iRetire4Him Show 80: Moving Forward, Part 3

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 approaching or already into retirement. You've [00:01:00] tuned into iRetire4Him the Voice and Resource of The Retirement Reformation. I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg, and I'm joined today by the founder of The Retirement Reformation, Bruce Bruinsma.

We encourage you to check us out online RetirementReformation.org, RetirementReformation.org, and of course on Facebook, the same name Retirement Reformation . The Retirement Reformation is founded on the main principle that your retirement years are the most significant years of your life. You take all the wisdom you've gleaned over your years and all the skills you've accumulated along with your retirement income, and you find yourself into a fully funded ministry model.

Your retirement years are full of freedom and adventure, and Bruce Bruinsma has written many books to help you, guide you through the process of taking advantage of your retirement years. Bruce wrote a series of books called The Future Funded Ministry Series.

Book number one is entitled Finding Freedom. We covered that in podcast 11 through 14. Book number three is entitled, Charting Your Course, which we covered in podcasts 2 through 10. And the fourth book [00:02:00] is entitled A Fruitful Retirement, which we covered in iRetire4Him podcasts 59 through 62. Book number two is our current series entitled, Moving Forward, putting Your Future Funded Ministry into Motion .

Bruce Bruinsma here to help us finalize all the details so we can move forward. Bruce, welcome back to I iRetire4Him.

Bruce: Hi, Jim. It's always good to be here and I'm so glad that we went back and picked up this book the second in the series. While I would prefer that people read them through sequentially, but each one of them can be standalone also, and, and we've had such amazing response to Moving Forward. That step of getting off the couch and getting unstuck and what do you need to kind of think about in order to take that step?

Jim: So, as we close out today, our three part series on Moving Forward, which is book two of this four book series, which I already said, how have you seen this series impact the lives of your Retirement Reformation followers?[00:03:00]

Bruce: You know what's interesting? As we enter into the first stage or the second or the third stage of retirement, there's always a little fear. There's always a little bit of the unknown. Well, because there's a lot of unknown. And so the two things that have come out of this particular book, that people have shared with me and, and that I've seen is that in fact it gives them the foundational - some additional foundational information, not only as an encouragement but as, as a foundation to build on and move forward.

We talked about the money personalities as an example. Understanding your financial landscape. So there are some tools built in there, but what really has happened and what people have shared with me is that it really was that urge, that nudge to be able to go from, okay, I kind of get it but now doing something about it and that doing something is the key. [00:04:00]

Jim: You know, you spend the second half of the Moving Forward book really helping people get prepared, our listeners, to get prepared financially for their future funded ministry years, including specific investment perspectives and basic investment understanding. Why is this included in a book on future funded ministry?

Bruce: About future funded ministry. Let's just break that apart for a moment. We talked in an earlier segment about the fact we are all ministers together now. When we are ministers together, our life requires some funding. When we are fully funded, when we have a fully funded future ministry plan, then we have total freedom to be able to respond to God's calling our life and what we do.

Many will not have that. They will be in a situation where it will be a partially funded ministry plan that will give them some flexibility, but they'll have some restraints. Maybe they still will need to work [00:05:00] or there are other restraints but just simply the idea that it, it requires resources and God provides them to us and that as good stewards, we then are prepared for the future.

Just think of the story of Joseph and the fact that in the seven years that they stored the grain up for that whole part of the world and the impact that that had it was, they had a fully funded grain future and, and how important that was. Those that did not have a fully funded grain future - Abraham, they had to go to, they had to go to Egypt in order to participate with someone who had a fully funded one. And think of all the things that happened as a result of that.

Jim: Hmm. Yeah, it's amazing. I, I actually asked an Egyptian one time, I said, do you guys still recognize the significance that Joseph played - an Israeli played in really the history of your country? He goes, absolutely, because Joseph saved the country of Egypt.

All right, so [00:06:00] Bruce, you know, we're preparing for retirement and we're either before retirement years, before that age 65 to 75 that you talk about - retirement in our most active years. Is there a spot where, where it's too late for us to get ready?

Bruce: No, there's really not. And the most important preparation is your emotional and your spiritual. You know, those preparations and your understanding of that. There is a next and your understanding of the length of time of that next, and the fact that God has a call on your life and to know what that call is at that point. Those are the things that are really, really critical.

Jim: Just being, you're saying being mentally prepared that retirement isn't just about a 30 year vacation, but that it's an opportunity to do 30 years of retirement unfettered by work.

Bruce: Unfettered by work. Or within the [00:07:00] context of work for some who need to do that because okay, they did not have a fully funded ministry.

But once, once you understand the context of retirement, the role that money plays, future funded, the role that ministry plays, the role that some relaxation in, in a sabbatical plays as you, as you get those into a right sequence - a right thought process, you're connected with God's wisdom and you're making wise decisions.

Boy, you know, retirement can be the most fantastic time of life, one with meaning and purpose and joy. And if you don't, it can be the one with the largest pain.

Jim: Mm. So how can Retirement Reformation, our organization, help our listeners to get prepared for their future funded ministry? Why don't you just tell our listeners right now about the Recreating Retirement small groups that you're doing both online and locally. Talk about those. [00:08:00]

Bruce: Yeah. One of the things that - I've talked about it before, but that each one of us comes to at some point is what I call an aha moment, which is: oh my goodness - there is meaning and there is purpose, and God does have a plan and it is gonna be 30 years. Ah. Now here's the question, what's next?

And so how has God uniquely planned and prepared you for what's next? And so to be able to come together in community, in, in a small group, and to be able to work through all the issues of understanding the preparation that has come, and then being able to describe and to come to grips with what's next.

And so Recreating Retirement is that process and that small group study that we're so excited about. Matter of fact, Jim, I gotta tell you, we got a big vision man in that in the next five years that there will be 10,000 Recreating Retirement small [00:09:00] groups that have been started and people have gone through it and are, are then encouraged to be able to take their next step.

So, you know, we're so excited about the process, about the material, but most importantly about Moving Forward into what's next. You can find out about this at our, on our website RetirementReformation.org. You can find about it on our Facebook page, and it's just something we're excited for.

Matter of fact, there may be some of our listeners that say, you know, I haven't been through it, but I'd like to. I wonder if I could teach that or lead as a group in my church. We hope that, and pray and believe that there will be a growing number of people that will embrace helping others to come to the realization that God already knows, and now you need to step into his preferred future for you.

Jim: Hmm. Those workshops, that small group [00:10:00] study is called Recreating Retirement, and it is a six week study. It's fantastic. It is just been released. You can do an online group on Facebook at Retirement Reformation, but you can find out all the information about a Recreating Retirement groups on our website, RetirementReformation.org.

When we come back, Blaine Derck will share his story of how God is working in his retirement years. And then we'll finish up during our third segment, the three part series on Moving Forward, putting your future funded ministry into motion. 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 [00:11:00] churches and faith-based organizations across the country. Is 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 RetirementReformation.org.

Jim: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him. Bruce, during every second segment of every show you always bring on a surprise guest. Somebody's got a great story to share about how they're living out their faith in their retirement years. Who do you have for us today?

Bruce: Well, to our audience, I'd like to introduce Blaine Derck to you. And Blaine has had an interesting pathway of life that has led him to a very unique situation. So typically what I do, Blaine in, in these conversations, I ask somebody to kind of, you know, give us a little background story to, to what it is you're doing now, but I'm gonna do this a little bit differently. Could you tell our audience what it is that God has you doing today [00:12:00] as ministry?

Blaine Derck: That's a great question. As I was coming out of the nonprofit segment, I needed some employment and I took a job, working part-time for a funeral home here in town. And I, I've been around funeral homes throughout my entire ministry, but this was an opportunity for me to work actually in the business, so to speak.

And as I was there, I began to realize, There were people who find themselves in the current state of affairs without any kind of engaged minister or an engaged church, and yet they wanted to have some semblance of a Christian burial. And as I was talking to some of the funeral directors that I work with periodically, they would call me and say, Hey, [00:13:00] could you maybe fill in and act as a pastor to this family?

And of course, the way I was raised in ministry, the answer to those questions are always, yes. Let me figure out how I do it. Okay. So I was just counting - just the other day I was talking to a coworker, and in the last three and a third years that I've been working for this particular funeral home, I've probably done over 70 funerals where families did not have a context of opportunity to have a pastor do their funeral.

So out of that, it's, it's opened a door for me that when I moved into retirement more full-time I was, I was still working that process and I'm still engaged in providing those ministry opportunities. And the way that works is I'll have a funeral director reach out to me and see if I'm available.[00:14:00]

If the time slot works for all of us then I reach out to the family and begin to build a relationship with them. It's a rather, it seems, rather short term, but I still have the contact information for all those individuals. And they still have the contact information for me. And I typically, about a month after the service, I reach back into their lives and just say, Hey, how's it going?

