The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast Ep 013 - Discovering Religion in Retirement with A.J. Walker

 

 

Transcript

Ben: Welcome everybody. My name is Ben Smith. I'm joined by my colleague, the Bangor Ram to my Central Red Devil. Curtis Worcester. How are you doing today Curtis?

Curtis: Oh that's a good one. I'm well Ben. How are you?

Ben: I'm great. I'm great. Another show. One of the things we wanted to talk about was religion. And I know it's a scary topic for lots of people and lots of ways to delve into that. And one of the things we've been talking about, a need that people have as they are in retirement is around community.

Curtis: Yep.

Ben: Right. And people looking for a place to belong. And to share similar values and beliefs and just have people that they kind of share that with. We just kind of hear that trend of people that, now that they're done with their career and they start kind of looking for that community where maybe they had their coworkers and they had other people that they filled their time with is kind of this, well where do I go to find that next? My kids might not be around or my grandkids or maybe my neighbors have moved away. The whole social circle changes and they start looking for different things. It might be their own personal faith and looking to explore that more. And it could be community and it could be lots of different things. So for the show today we wanted to dig into that as kind of a topic of retirement success. And with that, we wanted to bring in our colleague A.J. Walker. Both of us have worked with A.J. for some time and I've known A.J. since getting introduced to him in 2012. So I'll let him kind of get into the history, but that's the premise for today.

Ben: So A.J. appreciate you coming on with that intro. Thanks for joining us.

A.J.: Glad to be here.

Ben: With our show as you know, we like to kind of dig into you as a person and just help the audience just understand you and kind of your background. Would you just kind of dig into just obviously Maine, where you're from in Maine, and kind of then getting into your professional role and where you are today?

A.J.: Sure. Born in Maine. Born in Presque Isle. Grew up in the Bangor area.

Ben: So from here, right?

A.J.: From here. This is Maine.

Ben: Not from away.

A.J.: We're actually sitting in our Bangor office, which is in the heart of Maine. And so born in Presque Isle, grew up in Orrington, went to Brewer High school. Went to the University of Maine at Orono. And started working in this industry with my dad in 1983 when I graduated. I actually started in '82 working part-time. My dad owned a retirement plan record keeping business, administration, insurance, and some investments as well. I started and there were only three people in the company and we were able to grow it pretty significantly. Enough so that we couldn't find enough employees in Bangor so we opened an office in Portland. 31 years ago my wife and I moved to Portland with one small child at the time. And really started to grow there.

A.J.: And over the years from those times, 1989, I believe we moved to Portland, we grew the business significantly, bought a business, started another business all related in the retirement plan field. We started a broker dealer and registered investment advisory firm, bought an actual consulting firm in Massachusetts. We grew it pretty dramatically. My dad had retired during those years. And in the year 2000 we sold that to a national rollup. A rollup is when a group of investors goes and buys a bunch of similar companies. And so we became part of a national firm at that point, which was great experience and I ended up running sales and marketing and that whole effort for all of the offices east of the Mississippi. Good experience. I was there for three years.

Ben: And still based in Maine at that point?

A.J.: I was still living in Maine traveling all the time.

Ben: Yep.

A.J.: I was traveling extensively, still living in Maine, and then left that after three years. My contract was done and I was ready for a new adventure and had an opportunity in New York City. Went to this group called Retirement System Group in New York City, which was the same kind of very comprehensive retirement services company. Doing record keeping, administration and investment advisory work, broker dealer work. They owned a trust company. I was in charge of new business initiatives and all kinds of new things.

Ben: Just to interrupt, to give the permutation. So when you hear retirement services, for maybe a lot people, they may thinking about just generally for individuals, but this is really more for organizations offering a benefit to their employees, right?

A.J.: Yeah, exactly. So when we say retirement plan industry, the retirement plans exactly are dealing with plans sponsors of retirement plans. 401K plans, pension plans, 403B plans, things like that.

Ben: And finding the right partners to choose. So who would be the best vendor or what investment should they offer their employees and those sorts of arrangements.

A.J.: In that world with the Retirement System Group, we actually did it all. So we didn't work with outside vendors. Didn't work with outside vendors. And that would have been my background from 1982 through to, I started working there in 2004 or late 2003. Worked there until mid 2008 when we sold that business. And it was really great experience. And there I met a future business partner, Wes Del Col. Wes is the managing principal and the founder of Guidance Point Advisors. That's where I met Wes. Wes and I worked very closely together there and just found that we had very similar values and worked really well together.

