173: What if God’s Rules Are Actually a Gift?
Jim Brangenberg: Your retirement years can be 30 years filled with meaning and purpose as long as you connect your faith and your retirement days.
Martha Brangenberg: Welcome to iRetire4Him. We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Check us out online at iRetire4Him.com.
Jim Brangenberg: When the average Christian retires, purpose and meaning seem to leave their existence. It's my observation that the purpose and meaning built into the life of the person who's retiring spills out the minute the 8:00 to 5:00 clock stops turning. What all of us know to be true is that when someone retires, they are so filled with the desire to live with meaning and purpose that they become exhaustingly over-committed to new things, and their schedule is so full they can't imagine how they ever had time to work before.
Jim Brangenberg: But is this the model of kingdom living God desires? Is there a model that can be lived out in our retirement years that brings meaning and purpose but does not lose sight of living in obedience to our Father, an obedience that is represented through calm and peace and a life worth following, flourishing even?
Jim Brangenberg: Tom Lutz spends his days teaching and discipling students at Metro Atlanta Seminary and is discipling business owners and leaders as a Convene chair. Tom has just released a book called Equipping Christians for Kingdom Obedience. Tom's here to tell us what that looks like in our work life and in the retired life to come. Tom Lutz, welcome to iRetire4Him.
Tom Lutz: I'm awful glad to be back. It's good to see you guys.
Jim Brangenberg: Great to have you. Tom, you could easily be retired, sitting on a beach somewhere, instead of teaching students at the cutting edge Metro Atlanta Seminary and discipling business owners and leaders with Convene. Why have you resisted the American dream of retirement?
Tom Lutz: I didn't know I could. (laughter)
Tom Lutz: Just kidding. I don't 100% know. You're right, I could. I do play golf couple days a week so I'm not, I don't work 60 hours like I did when I was a young man. But I've just always felt like our call from God isn't related to a particular position. It's related to a purpose that transcends.
Tom Lutz: And so my quick background, I was a pastor for a few years, sold a business when I was 46, sizable business. And at that point I started thinking about what's, what do you do? I could go play golf five days a week. But I spent a good bit of time discovering my kingdom purpose, which is the first book I wrote.
Tom Lutz: And that kingdom purpose to me was to... Ah, there you go. You got a copy of that one, too. Jim was holding it up. So in, in that book I lay out the idea that God has a purpose for each individual, and that shows up in your gifting, it shows up in your positioning, the assets that He makes available to you, the skills, et cetera.
Tom Lutz: And so when I was my late 40s, I looked back over the 20 years at CMD, the company we sold, and I said to myself, what did I do well? When did I honor God and when did I use the gifts He gave me? And it just kinda turned out that I was best at sitting down with somebody with a blank sheet of paper and helping them get where God, they just felt God wanted them to go.
Tom Lutz: And so that just became, I realized I had done that for 20 years in the business, and then I said, "So all right, the business is gone but that calling to, to be that person has not gone away." And so for the next 10, 20 years, I worked full time doing strategic planning consulting, did a lot of church planters, did a lot of Christian businesses.
Tom Lutz: And then in 2010 got connected, as you mentioned, to Convene, where I get to feed into Christian owners, Christian business owners who are currently practitioner who are running their businesses today. And so that's what I've been doing for the last... And then the opportunity I don't know if we wanna go into it, but how, the reason I went back to do my dissertation was a word that I got from the Lord about we need to teach pastors the theology of work, if you will.
Tom Lutz: 'Cause we're not gonna get, you, the three of us, doing podcasts ain't gonna get it done. We've got thousands of pastors out there. I heard God one, one day said to me, "Until every Sunday from every pulpit, every sermon is illustrated from and applied to someone's workplace, the job's not done."
Martha Brangenberg: Wow.
Tom Lutz: And so that's been my, that's been my passion since early 2010-ish.
Martha Brangenberg: So Tom, you had, there's so many things there we could just land on-
Jim Brangenberg: Yes we could. Should we land on one or two?
Martha Brangenberg: ... And get pretty excited about. But I love how God has shown you that He gifted you, He gave you years and years of experience in the workplace, not to just go put that on a shelf, but to use it in a way that can then advance the kingdom for other people. So thank you for being obedient in that and being that example for people.
