Episode S3E21(125): Expanding Horizons - Finishing Well, pt.1

Randy interviews guest Brian Davis, a technology expert and church ministry leader, discussing several key aspects of finishing well, such as how the podcast world is changing, and how we at FWM are responding. Our new arrangements that Brian helped us set up are able to vastly expand our impact and reach as we try to make the FWM message more meaningful to all
Getting started with the FInishing Well concept in the church world by introducing it properly, working it into the fabric of the church, and supporting the message as members begin to apply it for themselves.

Transcript

Seth Muse: 0:03

Welcome to the finishing wealth podcast where we encourage seasoned believers to find meaningful ways to impact their world for the kingdom of God. Whether you're 65 and up are not quite there yet, everyone can begin preparing to finish well. Now, here's your host Randy has with the founder of finishing well, ministries, how habecker

Dr Randy Hess: 0:25

Greetings, everyone. Welcome back to finishing well, Podcast. I'm Randy. Yes. And I'm happy to be here with you today. I have a little bit of unfortunate news for my partner how habecker the founder of finishing well, ministries, how has had a bicycle accident, and he was writing a week ago, Monday, the 13th of May, around a lake in Dallas called White Rock Lake with a friend. And they had a mishap and both of them fell. And how broke his hip or femur bone, I can't tell you exactly which they're characterizing it as but the net result was how it was how he had surgery last week, on his leg. There, there was a rod inserted and Anna and a screw. And he is home recovering right now and recouping and of course can use your prayers, and good wishes for him to recoup, we all hope that he gets mended up pretty quick, and back in the saddle as soon as possible. So we're, we're all praying for that here. I hope you will pray for him as well. So we're going to press on with our activities in our podcast world. And that's why I'm here. I'm very fortunate though today, I have a very good friend with me on this podcast, who has helped us create a whole new world for us a whole new environment, and our podcast. So I want to welcome my friend, Brian Davis, who is also a member of the church that I'm going to called Highland country fellowship. And we do things together often there. But Brian and I are this is a first for us in terms of sitting down looking each other in a podcast. Welcome, Brian. And I want to talk to you a little bit about this very thing we're doing right now, if you don't mind.

Brian Davis: 2:51

I'd love to and thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dr Randy Hess: 2:58

You have set us up with what seems to be the, you know, the the Lamborghini of technology here. Could you just share a little bit about what you've done? And part of your finishing? Well, activities? Sure,

Unknown: 3:16

sure. So most recently, we just working with with you and how the desire was to have a little bit more of a studio setup for the podcast. And so that's what we've done. I have to have some radio experience on my background. In fact, the building that we're doing this in or the ministry, where are your offices are housed? It this is full circle for me because I used to do some radio production for the host ministry. Crazy. So it's just a joy. Yeah. And so yes, we've just set it up so that it's a little bit more like a radio studio and something to just to increase the quality a little bit. And I'm talking about the technical production quality, you know, not not content, but absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so it's fun to be here to inaugurate this. So this equipment, let

Dr Randy Hess: 4:07

me just describe what we used to do. I was for a long time, I was in a separate room from how we were looking at each other. Of course, during the podcast, even though we were right next to each other we we were looking at each other over computers, right computer screen, right? So it was a little odd, a little weird. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't great, but we did it. And I think the sound and everything worked pretty well. And then I got remote and was doing the podcast with how over zoom from my home office. And that that came across I'm going to say okay, but not particularly not spectacularly. Well, in my opinion, from the standpoint, could you just describe Just a little bit what's different here? What what I'm what I'm talking into and why it's different? Sure,

Unknown: 5:05

well, the the main thing is we're in the same room. And that really helps to just, it feels a little bit more human to be in the same room. But we each have, you know, we have about four microphones here that we can have conversation just with you and I, you and how we can have guests, we can have people phone in for a guest if we have a guest who's out of town or something like that. So,

Dr Randy Hess: 5:34

boy, it's an awesome setup. So we have these four wonderful mics that move around, I can actually move around if I want to. They're around a table so we can all look at each other. We can smile, we can grin. We can throw papers at each other if we want to. But it's kind of neat. Sure,

Unknown: 5:51

and you know, that conversation is mostly, I think nonverbal. Right? And communication. Yeah. And so to be able to look into somebody's eyes and and just see their posture, and to be able to just conversationally interrupt each other all that is very difficult when you're doing it remotely. So to me, that's the biggest thing is just to be able to have everybody, everybody in the same room?

Dr Randy Hess: 6:20

You know, I am, I think it's going to, I'm going to take to this pretty quick, I believe, but I'm just overwhelmed a little bit right now with Sure. The wonderful salad. So please, excuse me, if I, you know, it's, it's awesome to have the capability to talk with you right here. I got to say I, it feels so different. But also just to think that we can put somebody right over there and right over there and interview them at the same time. Sure. And have a real big kind of a small group conversation if we want. And we're not really bothering each other. We're all looking at each other and talking about a subject, which is kind of neat. I just love that.

Unknown: 7:04

And hopefully the technology sort of disappears during that time. You know, you're able to just really focus on the conversation.

Dr Randy Hess: 7:12

I need to get rid of it. But it'll be it'll be with me for a while, because I'm sure it's

Unknown: 7:16

new.

Dr Randy Hess: 7:17

I'm not comfortable with everything. Sure. He's

Unknown: 7:19

new and it's fun. Yeah, so

Dr Randy Hess: 7:21

yeah. So you know, the fact that you were able to come today, and help me a little bit and then be available to kind of talk through some things is just, in my opinion, a really? How can I put it, it's just a unexpected grace, because an unexpected blessing. Because you and I have been through a couple of things already. With the finishing well world, maybe we could call it the finishing well, battles that we go through sometimes. What what how and I mean by that, you know, what I mean by that, is just getting things going, trying to get something going, trying to get it understood enough to have other people see that is not going to put them off of what they're wanting to do in their churches, or with their community so to speak, it's really going to be a healthy thing to have the thought process presented to people in a way that is kind of comfortable. So did you when we talked about it, our church, you were one of the people who helped me really got it launched. You were all in pretty quick, as I remember. And so it was a couple of solar other couple shirts, a couple of pastors at the church. Do you remember that? Do you remember why you felt this was something that appealed to you as a good idea?

Unknown: 8:58

Well, so at the time, I guess I was 57 and 59. Now, and, you know, I was the director of the Men's Ministry at the time. Yes, I'm not now but I'm still at the church. Yes. Still on staff at the church is doing some different having some different responsibilities. Yes. But you know, a funny thing one time whenever I was trying to recruit some small group leaders, one of the people in the small that one of the people I was asking Bert to lead me in small groups, Brian, I'm happy to help. But you know, I'm only 59. And he said that tongue in cheek but that says a little something about our church. Our church is a little bit on the advanced year senior side for our average membership, right. And so. So that appealed to me because the finishing well is what do we do in our aging years in our advancing years and You know, I put, I can say finishing well in one sentence, or at least to me one sentence. We don't retire from being Christians. That's it. That's it. And we have so many people at the church who are of retirement age, and we have so many people in the church who are finishing well, but the the opportunity to put this in front of people who aren't there just poised, you know, God, I feel like has brought this church together. You know, there's so many people with so much to offer, yes, at our church, yes, in terms of wisdom, experience, mentoring, all that. So that is, that's why it appealed to me immediately.

Dr Randy Hess: 10:46

I have called that the vault, the senior vault, in previous discussions through our podcasts, and the reason it looks seems like a vault is that there are many there are millions of people 55 60 million people over 65 Now it's a big number, I can't give you the exact number, but many of whom we feel, and that's the purpose of finishing well and apart are out there searching, searching, searching. And there were in their own way. Even if they don't view it as searching, they're they're attune to the possibility that I'm going to discover something that really provides the purpose I'm looking for in my life, and the joy that I'm missing right now in my life. And so they kind of look around with that thought, but they don't have a way of characterizing it, characterizing it to the church leaders, even leadership even as something they're trying to do or trying to get involved in. That's my that's, that's part of our discovery, I think is that churches are wonderful, but not necessarily attuned to helping senior level folks continue to contribute in a meaningful

Unknown: 12:21

way. Right. And this is a way to identify that for people, you know, a lot of people might have a general uneasiness or restlessness about what they're going to do in their senior years. And this just helps identify maybe part of what God's plan might be for you. And finishing well doesn't tell you what that plan is. It just wakes you up to to the opportunity. And you know, the late Henry Blackaby said the will of God is no great ministry. Do you remember what he said? He said, If you want to know the will of God for your life, look, and see where God is working, and join him. Love it. Yeah. And so to do that, you know, a lot of it is not doing new things. It's just do what you've always done, if you're involved if you're if you're engaged with others in ministry, but don't stop just because you're reaching retirement age. In fact, that's when we have more to offer in certain ways, right?

Dr Randy Hess: 13:26

I know when I first came to the church, Brian, about three years ago, I did notice big time, that I felt like it was a vault I was talking about. Yeah, the vault people were there. And that what I mean by that is it was a lot of gray hair. A lot of senior looking people, of course. And many people, as you say, who have tons of really valuable experience, really valuable experience of all kinds of all kinds, and tons of capability. So it's a it's a mission field, in a way for something like finishing well, but it's it's under whatever other names, you want to talk about the activity and the thought process was already going on. It wasn't introducing a totally new concept. Was it?

