iRetire4Him Show 114: Practical Steps to Eliminating Loneliness

Jim Brangenberg: Did you know that when you retire, your calling, it doesn't retire. If you got a pulse, God's got a purpose for you. And this is what Bruce said in our last podcast. It's gotta be a part of our new entry every time. That meaning and purpose wipes out the loneliness in your life.

You've tuned in to iRetire4Him, the voice and resource of the Retirement Reformation, an organization dedicated to you, the retiree who loves Jesus and wants purpose all of your days, especially the ones ahead of you, and you don't want to be stuck with loneliness. Bruce Bruinsma joins us today as founder of the Retirement Reformation, he's here to walk with you as he walks through retirement. I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg. Check us out online, please. Retirement Reformation. org Retirement Reformation. org and check us out on Facebook too. Just under the same name, Retirement Reformation.

Seniors are lonely. Church pastors are lonely. Business leaders are lonely too. All this loneliness and what can we do about it? Today, we finish up a three part series about putting our retired selves into action to eliminate the loneliness in our retired friends, our church pastors, and our local leaders of businesses and organizations. All this loneliness and the solution has been there all along. The RJFFA is here to the rescue - the Retired Jesus Following Folks of America.

Bruce, with all this loneliness out there... we've got business people. Can seniors help eliminate loneliness and business leaders too, Bruce?

Bruce Bruinsma: I think two things to recognize that amongst the 48 million Christ followers who are 60 and older, I don't know exactly what percentage of those come out of the business world, but I would expect that it would say significant percentage. So for this conversation, let's just say it's 50%. So that would mean that there's only, 24 million people who have business experience, whether it be as a worker in a business, as it be as an entrepreneur, whatever it be in a business relationship, but that they were in one form or another, they were related to the business world.

That's in contrast to the direct vocational ministry world. And now they have translated from or transferred or transitioned - that's the word I wanted. They have transitioned from that business world to what the world calls retirement. And some of the issues that they are faced with that create loneliness are ones that other business people and those who were in ministry can come alongside to be of great assistance and to help them define meaning and purpose. Let's talk about some of the characteristics of those people.

First of all, they're used to working hard at whatever they're used to working. And so one of the things that attracted them to quote unquote retirement was the fact that the work they were going to do was going to change. Now, for many of them, the thought was, it's just going to go away. That's not true. We always work at something, but they transition. So they're all used to working a, probably a third of them, third of you who are listening, who fit into that category, we're used to being in some role of leadership. Something that you did that provided direction or support or encouragement or activity, that took the business organization that you were in to a different place, a new level, or solved a problem. So that's been the skill set that you have developed and that you've been a part of.

There's then another piece to the business folks who were the entrepreneurs or the business owners or the business executives of various firms. And you were used to leading in everything that you did. You were used to waking up with the tensions and the pressures that it takes for the decisions that you were going to make. For those of you in that middle category of giving leadership to a department or an organization, you woke up every morning wondering, who's going to quit today? How many people do I have to hire? So all the tensions that go along with that.

And for those of you that were the workers in those businesses. You woke up in the morning wondering, is the business that I'm in really going to survive? Or is there another role that I can play? Or is there another job that I can get in a related business or in a business where my skill set will work? So regardless of where you were in that chain of command, if you wish, or that area, there was tension and there was fear, but that was something that you lived with for a long period of time

By the way of saying when you transition from that into the world of quote unquote retirement, you hope that tension will go away but when it does, there is a huge hole of what is going to replace it in your spiritual, your emotional, and your physical growth that's going to take place.

I learned, and this was reaffirmed over the last week or so, at the average age of retirement, Jim, is in the country now is about 57 or maybe a little less. So we think of those in ministry. It's usually more in the 67 to 70 range, and that's what we talk about, but 57. So if you've got 30 years after age 60, and you do retire at 57, a matter of fact, I talked to somebody two days ago, they retired at 54.

This longevity issue is absolutely huge. And what it leads to is more opportunity for loneliness to rear its ugly head.

Jim Brangenberg: So we got lonely business owners and leaders. Okay. We've got those people, they're already lonely at the leading at the top because everybody's expecting something from them, but nobody ever, hardly asks, Hey, what can I do for you? And then we got those same business leaders who are retired, who are looking for meaning and purpose. How do we get those people connected, Bruce?

