The Retirement Speech
“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” - 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ESV
This year, we celebrated the retirement of our longtime church Secretary. A lot of people stopped by after 2nd service to congratulate and thank her (Bev), and to have some cake and punch. My wife and I were there and hugged Bev and had some cake. We stopped and chatted with Pastor Patrick and was about ready to leave when Patrick held up a “wait a minute” signal. He then very effortlessly gave the expected retirement speech (you know the roasting a person who you’ve worked closely with for several years speech). This reminded me of the five people that I had to give the retirement speech when they retired from my last employer.
Before I tell you about them, I want to give you some background info. I retired from a job where I managed a department of about 25 employees but only had a few that directly reported to me. In my role, I gave presentations often to my employees, peers from other departments, senior management, and presentations to the board of directors. I would say that the preparation effort increased in a similar proportion as the list of audiences (my own employees, the least presentation, and presentations to the board as the most preparation). I, for the most part, never felt nervous making the presentation because I knew the subject matter. In fact, I would also say that there was a inverse relationship between how much preparation effort and the time limit on the presentation (less available time requires more preparation and vice versa). My point is that making presentations was something I was comfortable with whether it was a few people or hundreds.
Giving the retirement speech was different. They were much harder. All 5 of these people, I had worked closely with and had developed a personal as well as a business relationship. In addition, instead of presenting on a topic which I was a subject matter expert, I was conveying an emotional message of how these people were going to be missed. I would say the presentations ranged from not sharing enough emotional feelings, to too much where I almost cried. The closer my personal relationship was to each of the five, the higher the chance that I’d share too much emotional attachment.
My point is that making an emotional presentation is not one of my spiritual gifts… and that’s okay. I know that I can make that kind of a presentation if I need to. I also know that God has given that ability to give an emotional presentation to others. Maybe God will, at some point, put me in a situation again where I need to make an emotional presentation. If he does, I am confident that he’ll give me the skills and ability to do the job according to his plan.
“For nothing will be impossible with God.” - Luke 1:37
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:19
