iRetire4Him Show 76: Recreating Retirement, Part 2

Intro: [00:00:00] While retirement is generally seen as a time of relaxation and self-focus, God calls us to love, serve, and help others for a lifetime. He has been preparing us for this retirement season, literally our entire lives. In retirement, countless Christians enter a state of spiritual dormancy not knowing how they are called to have an impact for God's kingdom.

The Retirement Reformation seeks to encourage and empower the 50 million Christians approaching or in retirement to embrace the calling God has been preparing in them. When the world says it's time to stop, you can begin to have your greatest impact. Welcome to iRetire4Him, the mouthpiece of the Retirement Reformation, where our goal is to journey from retirement to reformation so you can say, iRetire4Him!

Jim: Reaching out to the 50 million Christ followers in America who are [00:01:00] approaching or already into retirement. You've tuned into, iRetire4Him, the mouthpiece for the Retirement Reformation. I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg. I'm joined today by the founder of The Retirement Reformation, Bruce Bruinsma.

We invite you to check us out online: Retirement Reformation.org, Retirement Reformation.org. So many of you have asked, how do we get a Retirement Reformation started in our own local church? Well, today we step into show two of a three part series introducing you to our Recreating Retirement small group curriculum.

That's available now on our website, Retirement Reformation.org. For these three podcasts, we're gonna do a high level overview of the material inside the Recreating Retirement small group. We hope to inspire you to start your own small group in your own local body of Christ, and start reforming, redefining, and ultimately Recreating Retirement for you and your friends.

Bruce Bruinsma, welcome back to the conversation about Recreating Retirement.

Bruce: Hey Jim. I'm excited to be here and to be talking about this [00:02:00] topic. As you know, it's been in the works for a couple of years, and so to be able to bring it to, to fruition is really important. And, and I really like the name Recreating Retirement because so many people have a vision of what retirement is in their head, and in fact it needs some reforming.

Yeah. And so the opportunity to recreate the way we think about retirement and then the actions we're gonna take in this three part series is really gonna be important.

Jim: So Bruce, as you think about the everyday retired believer that's gonna get their hands on this Recreating Retirement small group curriculum, the study, what's your hope? What, what is your hope for that believer?

Bruce: My hope for that believer is that they go from Aha, my goodness, there really can be more, there is more. And God does have a plan . To answering the question that their grandchild might ask them. Oppa, what are you gonna do now that you're retired? And that in [00:03:00] fact you have an answer.

And it may be he's asking that to you when you're 61. He also may be asking you that when you're 71, he may be asking you that when you're 81. So to be able to come up with the answers for your grandchild, oppa, what are you gonna do next?

Jim: Yeah, that may be your kids too and your great grandkids when you get the opportunity.

All right. During part two of the study, you spend a couple of weeks focused on helping the Christ following retiree to get to know themselves, who God created them to be. Why is that so important?

Bruce: Well, you know, you need to have a platform. You need to have a foundation, a foundation of understanding, an emotional foundation, an intellectual foundation perhaps, but all those different elements that, that you can build.

And if you don't have an understanding of where you've been, it's kind of difficult to figure out where it is that you're going to go because what has happened in the past has helped create who it is that we are [00:04:00] today. And who we are today needs to evolve to who God plans us to be and the activities that go along with that for tomorrow.

So finding who, who we are, where we've been, what we've done, and this is gonna be a challenge for many people in there because it asks you to be introspective, to think about yourself and to think about it in a, in a creative way through a God-given lens. And so my encouragement for those that are, are going to take a step into Recreating Retirement is they be committed to that introspection and to that understanding because it's the platform against which the future will grow.

Jim: Hmm. And what you actually do in this study is you actually help them to understand the hardwiring that God built into them when he created them, but also the programming, the stuff that has impacted and influenced us as we've grown as human beings throughout our lives. Bruce, you also then [00:05:00] transition in this reflective time to ask people - I mean, this is stuff that they're doing, I imagine when you're, when they're gonna do this study, they're gonna be doing this homework all week long in preparation for going to their small group to kind of share some answers and share some things because you asked to reflect on five events that change their lives. And then you ask them about five choices that change their lives. Why the focus on events and then choices?

Bruce: Events are things that happen to you. You're in an automobile accident, that's an event. You go to a football game that's an event . You, you go to a wedding, that's an event that you go to. A funeral - that's an event. And all of those events provide a context for a response from you. And it is the context and the response that helps shape your future. Well, those are events that happen.

