it is the conservatives who are more willing to engage in discussion and dialogue with those who have differing opinions.

Those of us who are conservatives may often feel like we are on the defensive, but there is no need to take that attitude. Regardless of the media spin, the facts are on our side. Let’s keep getting our news from a wide variety of sources. Let’s keep listening and engaging with those who disagree with us. Let’s watch as truth triumphs over falsehood.

Lord, help us share Your Truth with all of those we come in contact with. Amen.

-----------------------------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Dreams and Spirituality

Daniel 1:17 – As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

When I was a teenager I remember eating spicy food while watching a scary movie. The combination of the two gave me nightmares. I woke up the next morning exhausted from all the crazy dreams I had. After having this happen to me a couple of times, I learned not to combine those two things together before going to sleep.

Dreams are caused by a wide variety of things. Many theorize that dreams are our sub-conscious mind’s way of sorting out what is going on in our lives. But could dreams be more than that? We read stories in the Bible where dreams had specific meanings. Many of us have had unique dreams that made us wonder if God was trying to send us a message.

Kelley Bulkeley is a dream researcher and theologian who wrote Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion. Bulkeley reports in an April 4, 2016 article in Time magazine that modern neuroscience “says that dreams can prime us to be spiritual, in one form or another.” She goes on to explain that the Sleep and Dream Database includes extensive research that shows “that half of American adults say they’ve had at least one visitation dream” where someone came to them in a dream to give them a message. Some people focused on the people in their dreams, but most focused on the message itself. Could this message have meaning beyond just spicy food and scary movies?

This is a question many evangelical Christians are also asking.  Could God use dreams to communicate messages to His people? Some strands of evangelicalism widely accept dreams as messages from God. Other strands of evangelicalism are more skeptical. Most evangelicals who accept the possibility of God sending messages in dreams make it clear that God would never contradict Himself. That means that if a dream was in opposition to the Bible, then it could not be from God. Dreams that contradict the scripture are more likely the result of spicy food and scary movies. But what about the ones that seem to confirm what God has already declared in scripture? There is no real way to prove either side of that debate because dreams are too subjective for that. Therefore, scholars will keep debating that issue until the end of time. 

So what good is Bulkeley’s research if we can’t really prove that any particular dream is from God? Her research provides an interesting conversation starter with our non-believing friends about how dreams and faith might be connected. Bulkeley concludes that though “Science may not be able to prove the existence of God . . . it can prove that, for many people, dreams offer a way to expand their sense of reality and attain a higher level of being.” As our culture becomes post-Christian and fewer people know the Bible, discussing dreams might open the door for a larger conversation about spirituality. These discussions could be the means by which the Lord causes people to think about spirituality. It is good for evangelical Christians, even ones skeptical about spiritual messages through dreams, to know something about this topic so that we can use this issue as one of our tools for starting Gospel conversations with others.

Lord, help us take every opportunity You give us to talk to our friends about issues of faith. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Preschoolers Will Help the Church Finally End Racism!

Psalm 8:2 - From the mouths of children and nursing babies you have ordained praise on account of your adversaries, so that you might put an end to the vindictive enemy.

My granddaughter recently celebrated her 2nd birthday. Her parents, who are ministers, invited all the children from church to the party. Ten children came. It was a lot of fun watching them play games, eat cupcakes and enjoy being together. About an hour into the party it suddenly dawned on me that of the ten children who were present, 4 were African American, 3 were Asian, and 3 were Anglo. I doubt the children noticed. In fact, I'm sure the children did not notice because the children gathered there did not see each other as black or white or Asian, they were just friends from church celebrating a birthday. My granddaughter and her peers are growing up in world where the color of one's skin is no longer the divider between who your friends can be or where you can worship. 

Lest you think that my granddaughter is some rare exception, it is important to point out that America's preschoolers are growing up in a vastly more racially diverse atmosphere than their parents or grandparents. If current trends continue, by 2020, only four years from now, there will no longer be any single racial group that will make up more than 50% of the U.S. population under the age of 18. With the youngest ages as the most diverse in American history.

This is good news for the church, and for the nation! Though we have made great strides in America in the last 50 years in the area of race relations, the Sunday morning hour still tends to be the most segregated hour of the week. Though it is most likely unintentional, it is still a reflection of what is in our hearts, which is that in our most intimate moments, we prefer to gather with other people who look, act and feel like us. However unintentional, when we gather to worship only with others who look just like us, we miss something valuable that we can learn from the larger body of Christ.

Lord, help us follow the example of our children and learn these valuable lessons about friends and church. Amen.

-------------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He has written a number of books, including one about how the spirit of offense is destroying our current society. You can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Feel Good Volunteerism is Misguided

The young man was inspiring, articulate, full of passion, determined to make a difference, and so incredibly misguided. Yes, you read that correctly. I heard him speak at a gathering of evangelicals from the northeast. The gathering represented a wide array of denominations. Several testimonies were shared by Christian young people about how they were serving others in the name of the Lord. Though the testimonies were inspiring, they all had a similar misguided theme. One young man said "Do what makes you happy and meets needs around you." Another said "Let's do what makes us feel right and whole while helping others." Several others speakers expressed the same idea that we should do what makes us feel good while helping those around us. 

On the surface that might sound like an acceptable premise. However, if we reflect more deeply on the comments they reveal a motivation that is less than honorable. For that group, the primary purpose of serving was to feel happy and whole. Though nothing is wrong with feeling happy and whole, that should be a by-product of serving, not the primary motivation.

Why is this an important issue to clarify? If our primary motivation is to feel good about ourselves then our service will likely ignore needs that might be extremely important but not enjoyable. For example, we might be willing to serve food in a soup kitchen but unwilling to wash the dishes at the same soup kitchen. Or perhaps we are willing to join a group of volunteers building a house for a homeless family but unwilling to volunteer at a shelter for homeless addicts. Perhaps we are willing to tutor at risk teens but unwilling to help juvenile offenders gain a GED. All of these things are needed but may not be equal in how they make us feel.

Some types of volunteer service make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Other types of service do not provide the same level of fuzzy feelings but are equally importnat. Some types of service will even make us feel uncomfortable, discouraged and frustrated. Should we avoid those avenues of service? 

Consider the challenging words of Christ in Luke 6:32-35 where He calls us to serve in ways for which we gain no advantage. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men." Jesus makes a powerful point. Christian service does not always reward us in the short term, but it should always make us more like Jesus, which in the end is really the goal. 

This week, instead of choosing to serve a way that makes us feel good, let's choose to do a hard thing that no one else wants to do. It will make a difference in ways we cannot measure.

------------

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He has written a number of books, including one about how the spirit of offense is destroying our current society. You can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY