Man in Motion
You never retire from living out God’s calling for your life.
Don Needham has a problem with the word, “retired.”
To be more specific, he’s concerned with the way he’s seen retirement lived out. Don says, “It’s all too easy to become like bobbers on the ocean,” meandering through the days without direction during what could be the richest time of a person’s life. During his years as a Woodmen pastor, Don focused on inspiring people to love well and live lives of service and devotion. Now, at 76 years old, he’s practicing what he preaches.
A LEGACY OF SERVING
Don and his wife, Becky, began attending Woodmen in 1987: early enough to witness the church grow from one campus to five, and worship singers transition from choir robes to skinny jeans and the addition of many new ministries and outreach programs.
“We hid out at Woodmen for about six months before they realized I had been a pastor,” Don says. From then on, he quickly became involved in many roles. Don served as an elder, a campus pastor and then pastor of Woodmen’s Legacy ministry to seniors. He contributed faithfully to Woodmen through the years, even after a cancer diagnosis lessened his activity for a time in 2012. He’s now praising God that he’s in remission.
Though Don technically retired in 2018, he believes that you never retire from living out God’s calling for your life. Don says purpose is key at any life stage. “As pastor of Legacy, I realized that when people retired and did not have purpose, their life was shortened, they’d be bored, they’d annoy people because they’re bored… I think we’re called to minister as long as we can.”
He personally found purpose through volunteer work with ministries like Save the Storks. Don and Becky have driven over 40,000 miles transporting Save the Stork vans to centers across America which provide women with free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and life-affirming counseling.
Don refers to their days with Save the Storks as the “richest time of our lives.” This serving opportunity opened up exciting travel experiences for the Needhams. More importantly, their work helped reach more at-risk women with free, mobile care. Through the hope that Save the Storks brings, many pregnant women choose to keep their babies.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Don also volunteers with Wheels for the World, a ministry that locates wheelchairs in need of repair, fixes them up and delivers them to developing countries. He beams while talking about the full-circle impact he’s seen. Wheels of the World partners with prisons so inmates can find purpose fixing the chairs. Don’s seen the pride in inmates’ eyes as they showed him pictures of people who received chairs they repaired.
He’s seen the joy these chairs bring to recipients first-hand during his seven trips with Wheels for the World to Brazil, Guatemala, and Peru. Until that point, many recipients were reliant on family and friends to carry them from place to place, or simply never left home because of their disabilities. “It can absolutely revolutionize a family’s world;” Don says.
Although in the last few years COVID limited Don’s volunteer options, he used the unexpected pause to move forward in other ways. He wrote and published two books: Standing Ready: Armor and Names of God and Healing the Purple Church: Bridging the Political Divide.
Don’s been blessed to see the impact of many of his efforts, but he says his impact isn’t as important as participation. “This stage of life gives us seniors an opportunity to chase our dreams with intentionality. You can come home fulfilled because you’ve done something that made a difference in somebody’s life. Everybody can say, ‘God, show me where I can make a difference.’ If we’re out there doing something for the kingdom, that’s what matters.”
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