Now we go to choices. These are things [00:06:00] that you decide that in fact, they are presented to you and these are the decisions that you make. And those decisions that you make will in fact impact how you will respond to events in the future and to opportunities that are presented to you.

Jim: So, I don't know... I mean, so talk about you. Let's talk about you personally, Bruce. Let's talk about one event that changed your life .

Bruce: I was on an airplane going to Frankfurt and I ran outta stuff to read. I turned to my wife and said, what you got that I could read? She handed me the Bible. I opened it up to Ecclesiastes and my life was never the same since.

That was an event. That event of not having something to read, asking Judy, she gave me her Bible. I opened it up to Ecclesiastes. I read it through three times. It changed my life . Hmm. And we can talk [00:07:00] at another time about all the different ways that that happened. Well, I presume the next question you're gonna ask, well then what, what choice?

Jim: That's right. What's one choice that changed your life? And I'm only asking you one. I'm not asking you to reveal all five.

Bruce: The one that I would choose would be the choice when I was given the choice, the opportunity to go to Timbuktu, literally to the ends of the earth . And it was not the event of going to the end of the earth, but it was the choice that I had to make of, would I respond and would I go?

And it was God's call that I do go, and I did go and I went to the ends of the earth. And that choice that I made has, has colored and impacted virtually every other choice that I have made for the rest of my life . Primarily, and you can think of it in a lot of different ways, but one of the key ways was, was the answer to the question: if God calls, will I [00:08:00] go? If he puts an opportunity in front of me, will I make the choice to step into it? When there is an opportunity to make a difference, will I choose to do that? And so the book of Ecclesiastes on an airplane to Frankfurt and the decision to go to Timbuktu would be an event and a choice.

Jim: These are just a couple of snippets of things that you will experience as you go through the Recreating Retirement small group material. We're so excited to get it into your hands. Make sure you check us out online Retirement Reformation.org and either download or buy a copy. I recommend you buy a copy so you can make your notes and, and don't do this digitally.

Write it down. This is a, this is a study you're gonna go back to and look at your notes from going through it . Online Retirement Reformation.org. We will be right back with an interview with Marty Granger who's gonna share his story of living out his faith in [00:09:00] retirement and in segment three, Bruce and I will continue to do a high level overview of Recreating Retirement.

We'll be right back.

Break: Recreating Retirement is an interactive small group study helping you to move from nothing to what's next. You can join us on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM East Coast Time on Facebook Live. Our goal for this study is to provide a group setting for interaction and new ideas while leading you through a first step in your journey from retirement to reformation.

Here's the big idea. During the next five years, 5,000 small groups will experience this journey of discovery in churches and faith-based organizations across the country as your church, a place where Recreating Retirement needs to be planted. Join us online to experience the study or prepare to lead a small group at your church or ministry.

Email us at ContactUs@retirementreformation.org or go to our website at retirementreformation.org. That's Retirement Reformation.org.

Jim: [00:10:00] Welcome back to IiRetire4Him the mouthpiece for the Retirement Reformation. As you know, our listeners, if you've been listening for any period of time, you always know that in segment two of every podcast, we bring in a special guest. Bruce, who do you have for us today?

Bruce: Hi. I'd like to introduce our audience to Marty Granger. Marty welcome.

Marty Granger: Thank you, Bruce. Good to be with you.

Good. And, and we could spend a couple of hours my asking questions and you giving answers, and it would all be interesting, but we've only got just a few moments.

Bruce: So if you'd be kind enough just to kind of give our audience a little bit overview of how God brought you to where it is that you are in your life stage.

Marty Granger: Right. Okay, well I became a believer in Christ when I was 22 years old. I was a young school teacher and I got involved with high school students at that time just sharing Christ with them spontaneously.

And that led actually to a career of 20 years with the ministry, the national Ministry of Youth for Christ, where I was an executive director in [00:11:00] the Albany, New York area, and then in the Washington DC area. And then you know, I when I was 45 years old after 20 years of doing that, I hung up my sneakers, I guess.

And I knew that, I knew that God had put a call on my life to the, to the gospel ministry. And by faith I stepped out and started an organization that at the time was called Faith in the Family. And I was doing speaking and teaching and really interpreting young people to parents and parents to young people and connecting both of them to the church, which was interesting.

