I am about to do something for the first time, but probably not the last. In a month, I will retire after eleven years as a non-profit executive. I wish now that I had written a good set of rules for myself ten years ago, when retirement was something old people did, and I wasn't bouncing back and forth between anxiety and elation. But like most people, I've acted as if this day would never come. Now that it is finally happening, I'm forced to make up the rules as I go.

Fortunately for me, not all the rules have to be made up. The first rule is something I've known for a long time. I learned it from my father when I was seven and he left ministry to teach-You can't go back.

This was a cardinal rule of ministry in our home, a rule Dad learned in seminary in the 1950s and which he broke only once when he went back to the church he'd served while in graduate school so they could throw a Ph.D. graduation party for him. Otherwise, although the members of that congregation loved my parents and although some of them keep in touch to this day, we never visited because it wouldn't have been fair to the next pastors. I realize that pastors increasingly make the case for being able to stay in their last church after they've retired, but I've rarely seen this work in the eyes of anyone other than the lingering pastor and his or her friends.