Unknown: 14:20

Right? And that's probably why it was embraced. Yeah, the way it was.

Dr Randy Hess: 14:23

So let's talk about that a minute. We, through the encouragement of the pastors there and the leadership at our church, I was I got an opportunity to discuss it in more detail with some people and and it led to our church deciding to make it a thing if I could say that, which is kind of a gross, kind of a crass way of saying that you know what Churches launch into something it has to be carefully thought through. I mean,

Unknown: 15:06

has to be a priority. And I would say it's it was the word I would use as it was an initiative. Yes. That we adopted. Yes.

Dr Randy Hess: 15:13

So thinking that through and saying, Yes, this is something we could support, it needs to be a part of the fabric of our church, if we can make it that we want to support it. And we want it to work. And we want to introduce it. We want to help it get started here. You took that on, for the men of that church. And you asked me to help in that regard. Can you say a little bit about how you took that are how that got to be kind of introduced before it was really brought to the whole church, it came to the man

Unknown: 15:52

while we were doing a quarterly series called the back porch group, and it was Saturday morning breakfast, and we cover a topic, you know, each time and it might be more on forgiveness, it might be service, it might be Thanksgiving and gratitude. This one that we did was we just adopted finishing well, it was just about a month before we introduced it to the rest of the church, but we feel like the men of the church should be leaders. And we wanted to sort of unroll it, you know, or unveil it to the men to start with, and just try to get some, you know, I guess some buzz going, you know, some excitement and enthusiasm. Yeah. for it. Yeah. And, you know, we wanted to be able to identify what people are already doing in their aging years. And I remember that time we that the breakfast and you came and shared about finishing well, but then we also heard from a few other people we did, and we discovered there are people engaged in, in personal ministry all over the place, who are already in a lot of ways, finishing well, they just they're not out there talking about it. And they probably wouldn't, right, yes, about a humility. But but that's why we did the breakfast, we wanted to give the men a chance to champion. And I think that

Dr Randy Hess: 17:15

worked a little bit because there are plenty of people involved in the introductory process that how uses when he goes to a church. That introductory process is fairly well known to most of you out there. But just to backtrack a minute and mention it. How has a series he presents to the church call the seven essentials. And in that he takes a different essential each week and kind of defines it and talks through it. And does really kind of a groups Group, a brainstorm process, with people in the church in terms of what they see. And that essential, how hard it would be to do how, how much it would mean to them if it does happen in their world. And I just like to review those real quick for your listeners out there. To remind you of what, what we did at at this church, at our church, how talk through the the seven essentials they are, he went he introduced the first one, which is we will grow as individuals. And he let people know through that process, that things change. In our life, nothing stays the same. And we as people as we mature in life. And as we acquire new knowledge as we go through, you know, through all kinds of mechanisms, whether it's just what we learn as we age, as what we learn as we face challenges and problems, what we learn as we as we face hardships, and and sadness. How do we handle that? How do we use how do we make sure we are paying attention to the Lord, during that process? How are we growing and our relationship to the Lord? So that's an important one, then we then he he goes into the idea that it we can't do this as as an island. So he talks about we have to connect with people we have to build relationships, we have to be open to new relationships. And so connecting is a key part we will connect with others rather than isolating ourselves. And by the way, Brian, you may have noticed this it can become clear that some people do isolate themselves as they as they age, their their spouse, dies they become a widow or widower and So rather than reaching out to new friends reaching out, as we age, it gets tougher to reach out for some reason. Sure. You agree with that?

Unknown: 20:11

I do agree with that. But

Dr Randy Hess: 20:13

not that we have people who don't want to, they do. But sometimes they find it awkward or difficult, and therefore, I'm not gonna go to the trouble. And I'll just live in my isolation, I'm fine. I've got plenty of support, you know, it's not that I'm hurting.

Unknown: 20:34

It makes me wonder if some of that's just a grief process of, you know, you get into the time of life when you're when the death announcements might outnumber the birth announcements, right? And so correct, I think that can have an isolating effect.

Dr Randy Hess: 20:49

Yep. So if we find that we can make a can reach out and find a new relationship, or two or many through just making friends at church, going to some functions at church and talking a little deeper, maybe from those functions going out for coffee with somebody our dinner, even, just to get to know people better. That's part of how we feel, you can really begin to finish well in a in a very strong positive way, rather than a, an, you know, rather than a disconnected way. All right, then we will love and care for people, if we are connecting with people, we want to show them the love of Christ and care for them. And you know, people don't respond very well to our for our overtures in that area, I think unless they think are really perceive that we do care about them. So it can't be a false or pretending. Rare, it has to be real

Unknown: 21:59

well, and I think it's a matter of having to pay attention as well, because people don't generally hang a shingle out that says, I have need, I need help. I need the I'm lonely. People don't generally do that. And so noticing if somebody is lonely, or you know, maybe is living a little bit in isolation and just reaching out. Yep. Thank you.