And over the years especially living in Washington, DC after I stopped doing active youth ministry, a great thing happened. You know, living in Washington, there's always something going on, literally every day in that city. And my phone began to ring and I was getting calls from different national organizations asking me if I could help them organize large events.

So over a period [00:12:00] of about I would say six, seven years, I worked with the Luis Palau organization. I worked with Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I worked with something called True Love Waits. And then one day Promise Keepers called me - the men's movement - and they needed an event manager for their stadium conference in Washington DC. This was in 1994.

So I put together a team of men from all over the area, and we were responsible for everything that happened that day, except what went on on the stage. And with 52,000 men in the audience, you can imagine it was a lot. And a great thing happened as a result of all the networking and the contacts that I made.

And that was that men and women started asking me, how do you do this? And I said, how do you do what ? Well, how do you run a 5 0 1 organization and do all that you're doing? And I said, well, why are you asking me? And they said, well, maybe you can help. And what turned out in 1996, [00:13:00]instead of me becoming a consultant to try to help them do something that frankly I found out a lot of them were not gifted or equipped or even interested in doing, I set up an organization so that we could sponsor and host I'll call them independent ministries and independent missionaries. And over the years it's been 30 some years that we've been doing this. We relocated our headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. My son, my adult son, my firstborn works with me.

And we moved here in order that we could work together. And over the years, what has developed for me actually to get sort of to the point is a burden. I've had a burden for not only younger men and women that want to enter into ministry, but also as I got older, I realized there was a whole mission field of Christian, I'll call 'em Christian workers, but I'm including pastors, [00:14:00] missionaries in particular, those two groups that for some reason or another, maybe they were forced to retire. They chose to retire, but they reached retirement age from their formal service. And I thought there's so much capacity here.

I have such respect for men that I've known that have been in pulpits for years and have been in mission work for years. And when they're done, they're not done. And so many of them have a fire in their belly and they wanna do something. And so basically we, we created a program for those men and women both, A place for them to belong and a place for them to continue to work.

And it's really been quite rewarding. It's not the largest part of what we do. Most of our ministries now are, they're full-time and a variety of ministries. Everything from ministering to men to, well, I could, I could go into all that, but lots of writing and training and traveling and speaking and [00:15:00]lecturing and, and discipling and all of that.

Bruce: But Marty it would, it would seem, just in listening to that wonderful odyssey, I mean, which has gotta be encouraging to, you know, lots of our listeners. God doesn't seem to be done with you yet.

Marty Granger: Well, I, no, I, I am still active. I am not retired. And, you know, for years before I turned retirement age, I would always say, you know, kind of glibly or I'd say, well, you know, retirement's not in the Bible.

It's kind of easy to throw out. But I remember when I turned around 65, I thought, you know, I'll kind of wait until I'm maybe 67 and I'll reevaluate this. And then 67 came and I said, I love what I'm doing. Why should I stop? Maybe 69 and so here I am today. You'd have to guess how old I am.

Bruce: But no, I'm I'm gonna ask you how old you are.

Marty Granger: I'm 76.

Bruce: There you go.

Marty Granger: Yeah. I'm, I'm 76 and, and continue to thoroughly enjoy the interaction that I have and the, the [00:16:00] opportunities that God gives you every day. My little, sort of, the way I wake up in the morning is what have you got for me today, God? Who am I going to meet today? Like this interview. Who are we going to intersect with today that has a similar passion? And it's fun to live your life that way.

So I don't, I don't see any need to retire. Frankly, my wife would say, no, no. Please keep going. Keep going.

Bruce: Yes, indeed. Well, you know, if you hurry up, you can catch up with me. I'm 81 . And people say, what? Are you gonna retire? And my answer is, well, I already am. I'm doing exactly what God wants me to do. With whom he wants me to do it and where he wants me to do it. And he's uniquely prepared me for 80 years for what's next.

Marty Granger: Amen. That's great. Yeah. You know, I have a certificate on my wall in my office that is the certificate of my ordination, and it talks about the calling to the gospel ministry. You know, there's no expiration date on that thing?[00:17:00] You know, that's, that's how I feel about.

Bruce: And just for our audience sake, there may be some people who would, you know, like to avail themselves of your services and so on. What's the website or the best way to be able to contact your organization?

Marty Granger: Well, the best way is the web address and it's ministry -alliance.org. You have to put the dash in between those two words. But ministry-alliance.org. We rebranded our our name in 2014 to really more accurately reflect what we're doing, which is creating an alliance of ministries. They're, they, they're all different. Can I give you an example?