Now there are some special cases that tragedy is very deep and you know, I, so I track those individuals a little bit more regularly and I try and reach out to them maybe once a month for the next year or so and just see how they're doing and, and use it as an opportunity to share my faith journey with them as the Lord opens those doors. And just be there as a comfort to help them as they walk this grief process. At least for the first year of that journey.

Bruce: [00:15:00] Wow. That's a, you know, there are all these niches of people that need Jesus to be represented to them. Maybe it's a shoulder to cry on. Maybe it's. , you know, someone to vent emotion whatever it may be. But to assure them that there is more, that God loves them and to to be, you know, to be Jesus in the middle of their grief. Did you - go back to when you were 20 years old, okay? Could you have even imagined that you would be having this kind of ministry at this time? Or was that something that God planted in your heart way back when?

Blaine Derck: Well, that's an interesting question that you're asking there, Bruce, because when I came out of college with my degree to go into ministry in a local church I was on staff of a fairly large church and it's pretty atypical for a staff pastor to do very many funerals because everybody wants the senior [00:16:00] pastor to be the representative that speaks into that situation. But the interesting thing is, I, in that first year after graduation, I did five funerals. That, that was unusual for a staff pastor because again, everybody wants the senior pastor.

But because of my network through what I was doing in the church, I was - some of us might remember the bus ministry way back when. I was the pastor of the bus ministry and the and the evangelism pastor. And that put me in contact with a lot of people that would not claim a local church. They would not say, Hey, I go to church on a regular basis.

And what happened is as I was engaging those individuals, God began to formulate in me a capacity to enter into some of those hard grief-stricken conversations with [00:17:00] families. And again, I wanna give credit where credit is due. I also was mentored by a pastor that took me along on funeral calls and said, here's how you do this, because you're going to get calls from people that have no relationship with you and no relationship with the church.

And I will confess, the way God's wired me is I'm pretty gregarious. I don't have too many people that I don't meet that I wouldn't at least be able to relate to in some form or another. And I surrendered that capacity to God and 40 years later, here's where I am. I'm, I'm using whatever God laid into my heart back as a graduate of college and working as a young staff pastor to where I'm at today.

Being able to have these conversations. I will confess to you that Covid put a wrench in it a little bit, and yet God has helped us navigate [00:18:00] that in that now families are quite comfortable even just having phone conversations. You know, it's kind of awkward. People don't want you in their home very much if they, if they don't have to.

But again, I give all glory to God and I'm able to bridge those emotional gaps even on the phone. And that's a God-given gift. It's not something that I've formulated and I wanna give him praise. So I'm even doing it now post covid in a whole new context that I hadn't done it in before.

Bruce: Well, I've noticed that people continue to die and that loneliness and separation from a community of faith is unfortunately becoming more of a norm than what we would like it to be. And so the way that God has prepared you, just one observation is that, you know, we, we talk about in the Retirement Reformation, we talk about how God uniquely prepares each one of us for what's [00:19:00] next. And your story is certainly one that puts an exclamation mark behind that.

So we appreciate you sharing with us, sharing that. Jim, do you have any questions for Blaine?

Jim: Yeah, Blaine, I can't help but notice the grandfather clock behind you that is not working. That's wrapped up in plastic and it's almost like a metaphor for what you just described, how you used to do ministry one way and Covid kind of wrapped that up, sent it packing, and you've got a new way of doing ministry. A new paradigm. Isn't an amazing how God continues to use your heart and passion for caring for people who are in a very difficult time, but yet you had to do it differently?

Blaine Derck: Yeah. And, and that's, and that's what I hope that will happen even for anyone coming out of a vocational context, whatever that context may be. Because, you know, I won't say that the transition was easy. I still scratch my head [00:20:00] sometimes and say, well, why aren't I doing what I was doing before? I just follow where God leads and sometimes God does pack up the old and gives us a new gift and you unwrap it and you say, oh, wow, God, thanks for the opportunity. Didn't expect this.

Bruce: What a great thought.

Jim: Blaine Derck, thanks for being an iRetire4Him. We'll be right back.

