Workshops help teachers better understand state retirement system

Horace Mann offers retirement planning workshops for educators

Educators work hard, so they can enjoy a fulfilling retirement when the time comes.  However, many do not have a full understanding of their state teachers’ retirement system and how it may work with other pieces of the retirement puzzle, such as Social Security, personal savings and other investments.  Horace Mann wants to help. 

Horace Mann, the nation’s largest multiline insurance company focused on serving the needs of educators, has been helping teachers prepare for retirement since 403(b) annuities were first authorized by Congress in 1961.  

 On a local level, Horace Mann representative Travis Jackson is an expert on the Texas Teachers’ Retirement System and hosts workshops on the topic.   

Whether you’re retiring in 20 years or 20 months, we believe working on a comprehensive retirement strategy should be addressed before you can make informed decisions regarding retirement.

Our educational workshops help teachers better understand how their state’s retirement system works and understand the options available to them under their plan.

Horace Mann agents only present state retirement system workshops in schools where the principal or superintendent has given approval.  The workshops are provided at no cost and with no sales pitch.

Educators or school business officials interested in learning more about Horace Mann’s Texas Teachers’ Retirement System workshops may contact Travis Jackson at 903-715-0521 or by email at Travis.Jackson@horacemann.com



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simple religion

“It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you find that what we call “seeing a table” lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child’s prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not—and the modern world usually is not—if you want to go on and ask what is really happening— then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.”

—

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

#TBT Fallbrook

Fallbrook playing a gig in an old meat packing plant. Kind of a creepy setting. Circa 1987. ‪#‎TBT‬
with Mark Yant and Jeff Hutchins. and Matt Doyal and Anthony Bazzani

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Quote of the Day

The 3 C’s of life: choices, chances and changes. You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.


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Quote of the Day

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations



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Light

In a world of darkness, we are those who have come from darkness into light and we are to reflect the light we have found in Jesus. But Jesus’ point is that we are not just to shine our lights in our own little circle of influence, but we are to shine them so that every place of darkness is either brought to the light or is exposed for what it is.

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Quote of the Day

“A strong person is one who can build a firm foundation with the bricks other people have thrown at them.”

Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mashup!

Why Revivals ARE NOT Effective

You can’t call them back to something they never knew. 

Old school ‘revival’ meant there was something to revive. 

Now that we are on the 2nd to 5th generation of un-churched people, revival is less helpful to say the least. 

You can’t call them back to something they never knew.

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Things we need to understand...

Reading one of my favorite books today, I came across this statement. It is pure wisdom, and so many just do not get it.

“For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain



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Jack Graham :: The Balanced Preacher

Music Fridays: Mercy (Phil Wickham)

Music Fridays: Mercy (Phil Wickham)

Heaven to Earth
came down from on high
with hope in His name
and a fire in His eyes

This is a great song.

The first verse talks about Adam, and how sin came into the world. The second verse, about Jesus, and how sin was conquered- all through the mercy of God.

This is the gospel.  This is “the story that makes dead men live,” as the song says.
The Bible says, 

"So it is written: ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man." (NIV) 1 Corinthians 15: 45-49

Jesus was the second Adam, the one born to inherit the Earth. Yet He gave up His inheritance so that we, the Adams and Eves of the world, might be reconciled with God. 


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When Jesus speaks, God speaks

Genesis 8; Matthew 8; Ezra 8; Acts 8

WHY DOES JESUS FIND the faith of the centurion so astonishing (Matt. 8:5-13)? The centurion assures Jesus that as far as he is concerned it is unnecessary for the Master to visit his home in order to heal the paralyzed servant. He understands that Jesus need only say the word, and the servant will be healed. “For,” the centurion explains, “I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (8:9). Why is this such an astonishing evidence of faith?

Three factors stand out. The first is that in an age of not a little superstition, the centurion believed that Jesus’ healing power did not lie in hocus-pocus, or even in his personal presence, but in his word. It was not necessary for Jesus to touch or handle the servant, or even be present; he needed only to say the word, and it would be done.

The second is that he came to such confident assertions despite the fact that he was not steeped in Scripture. He was a Gentile. What grasp of Scripture he had we cannot say, but it was certainly less than that enjoyed by many of the learned in Israel. Yet his faith was purer, simpler, more penetrating, more Christ-honoring than theirs.

The third astonishing element is this man’s faith is the analogy he draws. He recognizes that he himself is a man under authority, and therefore he has authority when he speaks in the context of that relationship. When he tells a Roman soldier under him to come or go or do something, he is not speaking merely as one man to another man. The centurion speaks with the authority of Caesar, with the authority of the mighty Roman Empire. That authority belongs to the centurion, not because he is in fact as powerful as Caesar in every dimension, but because he is a man under authority: the chain of command means that when the centurion speaks to the foot soldier, Rome speaks. Implicitly, the centurion is saying that he recognizes in Jesus an analogous relationship: Jesus so stands in relationship to God, and under God’s authority, that when Jesus speaks, God speaks. The centurion, of course, was not speaking within the framework of a mature Christian doctrine of Christ, but the eyes of faith had enabled him to penetrate very far indeed.

This is the faith we need. It trusts Jesus’ word, reflects a simple profundity, and believes that when Jesus speaks, God speaks.



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