Ben: And that sale of that company in 2008, which was really this spur for Wes to really go out on his own at that stage as well, which kind of founded Guidance Point Advisors.

A.J.: Right. At Retirement System Group, we were predominately working with planned sponsored retirement plans but there were some individual accounts that we were managing. Wealth management clients managing their own personal money. Wes saw that as an opportunity to launch a business of his own. So he worked out an arrangement where he started Guidance Point Advisors in New York. Actually moved it to Boston a little bit later I believe was the sequence. And so that's where I met Wes. And I was living in Maine during those years while I was in New York. I had an apartment in New York City but I was living in Maine still and just traveling extensively. So partway through 2008 when we sold it, I just came back to Maine full-time.

Ben: Gotcha. So you come back to Maine, what was the next venture for you? So you were obviously part of the business with your father and then selling that to a rollup and then to the next enterprise, but what was the next stage for you after, hey, I'm back in Maine and probably at that point maybe a little sick of going to New York City on a daily basis throughout the weekdays? How did you kind of come to the next iteration for business?

A.J.: Right. I had a little bit of money at that point to invest in another company. I really wasn't sure I wanted to stay in the retirement industry, retirement services industry. I had been doing it since graduating from college and now it's 2008. It's time for a change. So I looked around at a bunch of different opportunities. And my wife and I could never really agree on any that made sense. And the opportunities just seemed to just keep pulling me back to where all my background was. I thought that-

Ben: Like what? Give me an example of what type of things you were kicking back and forth.

A.J.: So we looked at-

Ben: Because we joke about a doughnut shop every now and again.

A.J.: No joke. I would love to have done that. I didn't find any doughnut shops for sale. I did find gas stations. There were a few gas stations that I was all excited about. The numbers looked great. My wife was adamantly against the gas station idea. All she could see were we'd have employees out there getting held up at gunpoint in the middle of the night or something. She's like, "No, I don't want to do that. That's not going to work." So we didn't do that. We looked at a service master business where we'd go out and clean things. That didn't sound at all appealing to me, but the numbers were kind of interesting. A bottled oxygen business, where people that are having trouble breathing or need bottled oxygen. There were a couple of opportunities there. But what I realized is that I don't know any of those businesses. And what I do know is that businesses are complicated. And I would have a very steep learning curve to jump into any one of these other adventures when I know what's going on with the retirement plan servicing, the investment advisory world. I understand how that works.

Ben: Gotcha. So you ultimately then chose to do something. Can you talk about ... If that gravity pulled you back to retirement plan services, how did you kind of come up with what the arrangement would be of something that maybe re-sparked that and kind of got you to be more excited about that role?

A.J.: Yeah. I made some good friends throughout the years working with various colleagues. One of those is a fellow named Erik Daley. He's the managing principal of a company, the Multnomah Group out in Oregon. Erik and I had worked together at the company that I sold Walker Associates to, InvestSMART. Erik was running the western part of the sales and marketing as I was running the eastern part. So we were competing with each other. And Erik is younger and smarter then I am, so it's always good to stay close to those people. When I went to New York City, Erik jumped out of InvestSMART and started his own business. Started Multnomah Group. He and I kept in close touch over those years when I was in New York. And understanding what he's doing, watching what he's doing, and one of the reasons I didn't do that initially is because I had children in high school moving into college and I needed cash flow and Retirement Systems Group allowed me pretty good cash flow during those years to pay for the college adventures that our daughters went on. So as I kept watching what Erik was doing, when we sold Retirement Systems Group and I'm sitting in Maine kind of wondering what the next step in my career will be, I had the luxury of having some time. That was great. I watched a lot of field hockey games with my daughters and it was great.

A.J.: And through that process there was these gas station opportunities and other stuff didn't just ever seem to come into fruition. I knew what Erik was doing out there and he and I saw the industry the same way. We talked a lot over the years. And that was that retirement plan sponsors really did not fully understand their fiduciary responsibility. They did not know what they're paying for services, and their investments were either just poorly performing investments or they're just really expensive. So based on that premise, we knew that we could really go help mid to small sized plan sponsors really improve their plans. Improve the governance of their plan, reduce the costs and improve the investments. Erik proved the model out on the west coast while I was in New York. It just became obvious I needed to get back to what I knew. I called Erik and said, "Let's make a deal. And I'm going to start a company, but I need a back office and I need somebody to help me run reports and things." So we made a deal and he really helped me launch my company called ACACIA Associates, which was the forerunner to Guidance Point Retirement Services.