Bruce Bruinsma: First of all, is the realization amongst them that there is more after "now what?" Because they are people that are used to planning and doing and so on. They typically will have two things. They'll have a bucket list. They'll have a honey do list. All the things that you know they committed or wanted to be able to do for their family or their spouse or their home that they haven't done. So they got to get that done. And then they got this bucket list that has travel or other kinds of things in it. And you got to get that out of the way.

Once you have that out of the way, now you're left with that nothingness, which leads to loneliness. And so when the 48 million Christ followers, when you say, what are you going to do in retirement? And they come up with some version of nothing. That is the open door. That is the key that will lead to, or the pathway that will lead to eventually to loneliness. Nothing and loneliness are definitely connected.

Jim Brangenberg: When we come back, we're going to talk with Donnie Vanker from lifeaction. org. We're going to go deeper on this conversation. And then we'll finish up at segment three, specific things that you could do as seniors to walk alongside business leaders. We're going to review some of the things you can do to walk alongside pastors who are lonely. And we'll finish up with some things you can do to walk alongside your fellow seniors who are suffering from loneliness. You're listening to iRetire4Him. We'll be right back.

Jim Brangenberg: Every second segment of every show you always bring on an incredible guest and as we've been talking about pastors being lonely and a solution for seniors ministering to pastors, who'd you bring on today?

Bruce Bruinsma: We've got a special guest today as someone who's become a really good friend over the last year, and his name is Donny Vanker. Donny is the CEO of a ministry that's had an impact for lots and lots of years called Life Action. And so Donny, welcome. We're so glad that you're with us for just a few minutes and so glad that we can connect on, on topics that will be of interest to those who tune into this podcast.

Donny Vanker: Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Jim. Excited to be here.

Jim Brangenberg: Oh, glad to have you, Donny.

Bruce Bruinsma: So Donny got just a couple of questions. The first one that starts with, God used some pretty unusual circumstances to direct you to the role that you have at Life Action now. Can you just give a, just a quick executive summary of the pathway that he had had you on to bring it to the place of ministry where you are now?

Donny Vanker: Sure. It was one that took me all over the country. I went to college at Wheaton college, met my wife there in the area, we got married. I wanted to go into pastoral ministry. Actually I was registered for classes at the seminary and ended up going into finance, the financial world for a little bit, then into commercial construction all while we were looking at joining some different mission agencies.

When my third son was born, he was born without any functioning kidneys actually. He was on dialysis from day five of life. And it just, it upended our world entirely. It's a long story. He survived. He just turned 18. He's doing great. But in the meantime, first transplant was when he was two and a half. Second actually was when he was seven and a half. So it's, it was crazy, quite the journey. But in the meantime, we had to shut the business down. And it was in that context that the Lord actually brought me into pastoral ministry.

We worked with a church out in Seattle for four years, then with another church in Michigan for three. Then the Lord took me back into the business world. So I worked for a human performance company as a conglomerate of of businesses. Mostly did work with Pro Olympic athletes, but also a lot of work with folks with neurological disabilities, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, stroke victims, TBIs.

Now people came from all over the world for it, and we had a variety of brick and mortar facilities, and a few non profits, and gear and apparel companies, and supplement companies, and all kinds of things like that. And did that for seven years, and we lived down in South Florida for five of those.

And we really felt like the Lord, through a variety of circumstances, was calling us back into vocational ministry, not necessarily in the pastorate work, directly working with the church. So we didn't know what that was going to look like. And my mother in law, who grew up in Southwest Michigan and she had been cared for, she was widowed about 27 years ago now, a long time ago.

And there was a ministry called Life Action that they used to work for here, and it was really actually, it was very kind of them. They, they had left Life Action, which was already a national ministry back then. And he had gone into the business world and then pastoral care. When he died, it had been seven years removed, but the staff at Life Action just continued to remember her.

It wasn't, they not only just sent flowers at the funeral, and some of the staff, showed up and cared for them. They also did it on her birthday, which is easy to forget. And then they did it again the next year and the anniversary of Rich's death, and then again on her birthday. And they just kept loving on her and caring for her for over 20 years.

And so when we found out that Life Action needed a a new CEO, the CEO that had been there for, in that role for 30 years with the ministry for almost 46 years, and they were looking for somebody, and when we saw the role that they were looking for, I actually think I've developed some of the skillsets they were looking for over the years.

And when we saw what they did and from a mission and messaging standpoint, and just how they care for one another, we thought, man, this would be a fantastic fit for our family. So that's how we came here and couldn't be happier.

Bruce Bruinsma: The reason that you're such a great fit is that you're very comfortable in the role of envisioning what's next and then the activity that needs to take place to bring a team together to commit change. And one of the things that we realize in the Retirement Reformation is that all of us, as we enter into the, into that 30 years of what the world calls retirement, there's a couple of things that happen.

Number one, a lot of stuff changes. And number two, that events happen that interfere with the plans that we have. And so I just wondered if you had some words of wisdom for our audience dealing with how to think about, the fact that change is going to come and how it is that we can think about it in a way that will take us to where God calls us to and that will take us to a place of meaning and purpose. So if you could just share just some of, out of your, all your experiences, just a few words to answer that very simple question. And that's a joke, by the way.

Donny Vanker: You're right. Yeah. I'll tell you a couple of things even that I've been able to experience at Life Action. So the ministry is 53 years old now, and we've been, we do a lot of events in churches over 7, 000 churches, multi day experiential events. And we walk people through a practical application of the gospel. And one of our primary speakers is named Steve Canfield, and he has been doing this for 48 years. And he is incredibly effective still today, and we have some of the other people that are on staff that have been with the ministry.

Dan Puckett has been serving with the ministry. He's in his 80s now and he's I think 47 years he's continued to serve with us. And I've got Elville Alba, who's been with the ministry I think like 46 years and he, I took a little hiatus when he was working with a church as a pastor. And now he mostly works with pastors, some of the people that we've actually recruited on our staff to help us.

They have retired from their vocational ministry. They were pastors or missionaries or doing different things and I've watched them, and the pace is different and the expectations are different. However, the amount of wisdom that they have is incredibly valuable and when they're willing to, when they're willing to embrace the realities of change, I've watched them and had the conversations with them and they've told me, they said, Donny, change is hard.

And when you haven't changed for a long time, it makes it exponentially harder. However, change is intrinsically related to growth. And that's part of life. That's how you define something. That's how you know scientifically that something is alive is that it grows and develops. So change should be expected in this life. And we all like the change that we choose. We don't always like change that's forced upon us.

Jim Brangenberg: That's the understatement of the day. Donny, before we run out of time today, Bruce and I have been talking about pastors being lonely. It's a lonely spot. Speak to our audience, mostly retired folks that are looking for ways to eliminate loneliness in themselves, but to be able to take their more available lives than they've ever had in their world and be able to minister to their pastor by helping them not be lonely. How can our senior listeners be a minister to the pastor to help him or her to not be so lonely?

Donny Vanker: Oh man, I'm going to tell you what, if you want to do something that will be an absolute incredible blessing to somebody who plays an important role in your life, who is often very lonely and often has nobody that they can trust where they can be vulnerable with, where they can learn and grow and develop. Those are your pastors. And if you, if I can inspire you and encourage you to do one thing, it would be to call your pastor or write a letter to your pastor, not giving them advice. Nobody actually likes unasked for advice. That probably no matter how old you are, right? So not giving them advice, not doing anything except just to thank them and encourage them.

Just find something that they do, that improves your life. And I'm telling you, you might be the only person that genuinely encourages them this week, and they need it because we all need it. So I strongly encourage you to do that. I'm sure that there's stuff that they need to work on and as you've built up that trust and you've given them courage where they need it, that's going to open up opportunities for you to give them wisdom where they probably also need it but aren't necessarily asking for it yet. So the best thing you can do, the thing that's going to be most life giving, to bring that encouragement and joy to the pastors and the rest of the staff and their spouses... for sure.

Bruce Bruinsma: That's really good. If one of our listeners wants to connect with Life Action for just understanding programmatically, some of the things you're doing, where there might be a revival that's going on, a pastoral retreat that they could help send their pastor to, help with marriage enrichment - what's the best way for someone to connect with Life Action? Just to see what's going on and see how they could plug in or receive benefits?

Donny Vanker: Absolutely. Lightlifeaction. org is where you can go and you can see all of the events. You can sign up to get our newsletters and prayer journals that we have. We've got different devotional studies. We've got incredible resources, even for your grandkids. We have audio resources that, that help walk them through our messaging in really incredible ways. And I will say this, one of the things that we are really looking at and you can pray for us is how can we make sure in all of these churches that we go to is helping them with senior programming, senior focused programming, because there's just tremendous opportunity for us.