Dr Randy Hess: 22:25

Key. Yep. So that was the third essential. Okay, now we're going to talk about the fourth essential just for a minute, and talk about investing. And what we feel investing means is investing in the generations to come investing in, in younger folks investing in our family investing in our kids and grandkids. But the investment is to help them as they grow, understand how important it is for them to to get better acquainted, if they aren't, are lean on Jesus for their guidance. But also just help them in any way we can. By listening, and by paying attention to them. And by showing them that we care about them. The next essential is called being available. And that is about trying to guide our own timetable. Our own schedule is such a way that we, if something comes up, where we can be a contributor, a helper to it, that we don't say sorry, I'm already busy, we make ourselves available to our family, to our kids, to our grandkids, to our friends. And, and through that process, we begin to see what it means to finish wildcards, we have more opportunities to do that. And we take advantage of the six essential is about planning ahead in a very practical way, for when we're no longer here, planning for how that's gonna look in our family, not letting them down, not making them go through the process in their grief that we're missing, to try to figure things out all on their own. And the final one is to anticipate what heaven is really like. And because of the real awareness of how awesome it's going to be. Find joy just to knowing that, that when we get there is going to be so nice and so wonderful. And no matter what pain we are in, no matter what difficulties we face, that's coming our way. And we're so thankful and grateful. So that's the seven essentials. So each try to instill that in groups, and in churches, wherever we can, and offer them a chance to know what finishing well meets, you guys made that so easy. And so really so effective, I think, can you just say something about that because the church was so I think the way you guys worked it out there, you were so proactive, and trying to figure out what we want our people to come away with, as you came up with some additional things. After the finishing well, seven essential steps were done. Can you say something about those brands?

Unknown: 25:46

Sure, I'd be happy to and something that you said about how the church had adopted this, you know, we decided this is said initiative while ago, this is something that we're going to embrace. And so we got to where we were looking almost at everything we might be doing through the lens of finishing well, for that time period. But specifically, the things that we did after that you were asking about, you know, we did workshops, and the the one that stuck in my mind was some one of our members stepped forward, and did writing your life's mission statement. workshop, and people came away from that, you know, with more clarity, and, and not in it didn't add to their, to their pile of things to do if anything, it narrowed their focus to do the most important thing. Yeah, to accomplish their life's mission. Which was really good. And what were some of the ones that you had?

Dr Randy Hess: 26:46

I think there were a couple of others that maybe help people see, I can get moving on this one was a session that helped them figure out what their gifts are. Yeah, right. Yeah. If you're having a little bit of a challenge thinking through, what is it that I really bring to the table? You know, at my age, right, and there is that question. There is that question out there? I know there is. It was helpful.

Unknown: 27:16

And that's funny, you say, at my age, because at the at the very time that we start to have the most to offer is when some parts of culture, start deciding they're sort of done. That's it with us.

Dr Randy Hess: 27:28

That's it, and it can make you question whether or not you really, it can't have anything to offer. You're right, right culture, conflicts with what we're trying to do. Right. And another thing we we did is interesting, I think, as a church, and that is we said, you know, what we will try on our own to come up with some ideas, we're not going to just say no you do at all, we're going to come up with some things we think might be service opportunities within our church, and outside of our church here locally, that we support, and we want to let you know that you can get involved with and I think that helped people also see opportunity. So thank you, Brian, for helping me here today. It's been a pleasure, it's been fun talking with you. And kind of thinking through how finishing well can be can be a real good spark in a church life situation, and help people especially as you grow older, the crowd goes older, and I'm not going to call it you know, aged But still they're older. Right? Is it grows older, there's thinking more about and I have more opportunity to get involved with this. So we got to help them think through what do you want to do with that? Sure. And you guys have done that. Thank you for your time thank you for making this an awesome studio and for for kind of playing back and forth with me today on it. Thank

Unknown: 28:53

you Randy. It's it's been a real joy.

Dr Randy Hess: 28:55

So I hope you have a wonderful day to day and all you out there hope you have a blessed day in a blessed week. The finishing well process is yours to grab I hope you'll grab it and I hope you will let how know if you wish at how at finishing well ministries.org That you're praying for him thank you everybody take care bye bye

Seth Muse: 29:29

thank you for listening to the finishing well podcast we hope you're encouraged by today's conversation to continue living out your God given purpose. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts or you can find us at finishing well ministries dot O R G slash podcast. And don't forget to follow us on social media at finishing well ministries. We'll see you next time