That's the duration of my ordained ministry (DV), according to the mailing I received from the Clergy Pensions Fund recently. That is, assuming I have unbroken service from my ordination until the Normal Retirement Age. Not that I'm counting or anything, but from this vantage point it seems an awful long way away!
However, knowing several 'retired' ministers, it seems that the retired clergy are just as busy as full-time ministers. After all, this side of eternity, there is no retirement for all of the people of God - we're still labouring for the kingdom until the day the Lord takes us, whether in or out of 'parish ministry'.
Plus, had Moses been a Church of Ireland minister (imagine that! would he have put up with Select Vestries?), he never would have led the children of Israel out of Egypt - he was long past the normal retirement age when God called him at the age of 80 for a task which would last forty years until they came to the Jordan to enter the Promised Land.
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