As we're going to be able to bless and encourage the seniors that are in the churches as we go, but lifeaction. org that's where we want to go.

Jim Brangenberg: And we'll support you, Donny, as long as that senior programming involves getting those seniors involved with the young people and passing on wisdom in the next generation because too many churches focus on senior programming to get them to hang out with each other so they can just grow old and die together. And we have got to fix that in the church here in America, and I'll step off my soapbox.

Donny Vanker with Life Action dot o R G. Thanks for being on iRetire4Him this afternoon and Bruce, great guest once again. We'll be right back with more on iRetire4Him.

Jim Brangenberg: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him, as we're talking about loneliness, but not loneliness in you guys. We're talking about loneliness in our pastors, our business leaders, and how you can solve loneliness in their lives and in the lives of your fellow seniors who are struggling with loneliness.

Bruce, we've spent the first half of today's show talking about pastor loneliness and defining it in business loneliness Actually, we briefed the pastor loneliness, jumped in a business owner loneliness, both as business owners and then when they retire, and I want to get practical in this last segment of this last part of the three series. Donny Vanker gave us all kinds of great information from life action. I want to get very specific. How can seniors help eliminate loneliness in seniors? What are some things you think?

Bruce Bruinsma: The first thing is to be present in your own life, to be present in the lives of the people that are the closest to you and then to reach out to be present in the lives of others. And so what does that look like?

 We have a very close couple that we're close to, and she is on her last hours before she passes on to be with the Lord. And so to be present in her life during these last stages, not to withdraw, not to say she's in her last stages, I'm going to leave her alone. No, to be able to be present in ways that will make a difference for her in these last hours, days and hours of her life, to be present in the life of her husband, who is now going to go into a whole new, after their 50 years of marriage. And so the whole idea of being present for others is really a foundational idea.

In order to be present, it means you need to be flexible. In order to be flexible, it means that you need to be willing to change. Perhaps how you think, to change perhaps what you say, perhaps to change how you behave. Contribute whether it be in money or time to them but you need to have that flexibility in order to change, in order to be present

Jim Brangenberg: And I think it's, you know, as we talk about the three different phases of retirement, loneliness can happen in any one of those three phases. I really think we just need to be, if we're staying in touch with our friends, and let's just say you're just starting to stay in touch with people in your small group, because there's lonely people right in your church. Find out what their needs are. Some of those people, they don't like to go out, or maybe they can't drive anymore, or maybe they're just worried about money. Whatever it is, just go hang out with them.

Eliminate loneliness. When you start to put somebody else first, it eliminates a loneliness in your life. As you said in the podcast a couple podcasts ago, meaning and purpose drives out loneliness, and when you've got meaning and purpose in your day. Hey, i'm gonna go visit Wilma or Betty. I'm gonna go - I'm not talking about the flintstones, but you can - they're getting old, The flintstones are probably in their 80s now, too. You're gonna see Ricky and Lucy. You're gonna go see them or whatever.

Just, it gives you meaning and purpose, Bruce, what about you? What can the seniors do specifically? We've talked about some ideas to drive out loneliness in the pastors of their local church. Maybe the pastors of the local church that they don't go to, like in a town like I live in. 2200 people, 15 churches There's some pastors here that pastor churches of 10 or 15 people. How can we help?

Bruce Bruinsma: I know that one example is that some time ago there was a church that we passed on our way to our church, and I said to Judy, I said, we should go visit them sometime. And so a number of weeks ago, we took off a Sunday from our church and went and visited that church. And then the pastor was happy to see some strange faces and we were able to connect with them.

And I said to him, as we were, as we're leaving, I said, Would you be open to just going to lunch with me and just having a conversation sometime in the next week or two? And man, you should have seen his face light up. He said, Oh, that would be great. We went, we had a conversation. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant and had some Vietnamese food.

And we sat and talked for about an hour and a half, and just the opportunity for him to be able to be with someone who didn't have an agenda, who he didn't know, and probably wasn't based on what I told him, wasn't going to negatively impact anything he was doing and maybe positively impact. So it's so simple to do, to be able to extend that cup of cold water, that hand of friendship and that openness and to be present and to be a listening ear.

Jim Brangenberg: We talked about a couple of things. I went to the practical end of this conversation, on the last podcast, if your pastor happens to be younger and as a family, you as seniors can just offer to help with kids.

