Beyond Retirement

Pastor Mark and Ernestine “Teenie” Finley are a remarkable couple whose journey in ministry spans decades, leaving an indelible mark on the lives they’ve touched. Now, as they enter what they would call their “sunset years,” their commitment to serving the Lord remains as fervent as ever, proving that retirement doesn’t have to signal an end to mission, but rather may become a continuation in a different form.

For the Finleys, ministry has been more than a profession; it’s been a calling, a guiding force shaping their lives and relationships. Their story is a testament to the transformative power of faith and the resilience of the human spirit. From their humble beginnings to the pinnacle of their careers, they have exemplified dedication, compassion, and unwavering faith in their service to others.

EARLY LIFE

Mark Finley’s mother was Catholic, and his father was Protestant. After a providential encounter with an Adventist layperson, his father became a Seventh-day Adventist. Mark didn’t think very much of it at the time. His father shared some of his beliefs with him, but respected a promise he had made to the priest when he married Mark’s mother that he would raise his children Catholic. 

When Mark was 17 and getting ready to go into his senior year of high school, his dad said to him, “I brought you up Catholic, as I promised the priest. But now you are going off to college, and I want to share some things with you.”

Mark worked with his father in their machine shop, and every morning his dad would share biblical principles on the way to work. That led Mark to study the Bible for himself. He was baptized in March 1963, and enrolled in the theology program at the former Atlantic Union College (AUC) in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. The school closed in 2018.

It was there that he met Ernestine “Teenie” Tenney, and they married. After graduation Mark interned for two years in Hartford, Connecticut, while Teenie taught church school nearby.

Pastor Mark says he felt it best not to go immediately to the seminary. “I needed time to have my ministry seasoned. I needed time to really put my feet down, so I worked for a few years at Wildwood Medical Missionary Institute with Elder W. D. Frazee. He became my mentor. I learned to make altar calls from him, learned to preach biblical sermons from him, learned to see the Spirit of God moving powerfully.”

From there the couple moved to the Southern New England Conference, where Pastor Mark sensed immediately that the church needed a new type of evangelism. Instead of going into a city for three or four weeks and holding short-term public meetings, he brought teams of young people in and began to work with churches over a longer period of time. 

This decision was based on a vision Ellen White had February 27, 1910, in which she related that there “should be a decided change from past methods of working. For months the situation has been impressed on my mind,” she wrote, “and I urged that companies be organized and diligently trained to labor in our important cities. These workers should labor two and two, and from time to time all should meet together to relate their experiences, to pray and to plan how to reach the people quickly, and thus, if possible, redeem the time.”¹ That was the model of evangelism Pastor Mark followed for many years. 

From New England the Finleys moved to the Lake Union in the midwestern United States and held evangelistic meetings throughout the region, but particularly in Chicago. They started an evangelistic training school called the Lake Union Sowing Institute, a cooperative venture between the Lake Union and the Theological Seminary at Andrews University. After two years the North American Division assumed the sponsorship of the Soul-Winning Institute. Pastor Mark looks back on their experience fondly. “It challenged me to really to fill my mind with biblical thoughts and to be sharp when it came to the questions that the seminary students were asking,” he says. 

After six years in Chicago, Pastor Mark received a call to serve the church in Europe. From 1985 to 1990 he was the Ministerial Association secretary for the Trans-European Division. It was there, he says, “that we began to work in Socialist countries, Communist countries. We had three Socialist countries in our division: Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. An overseas assignment broadens you. An overseas assignment gives you a breadth of the world work that you don’t otherwise have.”

After they returned to the United States for their children’s education, Pastor Mark was offered the position as speaker/director of It Is Written, the internationally televised program founded by George Vandeman in 1956 with the goal of sharing insights from God’s Word with the world. Pastor Mark traveled and preached with It Is Written until 2004. 

In 2004 he was called to the world church headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, to serve first as director of world evangelism, then as a general vice president of the General Conference after his election at the 2005 General Conference Session in St. Louis, Missouri.

SUNSET YEARS

Pastor Mark laughs when recounting his attempt to retire at the General Conference Session in Atlanta, Georgia. “In 2010 Teenie and I were a little older, in our late 60s. I was getting ready to walk onto the stage to announce my retirement. Elder Ted Wilson had just been elected as the General Conference president. As I walked onto the stage, he shook my hand and said something to the effect, ‘I’d really like you to stay on as one of my assistants.’ ” So for the past 14 years Pastor Mark has served a part-time role as an assistant to the president of the General Conference. 

Now semi-retired, the Finleys have branched out into other facets of ministry. 

For several years Teenie has presented seminars on the importance of every church being a training school for Christian workers.² In 2009 they moved to Dominion Valley in Haymarket, Virginia. It was there that Teenie noticed a piece of property with a sign stating, “Future Church Site.” She turned to her husband and said, “That needs to be an Adventist church and training school.” Pastor Mark answered that he was working at the General Conference and that it wasn’t wise to add anything else to an already-packed program. Teenie replied, “OK, I will pray.” Together they earnestly prayed that God would open doors if it was His will for them to move forward with the project. 