Martha Brangenberg: I'm curious if you have friends and peers that essentially pressure you: "why are you still working?" "Why don't you quit? Why don't you retire and just go on vacation?" Do you get that?
Tom Lutz: Yeah. Sure. We just have a very strange understanding about this thing called retirement. If you go to the scriptures and read it, you're not gonna - I'll tell you where it is. There's only one place where the word retire- one place in the entire Bible. But I'd also challenge you, can you name me one saint in the Bible Who is retired in the American sense?
Jim Brangenberg: No, there are none. And the only time there's retirement in the Bible is if you're a Levitical priest and that means you are a butcher who, so at 50, you are wore out because you've been throwing animals for 25 years. And then the goal transition into mentor to the younger Levitical priests. And so you, no, there's no permission to check out and go on vacation.
Tom Lutz: Yeah, so
Jim Brangenberg: Oh, there is. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Second chapter of Hesitations. (laughter)
Jim Brangenberg: In the New Living Bible the Hesitations The New Living Translation.
Tom Lutz: Yeah. Yeah, so it's, I think Numbers 8 we're instructed, they're instructed for the priests to start at 25 and to retire at 50. The rationale for the retire at 50 is they had to assemble the tabernacle, they had to lift wood to the fire, they had to heft sides of beef and so forth.
Tom Lutz: And so they didn't have the strength probably to do that. But when you think about it, what's the difference? What you have at 25 is energy, strength, you can sleep less. All, you got all this stuff that says work hard. When you get to be 50, the 50 is, 70 is the new 50 for those guys. But when you get to that point, you don't have so much of that. What you have is wisdom. You've got experience. You've probably got financial, in many cases, you've got financial assets. And so the transition is, I still do the work of running a Christian business for God's glory, but it's not my business.
Tom Lutz: It's not the one that God has given me, to entrust to me. It's the one He's given entrusted to the 34 companies that I, that I coach.
Martha Brangenberg: You know what? And- Let me just say this one thing, too. Just to take that a little bit further, is the fact that, with that transition from the energy and the stamina and all of that to the wisdom- there is that, my dad used to always say, "Work smarter, not harder", right? Yeah. They also didn't have Advil back then, so you know.
Martha Brangenberg: That was really hard work, but they still had this responsibility of raising up the next generation to do the work. And that's really what our call is to those looking at retirement and looking to that age and saying, "What is God calling you to raise up in the next generations?" And that's why this podcast exists, because we wanna encourage people to live on purpose, for a purpose in the retirement age, whether they're earning a paycheck or not.
Jim Brangenberg: And speaking of retirement, most of us think about our investments when we think about our retirement, and for many years we've been following Luke Andrews with Inspire Investing because our retirement investments, Tom, truly should reflect our deepest held biblical values, and many Christian retirees are surprised to discover that their portfolios include companies that are involved in abortion, pornography or other activities that stand against biblical principles.
Jim Brangenberg: Inspire Advisors specializes in biblically responsible investing, helping all of us to align our wealth with our faith while pursuing strong returns. We build portfolios that support inspiring companies through proven strategies. We recommend that everybody listening to the show today check out investbri.com and talk with Luke Andrews and start your biblically responsible investing journey today.
Jim Brangenberg: Luke Andrews, investbri.com. He's our investor. He is, been an advisor of ours for well over a decade, and he's transforming the way we look at how we save for retirement because we're making sure that our investments align with our values.
Tom Lutz: That's awesome.
Martha Brangenberg: It is. So Tom, you recently released this latest book of yours, Equipping Christians for Kingdom Obedience, and it wasn't just written in the context of retiring or retirement, but we find the application actually really powerful. What drove you to write this book to begin with?
Tom Lutz: So the quick story starts with the first book. That quote I mentioned a minute ago about, God said to me, yeah, that's Equipping Christians for Kingdom Purpose.
Martha Brangenberg: Yes.
Tom Lutz: And in that book, so my doctoral dissertation is on discipling C-level Christian executives. So I did a, a great a deal of research around what is it about... What I discovered was that when Christians can articulate their kingdom purpose, the transcendent purpose that God has called them to and ask, given them assets for, given them skills, abilities, and talents for. And what people need to understand is that transcends a job.
Tom Lutz: That's a lifelong calling. So the priests were to facilitate the people of God in worshiping God, right? So once he gets to the point where his particular daily calling is, the job, if you will goes away, that calling doesn't go away. That transcends. And so that's, so I've had four basic careers, if you will.
Tom Lutz: And that theme is the same through all four, but they're all very different in terms of the, what I do. And chances are I'll have a fifth, which will be one I don't get paid for. That's my grandchildren. That's my, that's my wife's current one is, we have 16 grandchildren, and that's her job.
Jim Brangenberg: One of the things that I love about the scriptures and that's what I love about Metro Atlanta Seminary, you teach at a seminary that's practical, tactical, factual, and biblical. You teach at a seminary that equips people without killing them. You know they go to seminary without dying from, studying nonstop, exhaustion. But yet you're still equipping pastors and future leaders in churches and in ministries and in business just with a seminary degree from all across the place, but it's right in Metro Atlanta. And I love that.
Jim Brangenberg: But what we know about the scriptures, Tom, is what you wrote about in this, in your second book, Equipping Christians for Kingdom Obedience, is that God wrote us a book, and he said, "Just follow these, these mandates. Just follow this, and your life will be a life of flourishing." Without a lot of trouble, follow these. This isn't a rule of things that are just gonna make your life miserable because they tell you no.
Jim Brangenberg: For some reason you're not supposed to boil a goat in its mother's milk. I don't understand that one. There's a couple other ones I don't understand, but that's okay. I'll just trust them.
Martha Brangenberg: I think there's science behind it.
Jim Brangenberg: I'm not a lot of goat. I'm not a goat eater much. (chuckles) But there's a lot of other things that I do find practical, love your neighbor as yourself. That really changes things. Love God. Pray, love your enemies. Pray for those that persecute you. It's pretty practical stuff. You wrote this book because when you walk in obedience to what God laid down, life brings flourishing. And then this can really help our retirees that are listening, but also our-
Tom Lutz: Absolutely ...
Jim Brangenberg: pre-retirees that are listening.
Jim Brangenberg: Talk to me about this.
Tom Lutz: Everybody. Everybody. Yeah, so let me get back to Martha's specific question. So the first book is for discovering your kingdom purpose, and it asks three questions. Who are you? The answer is you're an image-bearer given the task of causing the world to flourish. Second question then, second part of the book is, what is your kingdom purpose?
Tom Lutz: And so helping people to figure out. Mine, mine is essentially strategic planning, broadly spoken. And then the third section is how do you work out your kingdom purpose in practical day-to-day living? So then the second book is a continuation of the third question. It's how has God meant for us to live in the world?
Tom Lutz: So in the book I do a couple of frameworks. And I think this changes the way... Generally speaking, the law has a bad rep. But, in Western Christianity we tend to think that it was probably given by God at some point to earn salvation, and the jig's up. He laughed when we tried, and now He's sent Jesus and it's all over.
Tom Lutz: But in fact, if you think about it, the law was given in the context of grace. It doesn't begin by saying, "Hey, Israel, if you keep these 10 words, I'll bring you out of Egypt." He says, "I have brought you out of Egypt, therefore have no other gods before me," and goes on to lay them out. So the framework's quickly of this.
Tom Lutz: Christianity is the only religion that begins with a change to being. So law, so we begin with being, then God renews our mind, knowing, and then we do, right? Every other religion starts with either knowing or doing. So Christianity is unique in that. So you gotta think about the law. The law is in the context of a redeemed, it's a gift to a redeemed people.
Tom Lutz: And the other one then is to think about the difference between earning and effort. The law is not about earning, but it is about the appropriate effort that we can put into graciously obeying the Father who has redeemed us. And then the third key one is the difference between reward and result.
Tom Lutz: When the Fifth Commandment says, "Honor your father and your mother, that you can live long in the land you are entering to take possession." I don't think that means the child that obeys his parents earns long life. I think it's saying simply this: the child that obeys his parents is probably going to live longer than the child that does not, all things being equal.
Tom Lutz: And so that's how we have to think about this. If you want a world fl- it's the guidebook for the way the world's put together. Obey it, not to earn anything, not to, to get a reward. Do it because Jesus talks about this in Sermon on the Mount. He says "Let your light so shine before men that they see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."
Tom Lutz: But then it also says, I'll think of it a minute. You had another question. I'll let you do that and I'll think of this one.
Martha Brangenberg: You're saying several things that just really resonate in the sense, it's, it really comes down to one - I don't know if it really comes down to this. But what I heard from what you were saying, 'cause there are so many things, though, is that God's given us a guideline to that obedience. And, if you know something and don't do it, then it's truly disobedience. And I think that can be pretty simple.
Martha Brangenberg: I'm sitting here thinking about the people that are listening to you, Tom, and saying, "I wouldn't mind sitting under him as a student," because you have such a great way of just explaining things and pointing things out and giving us some simple points, even for complex ideas. You were saying, really it just boils down to a few main things, and then we can take it from there."
Tom Lutz: Few main ... I call them frameworks.
Martha Brangenberg: Yeah, the frameworks.
Tom Lutz: And they're just, they're
Martha Brangenberg: just- I love that ...
Jim Brangenberg: the other congratulations is you haven't used a single five-syllable word.
Martha Brangenberg: Yeah, so we thank you.
Jim Brangenberg: Way to go. Nice.
Tom Lutz: I'm actually gonna talk to Drew Johnson, who is a professor, after this and we'll get into it-
Martha Brangenberg: you can get into your five syllables
Jim Brangenberg: you can use all your five syllable You can even use a six syllable.
Tom Lutz: My un- my undergraduate degree was Greek and Latin, so I can big word with the best of them. (laughter)
Jim Brangenberg: That's just terrible. Just so terrible. All right. What we wanna do is look at this obedience and how it impacts our lives as workplace believers and as retirees.
Jim Brangenberg: Because when we walk in obedience to our Heavenly Father, through the 1,500 pages that He lays out for us that, that really help us to get to know who He really is, through the stories of others and through His direct words, how does that obedience really play out in the workplace, in helping bring positive results?
Tom Lutz: Yeah. Of course, if we're correct, if it's the guidebook. Here, I'll give you an example from Matthew chapter 6. So Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount says three times, you'll remember this, I think it's prayer, fasting, and giving. "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites who stand on the corner and blow their horn. I tell you, they've gotten their reward. Rather, go into your closet, pray to your Father in heaven, and He will give you a reward."
Tom Lutz: And I always thought that's weird. So we're both doing it for rewards. But He says the same thing about giving, the same thing about praying. But if you go study the underlying, it's a different Greek word that He uses for the Pharisees than He does for the Christian. And the difference is this: the word He uses for the Pharisee is to earn a wage. The word He uses for the believer is to get a result. Isn't that ... That's mind-blowing to me.
Tom Lutz: He's saying, "Don't be like the Pharisees who do this to get a reward, to get a, earn a wage to exact a payment from God. Rather, do what I tell you. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." That's the reward side. It's not, don't do it, don't do it in a deal to try to get something out of God. Do it 'cause you believe Him, and He tells you this is the best what, this is the best choice.
Tom Lutz: Wisdom, I say in my lectures, wisdom is the settled application of God's law to daily life. It's basically reading the Ten Commandments and saying, "What does that mean?" There's a, there, one example I use all the time, in Deuteronomy you're required to have a fence around your roof, and I'm gonna bet you don't have a fence around your roof.
Martha Brangenberg: Nope.
Jim Brangenberg: No, but I don't have a flat roof, so it was an OSHA requirement put out by God- ...(laughter) in order to preserve life.
Tom Lutz: To preserve, to preserve life. But if you have a pool, I'll bet you do have a fence around it.
Martha Brangenberg: Yeah, we don't have a pool.
Tom Lutz: Both of them are applications of the thou shalt not kill commandment for different times and different periods.
Jim Brangenberg: Wow. So many people, Tom, they'll look at, whether they're in their workplace environment or whether they're in their retirement environment, they look at god's laws thrown at them like weapons. " Do this," instead of receiving them like a love note or a valentine. How do we change our thinking on this? Because God laid out His law not to drive us crazy, but to drive us to His love and to give us the most out of this life that we can get?
Tom Lutz: Yeah. So another, another framework that, that I talk about in the book is the moral law, civil law, ceremonial law.
