Transformation and growth

by Terry Nyhuis

edited by Bob Terwilliger, fall 2023

One way to understand my journey is to identify how I function. Three characteristics have formed much of my life and work:

• First, my built-in drivenness. Wikipedia describes characteristics of Type A personalities as highly organized, ambitious, impatient, highly aware of time management, and aggressive. I couldn’t describe myself better than this, at least into my mid-50s.
• Second, a deep hunger for self-actualization. In Please Understand Me, David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates describe my temperament type as hungering for self-actualization, living with a deep need to be and become We seek to be genuine and to be in harmony with our inner selves. We also need to live a life of significance, to make a difference in the world.
• Third, a passion for lifelong growth, transformation, and human development, both in myself and in For me, to be fully alive has been to experience lifelong physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual development.

I determined long ago to never stop growing, being transformed, and welcoming ever-expanding seasons of human development.

This triad of built-in characteristics did not fit well in my conservative, rural community and Reformed Church in America congregation in Southwest Michigan. My questions, pressing against boundaries, and searching for inner meaning not only didn’t resonate well with others, but at times caused dissonance. I felt a bit like a resident alien.

Through my twenties, I explored and tested life. I enrolled in three colleges, finally graduating from Hope College; tried several career paths, from industrial research to farming, none of which fit me; and explored various spiritual paths, from megachurch settings to atheism. Toward the end of this season, a wise and influential person directed me toward seminary as a setting in which to stretch, explore inner life, and discover ways to grow.

Four years of seminary experience expanded me in amazing ways. I thrived, first for two years at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, then for two years at Fuller Theological Seminary in Southern California. Western not only tolerated but even welcomed my drivenness, searching, and passion for expansion. But it did so within the limits of a more conservative context. It provided an intermediate setting that was just right for my first two years in seminary. Then Fuller provided a more open and diverse setting. It was still Reformed but broader in perspective, with a wider spectrum of traditions and a richer culture of questioning and exploring.

Seminary not only helped me discover and live into who I was, it also channeled me into a career in which I thrived, could make a difference, and live a life of significance. As a pastor, I could work it all out, ask and prompt deep questions, and challenge myself and others to keep growing and being transformed.

My first pastoral experience was in Southern California, in a young, seven-year-old, large church that was still in the self- discovery and crisis-to-crisis stage. Ministries were being developed. People with diverse backgrounds were joining. We expanded from 400 to 1,200 members in a little over a decade. Questions and experimentation abounded. There was always more to get done than we were geared up to accomplish. The setting was great for who I was and for the season of life I was in.

After 14 years and a senior pastor change that didn’t bode well for me, I left that church and moved into a new role as lead, preaching pastor in a smaller Holland, Michigan, congregation. Life and ministry there was especially stressful, both for the congregation and for both Anita (my attorney wife) and me. Ultimately, we recognized that I was a less- than-ideal fit for a smaller congregation and Anita for a conservative law firm in Southwest Michigan. After eight years, it was time for us to move on.

We made a third 2,200-mile move between Southwest Michigan and Southern California, this time heading back west. I joined the senior staff pastor team at Crystal Cathedral Ministries, overseeing Congregational Life Ministries.

Anita rejoined the thriving law firm that had honored and challenged her before. It was a good fit for both of us. At the Cathedral, I thrived in a setting with high expectations, the potential to make a difference, people with rich questions and openness, and a culture of growth and expansion. No matter how hard or long I worked, there was always more to get done and opportunities for high-potential ministry.

After seven years of all-out life at the Cathedral, at the peak of my career and at 57 years of age, I hit a wall physically, emotionally, and spiritually. More than three decades of over-stress caught up to me. I was tired, losing passion, and confused about my emerging values, perspectives, and beliefs. Fortunately, because of the income and investments from our two careers, we had the freedom to retire early and did so. We made a fourth 2,200-mile move, this time heading back to Michigan.

From the beginning, I saw retirement as transitioning from one season of life and launching into another. I approached my first year as a sabbatical, a time of pausing, renewing, and relaunching. I didn’t see myself as being done with passionate and dynamic living. Instead, I was moving into midlife and beyond as a time for growth into fresh stages of growth, transformation, and development.

During my sabbatical year, I searched for what I called a University for Healthy, Older People (a U-HOP). After failing to find a church, organization, or program to launch me into later stages of human development, I set out to explore lifelong growth in a more self-directed way. The doctoral program through George Fox University in Portland, Oregon, provided guidance, resources, and structure to do so. I completed a doctorate at 67 years old. My dissertation was titled, “Aging Baby Boomers, Churches, and the Second Half of Life (Challenges for Boomers and Their Churches).”

Through doctoral studies and beyond, I’ve discovered a rich, though lesser known, understanding of lifelong growth in which human development continues, even intensifies, in the second half of life. I have come to see myself as having retired to pursue and experience growth, transformation, and human development throughout midlife and beyond. I tell people that they may feel free to call me old, elderly, senior, odd, or aged. Just don’t call me mature. At 74, I’m not nearly done maturing yet.

James Hollis describes why I am so excited about these later decades of life. He describes it as a season of life in which we are ready to discover that:

“Life is much riskier, more powerful, more mysterious than we had ever thought possible. [And,] while we are rendered more uncomfortable by this discovery, it is a humbling that deepens spiritual possibility. The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were younger.” (From Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis.)

Our Western culture and churches have named those of us who are continuing to expand into later seasons of development such things as mystics, poets, saints, sages, elders, and wise ones. They have also labeled us as heretics, disloyal, strange, confused, and lost. We, no matter how we are labeled, continue to emerge and thrive across centuries, faith traditions, cultures, and contexts.

I am now in my 17th year of retirement. While my wife and I haven’t found a local church that understands, appreciates, and supports our second-half development into mystical seasons of life, we keep watching. In the meantime, we continue to bump into and connect with people on a similar journey. We love helping them discover ways of seeing their later seasons of development as amazing and precious, even if sometimes misunderstood and unappreciated.

Yes, I’m having to occasionally patch up some things physically. I need to be more intentional about physical training and adjusting to shifting mental and physical characteristics. But at 74, I wouldn’t trade this mysterious, uncomfortable, potential-filled, and troubling season of life for any other.

Me, mature? Not even close. Me, done? No way. Decreasing growth, purpose, and meaning? Not a bit. Me, a misfit? Yes, but a healthy, growing one, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Terry received a BA from Hope College, an MDiv from Western Theological Seminary, and a DMin from George Fox Seminary. He worked as a physicist, as the partner and operator of a cattle farm, and served Lake Hills Community Church in Laguna Hills, California; Trinity Reformed in

Holland, Michigan; and Crystal Cathedral Ministries in Garden Grove, California. He and Cheryl live in Holland, Michigan. nyhuishome@hotmail.com