Their answer came in a remarkable way. Teenie relates, “I was teaching a seminar and giving this whole concept of how you train a church in evangelism, both preparation in the preevangelistic work and then in evangelism. I just casually mentioned that there was a piece of property for sale, and maybe, now that we’re getting older, we need to retire more and stay in one place. ‘And you know,’ I said, ‘I would love to have that for a training school.’ Later a person I’d never met before came up to me and said, ‘Could you tell me more about that training school?’ I did, and the next day he came back to me and said, ‘God impressed me to give you $50,000 for that property.’ ” She went home and told Pastor Mark that God had given them $50,000 for a training school. Almost as soon as they set up a designated account for the property purchase, they received a call. Someone had heard of the $50,000 donation and wanted to match it. Someone else gave them $7,000. It was clear to them that God wanted them to move forward. 

They went to Virginia and looked at the property; then the real estate agent told them of another piece of land in town that had been intended for a library, but that the township had decided not to use it. Would they like to use it for the church? The owners would sell the property to them for approximately half the original asking price. The Finleys thought that perhaps this was where God was leading, and began looking for more of His providence. Not long after, they received a call that all the funding they needed would be made available. They just needed to purchase the property. 

They bought the land in Haymarket, Virginia, started the training school, and, as Teenie says: “Here we are still today in our retirement.” The new church, Living Hope, started from a church in Warrenton, Virginia, that had a very small attendance. Their membership began to grow, and that church group moved to form the base for the Living Hope church in Haymarket. 

Today Living Hope has approximately 250 members, and the church continues to flourish. They plan to replant a congregation back in Warrenton. Hundreds of pastors from across North America have attended their training sessions at the school of evangelism. They have anywhere from seven to nine sessions a year, usually about five days each. 

All of this, Pastor Mark and Teenie say, was after they retired. They have continued to travel the world preaching and teaching, conducting evangelistic series, assisting the General Conference president, and writing sharing books. In fact, the Finleys recently participated in Hope for Africa, a satellite evangelistic event in Kenya with 20,000 downlink locations in 11 countries and in seven languages. About 197,000 people were baptized in those meetings. They ran a field school of evangelism in the morning, with 300 to 400 pastors and laypeople attending, learning how to share the gospel more effectively. 

“It seems we have sped things up a bit [in our retirement] and are doing what we did before, but are adding components such as the training school, the retreat home, and other evangelistic initiatives,” Teenie says. 

NEW PROJECTS

Some of the other things she is referring to include a relatively new YouTube ministry, radio broadcasting, and retreats for pastors and church workers. 

YouTube

The Finleys started a YouTube ministry in their local congregation with “laypeople—no media professionals,” Pastor Mark says. “We have now built a YouTube ministry where we have a team that are top quality. They are committed to sharing Christ with the world through media.” Their YouTube channel, HopeLives365, has, as of the time of this writing, more than 238,000 subscribers and touches people in every country where YouTube can be accessed. 

Every week they produce at least two to three programs. People around the world are coming to Christ and being baptized. Pastor Mark used the YouTube ministry for an evangelistic series for Chinese-speaking people around the world. They had 10 million views from those meetings alone.  

Radio

In just the past six months, Salem Broadcasting, the largest Christian radio network in America, has added Pastor Mark’s sermons to their programming lineup. At a recent broadcaster’s luncheon, program directors from across the country were excited about having Pastor Mark preach biblical sermons. They have produced more than 200 radio programs now. “Incidentally,” Pastor Mark says, “within Salem Broadcasting we’ve developed wonderful relationships with the people in the evangelical community. We really appreciate them. They appreciate our ministry. They are actually fundraising for us!”³

Retreat Homes

The Finleys have established the nonprofit organization Hope Lives Evangelistic Ministries with two retreat homes to which they invite pastors to be their guests for quiet retreats. These homes are specifically for pastors, church workers, and ministry groups to come and rest, eat good plant-based food, and exercise, all while learning how to help their ministry grow. They attend classes on church growth, evangelism, the three angels’ messages, and more at the Living Hope church. It’s a wholistic approach to a ministry retreat. 

“This is life for us in our retirement years . . . if you can call it that!” Teenie is quick to add, “We love it. We are rejuvenated ourselves.” 

Pastor Mark agrees. “We are excited about our ministry. We believe that God has opened doors for us today that we didn’t have 10 or 20 years ago. Today we have a broader vision than ever before. We are now able to reach the world with our YouTube and radio ministries, and our retreat homes give us the opportunity to work with and train pastors.”

He concludes: “The greatest joy in life is serving Jesus. Ministering for Christ gives each one of us a purpose to live for in our retirement years. It provides a reason to get up in the morning. It energizes us and inspires us with a renewed vision. Find some area of ministry that you enjoy, and volunteer in that ministry for a portion of your time each week. You will be glad you did, and others will be blessed.” 

¹ Ellen G. White manuscript 21, 1910, in A Call to Medical Evangelism and Health Education (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 2010), p. 15.

2 See Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1905), p. 149.

³ You can listen to Pastor Mark’s radio sermons by searching “Mark Finley” on OnePlace.com.