For 75-year-old E.J. Hines, retirement has been a definite blessing. A career-long GuideStone retirement plan participant, Hines can say something many other retirees — secular and those in Christian service — can’t say.
Thanks to his planning, and consistency in saving for retirement through the years, Hines is making more money in retirement than he did as director of missions for the New River Association in Jacksonville, N.C., on the state’s southeast coastline.
Hines never was paid millions, but he saved money at every opportunity.
“My second pastorate began March 6, 1960, and that was my formal introduction to the ministry of the Annuity Board (now GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention),” Hines said. “Pastors and preachers in Southern Baptist life don’t get paid a whole lot. As soon as I could, and all along the way, I asked the church to increase the amount contributed to my account.”
Hines’ ministry, spanning an incredible 41 years with New River, included starting the association. After coming to Calvary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, N.C., he said he visited the pastor of the First Baptist Church and talked about forming an association. Hines explained that the Atlantic Association to Jacksonville’s east and the Wilmington Association to its west encompassed Jacksonville, but the distance made it difficult for local pastors to participate in their respective associations.
Hines was elected chairman of the missions committee, and then after one year, the recommendation was made to call what was then titled a Superintendent of Missions. He began that position Jan. 1, 1964.
“The New River Association asked the missions committee, that I chaired, to be the search committee,” Hines said. “So, I was on the search committee that called me.
“The joke was that ‘Hines couldn’t preach, so he had to form an association,” he added, laughing. “It’s been a wonderful journey — one that has thrilled my heart.”
New River Association and its churches have an important ministry point in Jacksonville in the giant Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. More than 50,000 active duty Marines and sailors are stationed at the camp, along with 30,000 dependents (children and spouses). Another 20-25,000 retirees and their dependents live in the area. Hines said those more than 100,000 individuals attached to the military in some form have special ministry needs that the association and its churches seek to reach.
“Almost immediately after creating the association, we bought a large building downtown, right next to the bus station, where hundreds of sailors and Marines come in to Camp Lejeune,” he said. “We called it the Welcome Inn, and it was a great ministry
opportunity there.”
In addition to the military ministry, Hines said the association also has the state’s largest and oldest ministry dedicated to Japanese residents in the region, and they are looking at new mission opportunities in Japan.
But even in the midst of building and growing the ministry of New River Association, Hines did not neglect his responsibility to take care of his personal finances. An accounting major when he went to college, Hines was already interested in personal finance.
“I began going to the conferences (when the then-Annuity Board representatives came),” he said. “I listened to become further sensitized to financial management. In the last 15 or 20 years, I began to intensify those efforts.”
Those efforts were aided by his wife’s return to work in later years, which allowed them to contribute even more to his retirement savings.
“GuideStone has provided an education for me,” he said, adding that current and past GuideStone representatives have helped him along the way.
The decision to retire was a process for Hines, and the transition to a new director of missions formally took about six months. Hines said he has no feelings of unfinished work or a feeling he has left unfinished work. His tenure — the longest in North Carolina history – wrapped up Jan. 2, 2006.
“When I walked into my successor’s office (the office he had used for 18 years), I had the sensation that I was in his office, it didn’t feel like mine,” he said. “That was a grace… a work of God’s Spirit.”
Retirement for Hines includes staying quite busy — he says “day off” and “vacation” were not part of his dad’s vocabulary, and that wore off on him — and he offers advice to younger ministers who want to retire one day, too.
“Establish a plan, and do not conclude that money is evil — even Jesus had a plan to buy the food,” he said. “You must have a plan to take care of your family. You need to plant your feet firmly in the context of reality, and build a strong financial foundation.
“GuideStone has the best thing going.”