A.J.: That's what I did. So I started and I just literally started with zero clients, zero business and just started making phone calls and sending out emails and connected with people that I know. And before long I had a client, then I had two clients, and three clients, and four clients. And eventually over a few years and just phone calls that I had made, I found this opportunity with a local bank trust department that had a book of retirement plan business that we were able to make a deal and acquire those accounts. That's of course how I met you.

Ben: Right. That's how we met. Yeah.

A.J.: And at that point, changed the name of the company from ACACIA Associates to Guidance Point Retirement Services and made a deal with Wes Del Col. So going back a few minutes I'd mentioned Wes. Wes started this company Guidance Point Advisors and Guidance Point Advisors focused on financial planning and wealth management for individuals. I knew that the business I was starting was focused on retirement plans and retirement plan sponsors. Well obviously if you're looking at a Venn diagram, there's a big overlap. The overlap being we're both dealing with people in the retirement field, the retirement age. So people are either planning for retirement or managing. We need to manage their money in retirement. It just made sense that we had an organization that could span both sides of the fence.

A.J.: I approached Wes with it and said, "Let's look at this together." And so we ended up making a deal. Wes owns part of Guidance Point Retirement services and Ben you and I own part of Guidance Advisors. So it worked out really good. And so now we can work with people as they prepare for retirement through corporate retirement plans [inaudible 00:13:19] sponsors. And then on the other side when they're coming out of those plans and needing somebody to manage their money, Guidance Point Advisors does that.

Ben: Excellent. So in regards to Guidance Point Retirement Services, again, you kind of talked about the structure and kind of building it. Guidance Point Retirement Services we started in 2012, but your precursor went back to a few years before that.

A.J.: 2009, yeah.

Ben: Yeah. So what have you kind of found about this iteration of your career that you've really enjoyed and then from your lookback again at this point where 2009, we're now over 10 years of that, how has it gone and how has it gone relative to how you thought it was going to go?

A.J.: Yeah. I like it a lot. If you recall my past background I was always involved in companies that were much broader. Included record keeping and administration and other details in running retirement plans. That part of the business requires a lot of scale and a lot of employees and a lot of management that really wasn't very fun. I didn't enjoy it at all. So when launching this business and Guidance Point Retirement Services, we're much much more focused on providing that consulting service to the client. And we'll go help them find the other service providers. So I think the business model's really good. It lets us leverage our expertise without getting bogged down and trying to actually sell a product or run some kind of a very complicated back office. I like that a lot. I think what we've built here is a business that is very helpful to the end user, very cost effective for our clients, and it's very scalable on our side. Scalable meaning we don't need a lot of technology. We do need more people. As we grow, we need more consultants. So I like it a lot.

A.J.: One thing I learned with the Multnomah Group ... I mentioned Erik is younger than myself and smarter than myself. When he and his partners were kind enough to really help me get this going. I really watched how they worked and they worked in a collegial way that I had never really experienced. They really enjoyed work more than I had ever really enjoyed work. They had fun. It was a very open environment. Sharing information and ideas and I really wanted to emulate that and I think we have.

Ben: Yeah. I agree.

A.J.: So we've tried to do that here at Guidance Point.

Ben: Yeah. I think we all kind of generally ... It's easy to do lip service and say you do that. I think we all really have a lot of fun working together and even though we have some geographic distances between offices and people at times, we're on the phone quite a bit with each other throughout the day and we try to see each other physically enough that you kind of get that semblance of team and you spend a lot of time in each others' personal, like what's going on and what'd you do this weekend type stuff. So it's been a lot of fun.

Ben: I do want to just kind of shift over here. Obviously as we talked about getting to know each other a little bit, you and I have been in the car a lot. Over traveling I-95 and 395 and 495 and all the 95s. But one of the things we talked about was in terms of religion and that's why we kind of ... Obviously why we want to think of you for the show. And I just would love for you to go into the background that you have with faith. In terms of, what was your experience in growing up with faith and then I know you had a specific example about faith and discovering that or being more deeply discovered with faith.