Tom Lutz: So I think of the moral law as being the Ten Commandments. They're the absolutes, they're the constitution, to use American parlance. They are the absolutes, what is never to be violated. Then things like a fence around the roof, things about rules about if you see your neighbor's donkey wandering down the street, what did you mention before of the way you put the lambs and the milk together or something?
Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, the don't boil a goat in its mother's milk I think it was, that law.
Tom Lutz: Yeah. All of those things were God saying, "In your culture, you need to have a fence around your roof." The commandment thou shalt not murder hasn't changed, but in our culture, that same thing is applied. There's three Hebrew words, mishpatim and mitzvah, and those are words that say "application." So when Moses goes to talk to the people just before they're gonna enter the Promised Land, he makes this statement, "See, I have taught you decrees and laws." That's the Hebrew word, mitzvah and mishpatim.
Tom Lutz: The, "I have taught you how to apply the Ten Commandments in the culture you are entering to take possession of it." Then it says, "This will show your wisdom in the sight of the people who will see these statutes and say, 'Surely, this is a wise and understanding people.'"
Tom Lutz: And I think, fast-forward, I think Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount updates that. He says, "Let your light so shine before men that they see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."
Jim Brangenberg: What I love about this is that you're applying this to not only business owners and leaders, but to future pastors and leaders in churches and ministries, that they're hearing the truth about this.
Jim Brangenberg: Let's just take a, I wanna just take a sidestep, 'cause not everybody listening knows about Convene. Give a quick plug as to what Convene looks like. Really quick, 'cause we're getting to the end.
Tom Lutz: Yeah, so Convene is a national organization started in California. A couple of fellows that were at Saddleback Church, the men's discipleship leader and a Christian business owner started to see there are organizations, one called Vistage, for example, which does much that what Convene does. It helps business owners get together and help each other run their businesses with excellence. They wanted to do that same thing within a biblical framework.
Tom Lutz: And so it's pretty simple. I've got 34 companies, two different groups. We meet, this morning I had them, we met for six hours together, and we just, half the time we're working on sort of MBA level. Today we were talking about what the legalities of how you can and can't share your faith at work, at your office. But then we spend half the time talking about - one guy is trying to restructure his sales team. And so we got into issues of the appropriate way to incent behavior through commissioning the godly way to do that.
Tom Lutz: Another one, wanted, has had a hard time hiring people and that causes all sorts of disruption because you lose the employee, that's bad for the business. But you hired a person, you kinda derailed them for six months and you made a bad mistake, and so we started talking about wisdom as it applies, as it applies to that.
Tom Lutz: And another has a vendor who's, does awesome work but is constantly late with delivering products. But so we're applying biblical wisdom to very practical... These guys are gonna go they left this afternoon to go try to fix these problems.
Martha Brangenberg: That's awesome.
Tom Lutz: And with that wisdom.
Jim Brangenberg: Do you find that they have learned to seek our Heavenly Father for those answers, those tough answers?
Tom Lutz: Oh, yeah.
Jim Brangenberg: Because a lot of them, a lot of business people are, like, fixers. They're gonna go fix something, and they rarely stop. And I'm the guilty one. I'm sitting here. They rarely stop to say, "Huh, God, what do you gotta say about this? Who should I hire? Should I hire- Should I hire this person? Should I fire this person? Oh, yeah. M- what about this vendor?"
Tom Lutz: We talked a lot about that. The devotion we had today, whoever's the host for the day brings a devotion, and Tom brought the devotion from when Elijah's in the cave, and remember he hears the earthquake and he hears the wind storm, and he hears the, and then he hears the small silent voice, and God is in the voice.
Tom Lutz: And his challenge to us is if you sit down in the morning to read your Bible or read some Psalms or whatever your devotional practice is, end it with five minutes of silence. Because what happens is we get in there and we just fill our heads all full of stuff, and then say, "Oh, God I'll talk to myself, thank you very much."
Tom Lutz: And that was the challenge, and to basically after your devotional time, sit and listen for five minutes to see what God's gonna tell you. That's some good words. And that's a great word for business people, 'cause we are. We wanna just crash through and, get 'er done.
