standingonthewater.ca  - Ministry website of Adam and Kim Atkinson
  • Home
  • About us
    • YWAM Fiji
    • Why Standing on the water?
  • Support us
    • YWAM Donations
    • The Great Comission Foundation
  • Missionary Blog
  • Contact

do missionaries get to retire?

4/12/2017

0 Comments

 
This is a continuation of a blog series where I answer questions that people asked anonymously about missionary life.  To see the original survey or to ask your own questions click here.
Question #1:
What retirement plan are you provided with and when does a missionary retire?
Response:
Each missions organization has different retirement plans just like each business or company has different retirement plans.  We work for Youth With A Mission (YWAM) which is a grassroots missions organization that is decentralized and allows each of its regions around the world to choose how it handles retirement.
As a Canadian YWAM'er, who pays Canadian income tax, we are legally considered to be "self employed contractors" who work for YWAM Canada.  YWAM Canada has no retirement plan and only takes a small percentage of our missionary support to cover accounting and office expenses.  Each Canadian YWAM'er has the freedom / responsibility to plan for their own retirement.

"When does a missionary retire?"
There is no planned retirement in YWAM.  Each missionary makes that decision on their own depending on what God tells them, their health and family situation.
Our international leaders model a lifelong calling to missions and most of our senior leaders continue their full time missionary work well into their 80's.
​
Unlike some professions missionaries, and other christian leaders, usually become more valuable as they grow older (a very eastern cultural concept).  Their experience and wisdom become invaluable as they have been learning and growing for so many years. Unlike some jobs, such as those that deal with technology and things that change rapidly, christian leaders do not become obsolete over time.  God and His relationship to Humans is an everlasting subject.
Picture
"Wisdom is with aged men, With long life is understanding." Job 12:12

Question #2:
​How do missionaries prepare for retirement? Or do they? Have you met missionaries who don't retire? How are missionaries provided for ?
Response:
Some of this questions was answered in my response to question #1. (To recap: YWAM missionaries prepare for retirement however they want whenever they want. Yes, I meet many missionaries who never retire)

Here is my response to the last part of the question.  "How are missionaries provided for?" I will answer this question as a Canadian missionary since that is my context.

Most Canadian missionaries prepare for retirement the way that an average Canadian would.  Our family has a small amount of RRSP savings and we always pay our CPP contributions when we pay our income tax to the government.  
The difficulty for us is that we always seem to have pressing needs and almost never have money to put into our RRSP account.  When we need to choose between putting a couple of thousand dollars into our retirement account or travelling to another country to teach people about the bible, the bible teaching always wins.
From a financial point we are not very well prepared for retirement but we have been living by faith in God since 2003 and believe that God will continue to provide for us into our old age.
0 Comments

Teaching our kids about "real" life...

4/3/2017

1 Comment

 
This is a continuation of a blog series where I answer questions that people asked anonymously about missionary life.  To see the original survey or to ask your own questions click here.
Question:
​How do you teach your children about 'real' life? (As in: going to your job, earning your money, school culture, etc).
Response:
This is a very good question and something that my wife Kim and I talk about all the time.  As full time missionaries we live very differently from most people. Honestly there are times that I lay awake at night wondering if our children are going to be hindered in life by choices that Kim and I have made. We are sooooo far away from living a typical N. American lifestyle!

I could turn this into a post comparing our life choices with what is "normal" but instead I will focus on the areas that the person who asked this question specifically mentions.

​"Going to your job"
- I am not sure what the person who asked this question is asking?  We often work out of our home so there are days when neither of us leave the house for "work." I think that our kids definitely understand that there is different kinds of work.  Some work can be done at home and other kids of work you need to travel for.
Farmers, writers and other business owners almost never "go" to their jobs either so I don't think our situation is unique.

​"Earning your money"
-Oooooh!  This one hurts.  I could be wrong but it seems like the person asking the question is implying that missionaries do not "earn" their money. Our kids see each of us working at least 40 hours a week and they also know the many other sacrifices that we make for our missionary work.  I have not doubt that our kids will have a strong work ethic.
Here is another blog post I wrote about missionary receiving a salary or being paid for their work if anyone is interested.

"School culture"
-By school culture I am assuming the person asking this question is talking about developing social skills, making friends and having a chance to connect with their peers.  
Our kids are able to do this many different ways.  Our family is very social and spend a lot of time hosting families at our house or we ourselves are travelling. In the past year our family has spent several months in Fiji, Spain and Canada.  In each place our kids have spent significant time socializing with other children and adults.  These cross-cultural / cross-generational experiences help our kids to develop very healthy social skills.
Some things they do miss out on, from school culture, are bullying, peer pressure, cliques and school dances ;).

Although I said earlier that I worry about the choices that we have made with our kids, I worry less and less as time goes by.  So many of our friends and visitors who spend time with us as a family affirm the choices that we make and compliment us on our kids development.  And who knows, maybe our kids "alternative" upbringing will turn them into advocates for change where ever they end up?
1 Comment

    Author

    Adam Atkinson

    Archives

    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017

    Categories

    All
    Accountability
    Faith
    Kids
    Missionary Life
    Missionary Work
    Money
    Parenting
    Retirement
    Support
    YWAM Canada

    RSS Feed

"I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right."
​-Billy Graham
"I’m not afraid of the devil. The devil can handle me – he’s got judo I never heard of. But he can’t handle the One to whom I’m joined; he can’t handle the One to whom I’m united; he can’t handle the One whose nature dwells in my nature."  - A.W. Tozer
  • Home
  • About us
    • YWAM Fiji
    • Why Standing on the water?
  • Support us
    • YWAM Donations
    • The Great Comission Foundation
  • Missionary Blog
  • Contact