Bruce Bruinsma: That's a great, such a great idea. How can, how can we just give you some space that in fact, for you and your wife, for you just to reflect and think or just to be able to set stuff aside?

Jim Brangenberg: A lot of times pastors move away from their families so they don't have mom and dad or mother in law and father in law around to do some of that. And so you can be adopted grandparents for them. That's a huge thing. Giving them a date night, letting the kids spend the night at your house so that mom and dad can have their own house. That's a huge thing. But let's say your pastor happens to be a little older and their kids are grown and gone and you're a younger person, maybe you're in your fifties or sixties as a senior and you're handy.

Offer your services to your pastor to help them with something around their house. Everybody has something that's broken that needs to be fixed. Everybody! Bruce, what's broken in your house that I can fly to Colorado Springs and help with?

Bruce Bruinsma: I've got one, two, three, I've got four lights, up lights on my house and my garage that are out right now. And you have to climb a ladder high and it's tough to get up there. So you got to get on a ladder to change those dumb lights.

Jim Brangenberg: And Judy doesn't climb ladders anymore. I know she used to be the one climbing the ladders.

Bruce Bruinsma: Not anymore. And there's a real life issue.

Jim Brangenberg: Changing light bulbs. Those stupid recess lights are so hard. My parents always had trouble with those. I always did the light bulbs once a year, just in case. And then I changed all the batteries in the smoke detectors. Another thing you could do, just change the batteries in the smoke detectors. Every year.

Because they're gonna go out in the middle of the night if you don't. That's just what they do. All right. Let's finish up the conversation, Bruce, about what can seniors do to eliminate loneliness and business leaders in their community? Specifically, what can our former business leader seniors do in the lives of business leaders in their community to eliminate loneliness?

Bruce Bruinsma: When we do what it is that God has prepared us to do, experientially, emotionally, whatever it may be, through the lifetime that we've had, understanding what that preparation is and then asking the question, what can I do with that preparation to be able to support others or to be able to bring renewal to others of the church and to bring growth so that those of us that come out of a business background, we want to see something happen. So to be able to provide the opportunity for those experiences, to be able to help make something happen for someone, for someone who is homeless, for the widows, for the orphans, for your neighbor, for your friend.

I've got a friend in Michigan not anywhere near life action. We've been friends for 70 years. That's a long time. I was 10. I first met him when I was 10 and he's transitioning. He's got a difficult transition time ahead of him for a whole variety of reasons. And my, just simply call him and saying, Hey, George, what would you like to talk about my friend? And we have built trust over this time.

And invariably, when I say that, he just, he just, has a place to unload that. Even though we're a thousand miles apart, we can do that, some version of that, to be able to ask someone to help with a conversation, to say, what are the top three things that, you know, that really needs some serious prayer or needs some serious thought.

Everybody's got them. Everybody's got three. And so asking that question, which, and in a way, which says that I'm open to hearing what it is that you have to say, which will help them find that meaning and purpose and will also give you that. So that mentoring that I think that describes.

Jim Brangenberg: And there's so much wisdom pent up inside of retired seniors who were business owners or business leaders. We need to pass that information on. Invest your life in somebody that's younger than you, that needs somebody, that it doesn't have an agenda but they can share confidence with. Because you know as well as they know that if you're a former business leader, they're neglecting their marriage too, just like you did.

And how do you avoid that stuff? How do you keep it right? Bruce, great conversation about how do we use seniors to eliminate the loneliness in seniors, and in pastors, and in business leaders. Really, a fantastic, and again, I still think you should set up the RJFFA, the Retired Jesus Following Folks of America. I think that's a new association. It'll be as big as AARP, I'm sure.

Bruce Bruinsma: I tell you what, those are ideas that become germs, that become a prayer idea, and as God will bless it, that will happen.

Jim Brangenberg: I thought you were gonna say germs and it'll become a plague. Ha! Fantastic one, Bruce. Love that.

You've been listening to iRetire4Him with your host Jim brangenberg, and of course the founder of the retirement reformation Bruce Bruinsma. Please check us out online, get involved with what we're doing. Retirement reformation dot org. Host an event at your local church, An oxygen for life event or some of these other events that we do. Do your small group around the retirement reformation curriculum. Read our books. Use them to implement for meaning and purpose in your life as a retiree so that you can journey with Bruce and I from retirement to reformation and we can all say together: iRetire4Him!