Jim Brangenberg: That's a- It's a good, it's a good word for retirees too, who are trying to figure out, "How should I spend my day today?" Instead of filling it up with whatever... actually after you're done with that quiet time and that coffee-
Martha Brangenberg: Listen ...
Jim Brangenberg: yeah, just listen.
Martha Brangenberg: Be quiet.
Jim Brangenberg: Listen.
Martha Brangenberg: I wanna ask you another logistical, practical question, and that is that you brought up the teaching at Metro Atlanta Seminary. Tell us about that just briefly for our listeners to understand what that is all about.
Tom Lutz: Yeah, so we have a great deal of retired. I hate that word. But it's an American word and we use it, so you know what I mean. People who are no longer receiving a paycheck but who want to be useful in ministry, meaning and purpose. That's what everybody's looking for.
Tom Lutz: So basically it's very simple. You get 40% of your credit is from academic work. We do four quarters a year. Over a period of three years and that's your academics. So you'll do a two credit course, a one credit. So last night, Monday night, I started teaching Older Testament Survey. And I get, I have two hours, two hours 20 minutes a night for eight weeks.
Tom Lutz: They read the entire Bible when they're doing that. I've got a new book I'm working on, which is a companion to the Bible, a companion to my lectures. And they read the New Testament, Old Testament introductory book. But so that's that. It's pretty interactive. My style was a little more lecture, but we still have a lot of questions and so forth. So that, they'll run through that for eight weeks, four times a year for three years.
Tom Lutz: 40%, so that's 40% of your credit. 40% is practical- in, it's leading Jim you were asking about do I get a chance to teach pastors budgeting and that sort of stuff. If they're in a church leadership role some cases it's leading prayer meetings, it might be counseling whatever, so it's more practical, but it's the same balance.
Tom Lutz: And then the real key, what we think is our secret sauce, the 20% remaining is a program of relationship with a mentor. So you're learning all of this, you're putting it into practice, and you've got a slightly more mature... And the way we do that, if you're in the worship leader practice, your wor- your mentor's probably a worship leader.
Tom Lutz: If you're in a business, if your current job is in, in the workplace, chances are you're gonna get a workplace savvy mentor. If you're a senior pastor, you're probably gonna get a senior pastor. But we think it's goes, 200, 300 years ago somebody had the bright idea to build big buildings and throw students into them for extended years. And the average seminary student now comes out with $150,000
Martha Brangenberg: oh my...
Tom Lutz: of student debt.
Jim Brangenberg: And they've lost touch with reality 'cause they've spent three years inside an institution.
Tom Lutz: They've lost touch with reality.
Jim Brangenberg: Metro Atlanta Seminary, you gotta check it out. You can only hope that Tom Lutz will be one of your professors.
Tom Lutz: We do, most of our classes are available online.
Martha Brangenberg: Awesome.
Jim Brangenberg: So you do both.
Tom Lutz: Yeah.
Jim Brangenberg: In person and online.
Tom Lutz: We do. So we do a few that are exclusively online, but we've got about 25 students, I had two students last night in South Africa.
Martha Brangenberg: Fabulous. Thanks for sharing that.
Jim Brangenberg: Yeah ... and thanks for sharing Equipping Christians for Kingdom Obedience, because it is something that we all need to think about. What obedience, we all just obey,, that was used as a weapon, but God wanted to give it as a gift to us. And I appreciate you bringing that out in your book.
Jim Brangenberg: Tom Lutz, thanks for being with us today. We've talked about a lot of stuff.
Tom Lutz: It's been awesome. I love you guys.
Jim Brangenberg: Yeah and if you wanna get a hold of Tom's book, it's on Amazon. We'll make sure you have all the links in the show notes.
Tom Lutz: Yeah, I think I sent it to you. There's vocational-discipleship.com.
Martha Brangenberg: Excellent. And we'll have that linked in the notes. Thank you so much.
Jim Brangenberg: And if you want more stories like this one to reach more retirees or workplace believers, just join the Coffee Club. You can donate 5 to 10 bucks a month to iWork4Him and skip the trip to the coffee shop just once. Visit iwork4him.com/iretireforhim-donate. The link is in the show notes as well.
Jim Brangenberg: Remember, if you have a pulse, you have a purpose. If you're not dead, you're not done. We'll see you the next time, so together we can say iRetire4Him