Bruce: Very, yeah, a very quick one, very quickly.

Marty Granger: A, a chaplain of a graduate school of a major Christian college, a retired seminary professor, and a retired pastor from Louisiana, and a man that was with the good news prison fellowship ministry for many years - these are some of the kinds of people that we've been serving in this program.

Bruce: Well, we would hope that [00:18:00] through the message of the Retirement Reformation, our new small group study called Recreating Retirement, that in fact the, the result of all of those is that there will be many of them that will reach out to your organization. We thank you for the way God has led you and continues to do that, so thank you for helping to build the ministry and being such a key part to that. We appreciate it.

Marty Granger: Thank you Bruce, and God bless you.

Jim: We'll be right back with more on iRetire4Him.

Break: Our work on this earth doesn't end when the paycheck stops. God calls us to be faithful for a lifetime. Whether you're looking forward to retirement or you're already there, our all small group study Recreating Retirement will help you understand, engage, and activate what God has for you in this fourth quarter of life.

Join Retirement Reformation founder Bruce Bruinsma as you consider your past strengths, spiritual gifts, and your passion. And how they all come together is the call God has for you in these years. [00:19:00] Connect with us on our online community group at facebook.com/ Retirement Reformation Wednesdays at 6:00 PM Eastern.

Or if you'd like to bring Recreating Retirement to your church, email us at contact us@retirementreformation.org. Are you ready to start your life-changing journey today?

Jim: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him. As we're doing our high level overview of Recreating Retirement, a brand new small group material available from Retirement Reformation online Retirement Reformation.org.

Bruce, here you go. I'm going to, I got some zingers here for you. Retirement isn't the same for everyone, is it?

Bruce: Boy, it sure is not. It runs the full, the full gamut of activities very close to home in your neighborhood to experiences throughout the world, right? And for everyone it is totally different.

So if, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, huh, I'm just kind of [00:20:00] curious of what maybe it is that God has in mind for me that I'm not understanding now. Or you've got this deep hole in a passion, you're going, man, I am really frustrated cuz I thought retirement was gonna be totally cool and now it's just being a pain in the whatever.

And I need to be able to find something that's got, that's gonna get my juices going and, and get cranked up. Or it may be that just yesterday you saw a need, you saw someone who was hurting and you said, oh, oh, I could help. Wherever it is you're coming from, this is the pathway and the process and the Recreating Retirement, which will help you navigate through those steps.

Jim: You also touch on six questions that are related to questions that people are gonna face. These are choices they're gonna face in retirement, like the choice to love your spouse. Why is that so important for our listeners to take the time - listeners and [00:21:00] studiers, let's call 'em study people going through the Recreating Retirement study - to consider these choices ahead of time?

You, and again, you gotta get a copy of the Recreating Retirement curriculum and understand, but you're asking six choices that they're gonna have to make ahead of time. Why is it so important that we do this in advance of retirement?

Bruce: Well, lemme tell you a story. My son Brent, who is 54 and has Rubenstein Syndrome and has lived in a group home in Arcadia, California and in Chino, California for the last nine years and is now about to make a transition to another home. And in the way that he thinks about things he ruminates on the past, The circumstances then has a very difficult time of being able to step into the new opportunity. And so over this past weekend, we were with Brent and we went to visit the new house where it is that he would live with three others and, and the support system that's there. And he was going through a regular litany of [00:22:00] why he shouldn't change. And he lived in the other place for nine years and on and on and on and on and on.

And I said to him, I said, you know, Brent, the other three men that live here with you, It looks to me like they could use your help. And he, his head kind of went from side to side and he said, do you think I could help them?

I said, yeah, I think you could. He said, well, the room is bigger and it does have a door to the outside, and I think the staff is very nice, but do you really think I could help them ? I said, yeah, Brent , I think you could. He said, okay.

Jim: Hmm. That must have been a very powerful moment for you and Judy.

Bruce: It was.

Jim: In the Recreating Retirement study, you move on to identity. Why is it so important for those studying the recreation of the, of their retirement, to know who they are?