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 passions and how they all come together as the call God has for you in these years. Connect with us on our online community group at Facebook.com/ Retirement Reformation. Wednesdays at 6:00 PM Eastern.[00:21:00]

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

Jim: Hey, welcome back to, iRetire4Him. Had this great conversation with Blaine Derck. I, I'm so glad, Bruce, you do such a great job of picking those segment two guests.

Bruce, I thought it would be really helpful in this final segment of this three part series on the book number two, Moving Forward, that we go back and do a summary on all four books that we've got in this series. So why don't you start off just talking. What is book number one, Findinng Freedom - Understanding the Power of a Future Funded Ministry? What is book number one all about?

Bruce: First of all, it's the first stage in that aha moment that all of us will come to at some point or another when we realize that there is more, and that in fact the [00:22:00] retirement years instead of being a trap, instead of being smaller boundaries, instead of coming together to be less than, it's an opportunity to be more than, and the freedom that you can find.

And we talk about the freedom in Christ that we can find and the way that God has prepared us. It's, it's that opening of that aha moment of, oh my goodness, there's freedom ahead. Not slavery or any other downer kind of thought. That's the first book.

Jim: And I can attest to the fact that having lived in Florida for 20 years, that people do feel like retirement is a death sentence instead of a life sentence.

Bruce: Not only a death sentence, but a death spiral. And you realize that that's not true. Finding freedom.

Jim: Finding freedom is all about changing your perspective. And then of course, we just finished up a series, are finishing up a series on Moving Forward. But Bruce, why don't you just summarize in case somebody just listened to this podcast and didn't catch the other two? Moving Forward helps people do [00:23:00] what?

Bruce: Get off the couch and get started and provides the understanding, foundational information that will allow you to feel, to be encouraged to get off the couch, to be encouraged to be able to listen to what God has in mind for you. So it has the next step of, the foundation of what it takes for them to be able to feel, be encouraged to take the next step and to literally move forward.

Jim: So book number one just awakens our listeners to the idea that, wow, there's freedom in retirement. Book two is, Hey, get off the couch, here's some steps, get going. And then book three, Charting your Course, Discovering Direction for Your Future Funded Ministry. Talk to us about this book.

Bruce: I think in its simplest word, it, it talks about planning and talks about the value of being able to understand what may be ahead, to be prepared, and to take steps into it. Someone asked me the other day, why is it that so many Christ followers in [00:24:00] retirement don't have a retirement plan other than perhaps a financial one?

But that's the extent of it. And the answer is very simple. If you're not going to do anything, you don't need a plan. You don't need a plan to do nothing. But if, in fact you understand that there's freedom available, that in fact you need to move forward, what are those things gonna look like? What's, what's the basis? So Charting your Course deals with those kinds of issues.

Jim: And you close out the four-part book series now called A Fruitful Retirement. Talk to us about this.

Bruce: Well, in some ways we go back and we recap some of the things that we've talked about in the other three. But here's the promise and here is the, the opportunity to be able to read about to understand people who in fact are living a fruitful retirement. And when we talk about fruitful, that should remind us of those fruits of the spirit. And when we live with the fruits of the spirit, oh my goodness, [00:25:00] the freedom that we have, oh my goodness, the ability to move forward that we have, oh my goodness, the ability to take a look at what's next and, and to have a plan.

And so Fruitful Retirement kind of sums it all up and is the encouragement that there is wonderful times ahead that will be meaningful, that will be purposeful, and that you'll be able to deal with the emotional, spiritual, and other challenges that you'll get and to live a life that is fruitful and meaningful.

Jim: What's amazing, Bruce, is that in this four-part series, sometimes people have a hard time getting started on all this when they're alone. And so you guys have created these Recreating Retirement small groups, and you've got an online small group Recreating Retirement group. You've got a study guide that people can actually go through with a group of people within their own local body of Christ.

This is exciting because you've got everything in the [00:26:00] resources of Retirement Reformation that any future retiree or current retiree needs in order to have switched their mindset, shift their paradigm to being involved in a fully funded ministry model in their retirement years. Bruce, it's exciting, isn't it?

Bruce: It really is. And in the lives that are being changed. And we would invite each one of you to step into the process, join with us so that in fact, we can all say together, Jim, as you and I say, at the end of every one of our podcasts, the reason why we're here is iRetire4Him!

Outro: Thanks for listening to iRetire4Him with your hosts, 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. [00:27:00] 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 time to sign the Manifesto at Retirement Reformation 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 RetirementReformation.org.