As the Rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Jacksonville
Florida I have retired. I discussed it with my Bishop and received his blessing
in mid-November. Our plans were put into motion. I was shocked, however, when
I notified the Church’s Pension administrators in NYC. As soon as I talked with my Bishop,
I called the pension fund and let them know of my plans to retire and begin my
pension benefits.
—Congratulations, Father Atkinson. When will you be retiring?
—The last day of the year. I said.
—Oh, I'm afraid that the soonest we can process your request is March first. We need at least ninety days and your completed Retirement Application (application. I need to apply to retire?) must be in our hands by January 31st to ensure we can start your benefits on March 1.
Now I had another Huge to-do on my growing To Do list of
items to finish before leaving the country. I don’t know why I thought this was
going to be easy. I don’t know why I thought that I would receive all the help
I needed in “applying” for my retirement benefits. When I had checked the Pension
Group’s website to find a contact name and number, I was faced with pages of
information about how I could open new and better retirement investment
accounts but no information about how to begin receiving benefits in
which I had invested. This should have been a warning.
I will say, the Church Pension Group is a well run and
skilled organization which I have found to be full of help and information
throughout my tenure as a priest in the church. But now my thought was
overwhelmingly, you want to draw your pension, we are not as
anxious to help you make the process easy.
I received my Retirement Application Package and spent the
rest of out time stateside assembling, confirming, and collating all the
information the Church Pension Group needed.
Most of which was confirmation and
documentation of information that was already in their database.