Bruce: [00:23:00] Who we are is the result of God's plan for your life, your response to it, and the way that you choose to deal with the issues of life that, that come along. And most of us are aware of the different kind of personality queries that we can have, ways we can learn about how our personality is unique to us, how it's different from others. . And, and so in the book, one of the things we do is we provide three or four different opportunities for each individual to be able to examine kind of different parts of their life, different parts of who they are, so they can have an understanding, and then to be able to see how that then fits into God's plan for that next stage of their life.

One of the results of understanding more about who you are is you have confidence and you have clarity about what it is that God is calling you to do. [00:24:00] And, and you don't have to be like Brent and be so worried about what, what is going to come up that you maybe never done before or you haven't done in that way, or you haven't thought about in that way.

But to be able to be able to put you into the place of confidence and of faith of taking the next step into the next journey of your life . It is who you are and who it is that you are becoming and the impact that you'll have on the kingdom.

Jim: Well, and in taking that who you are concept a little deeper, you also then dig deep into helping our studier, those studying the Recreating Retirement small group material, to study their God-given gifts, talents, and abilities.

Why do I need to know about my gifts, talents, and abilities in retirement? Aren't I just chilling for 30 years anyway? Sarcasm noted.

Bruce: As we, as we've talked so often, and as our audience knows, and if you're just joining us for the first time, [00:25:00] in fact, retirement is more than nothing. Retirement is in fact God's call on the balance of our life.

It is the opportunity to be able to use the characteristics that he's built into us and that we are continued to develop and to be able to use those for the betterment of the kingdom. There are so many needs in our world. All you have to do is, you know, turn on TV for 10 minutes and listen to the news and then turn it off to pick up the newspaper and read the front sections and then set it aside to walk down to the street, to go to your local rescue mission et cetera, to see the tremendous amount of needs there are and to, and to know that God has a plan for you to help address one or more of those needs with one or more individuals that he will put you in front of you.

What a, what a blessing. But to know that and to be able to do it with confidence and, and not to do it with fear and trepidation, [00:26:00] but to be able to do what will come almost naturally for you as soon as you're able to identify it and then take steps into it.

Jim: And we don't spend near enough time understanding who we are, who God created us to be, and what he created us to be doing, especially in our retirement years. Bruce, our listeners are wondering, how do I get a copy of the Recreating Retirement curriculum? Where do, where do they go? How do they get this, and what formats is it available?

Bruce: Well, our resource center, of course, is all at Retirement Reformation.org, which is our website. On that website, you'll see a whole panoply of, of resources that are available to you. Amongst those resources will be this curriculum and the ability to be able to download it virtually, get a hard copy, be able to be plugged into a virtual group that we'll, that we are continuing to do so that we will have virtual groups.

So if there isn't one in your church or you'd like to just go through the material a little more anonymously you can do that, and it's available. Also, our staff will be happy to answer questions to help you if you'd like to lead a group or start that in the church, to be able to give you the steps to take, to be able to do that and, and to then above all, have it impact your life and then tell others.

Jim: So go out to Retirement Reformation.org. Get a copy. You can get a hard copy, you can get a digital copy. I recommend the hard copy so you can make notes in it and keep it. Retirement Reformation.org in our resource center. Bruce, great conversation today, high level overview of the middle part of the Recreating Retirement series.

When we come back in our next podcast, we're gonna finish up our high level overview of Recreating Retirement. Thank you, Bruce, for being here today.

Bruce: God bless. We just pray that this will be a blessing to our.

Jim: You've been listening to, iRetire4Him, the mouthpiece for the Retirement Reformation with your host, Jim Brangenberg and of course, the founder of The Retirement Reformation, Bruce Bruinsma. [00:28:00] We're Christ followers journeying from retirement to reformation so we can ultimately say iRetire4Him.

Outro: Thanks for listening to iRetire4Him. With your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg and Retirement Reformation founder Bruce Bruinsma, iRetire4Him is the mouthpiece of the Retirement Reformation.

Most Christians tend to follow the world's pattern of rest and self pampering during retirement. However, in your retirement, you can be focused on God's unique call to love, serve, and help others. This can be your best season of life if you take advantage of a life's worth of knowledge and experience and combine it with a greater freedom of time and money and invest it all in the generations, both preceding and following you.

The Retirement Reformation is encouraging Christians to find and follow God's call in all seasons and aspects of life, especially in retirement. Take [00:29:00] time to sign the manifesto at retirementreformation.org and explore the wealth of resources available on our site.

Join this movement of God and Journey from Retirement to Reformation so you can say iRetire4Him. Go to Retirement Reformation.org.