A.J.: Right. So I did not really grow up in an active faith situation. My family situation was such that we did attend church infrequently when I was young. My older brothers would complain of being drug to church or something and of being compelled to go to church. I was not. I'm the youngest of four siblings. By the time I came along my parents were tired of dragging children to church. So there was not really this ... It was just assumed that we were Christians because that's the cultural aspect our family grew up in. It wasn't really a focus of anything. It was more of just, you're a Christian because that's just what we are. I didn't know what that meant. I had no personal relationship with Jesus. I didn't understand anything. It was all positive but it wasn't something that was a focus of the family.

A.J.: As I went through high school and into college, I got fairly involved in politics. And I think looking back at it, what was driving me towards the political world is that I knew there was something else sort of out there. That I could see problems in the world or problems whatever, that maybe politics is a way to make a difference. That wasn't as conscious in high school as I look back on it. That's what was going on. So I was in the student senate and I was my class president senior year in high school. I was a student senator at the University of Maine. I can tell you a lot of funny stories about that but I did all that stuff. I helped one of my friends get elected when we graduated ... He was a year ahead of me. Helped him get elected to the Maine State House of Representatives out of the Orono district. I was his campaign manager.

A.J.: I thought that was all cool. And then graduated college and continued on with some of the political stuff and campaigned pretty hard for a republican candidate for governor that never made it through the primaries. Failed in the primary. What I saw there was very, very disillusioning, very eye opening. And it was that there really is no answers here. I really was completely disenchanted that politics really solves anything ever. I think that as I've matured and now I'm in my late 50s, it is important. There are some important civic part of that whole being a citizen. But the truth is, the big questions in life are not going to get answered by that. Started me on a process of just sort of very passively thinking about the meaning, life meaning and the universe kind of stuff. So I was searching through that.

A.J.: I had a bunch on encounters in my early 20s with people that were Christians that I didn't know what that meant. One of the early fellows was a friend of my dad's who had had some trouble in his life. Very bright guy, very accomplished, but he'd had some problems and my dad was helping him. Letting him use some office space to get back on his feet. And he and I ended up becoming good friends. He's older than my dad, but a really interesting guy. And he was the first evangelical Christian I ever met. Very fascinating. He was actually a Catholic. As I've progressed throughout my faith journey I find that that's not real common. Yeah, so I started searching. So this fellow was great. So we started to go to lunch and really talk about some bigger issues. Life and meaning and purpose and those things. And it really started to resonate with me. And I knew looking back at it from a teenager, that I realized that I wasn't the biggest thing in the universe. I always remember thinking, looking at the stars or being out in nature or just discussions with some friends that there had to be something bigger than me. Because if I'm the biggest thing in the universe there's a real problem. There's no hope. There's hopelessness.

A.J.: So this fellow, Tom Neagle is his name. Tom was just a wonderful, thought provoking guy with a lot of wisdom. And that was the start of it. And then I started to listen to the radio. As we were moving our office to Portland, I found that music really isn't good for me in a car. It puts me to sleep.

Ben: Don't do that.

A.J.: When you're driving a lot, you don't want to do that. So I can't listen to much music. So I was listening to talk radio. And this was back in '89. Talk radio wasn't like it is today. So I started listening, I bumped into a Christian station and found that fascinating. And started listening to some of the programs pretty steadily. One fellow was Chuck Swindoll, who is maybe one of the greatest story tellers you ever heard. Chuck Swindoll was a pastor out in California at the time and I've learned a lot about him since. And he was going though the bible and doing some bible studies. What was happening is we were living in ... We still had our house in Brewer and we were moving to Portland and I'm going back and forth. And I was starting to time my drives so that I could make sure I could listen to Chuck on the radio. So he was on from like 5:30 to 6:00 or whatever the timing was. And I'd run out of radio coverage by the time I got a little past Brunswick when I left Portland. So I was kind of getting it.

A.J.: And he was on this great series and he did this telling the story of Abraham, a friend of God. And he was telling the story ... I don't know who all is familiar with these stories out of Genesis, but Abraham at one point as a very old man, his wife was very old, had their only child. Their only male child. And it was an amazing miracle. Any rate, there was this point when he feels compelled that he's supposed to go sacrifice the child. It's like a very unbelievable situation. So he's at the point where the child's on the altar, Isaac is his name. And Abraham's already to sacrifice him. And then there was a noise in the bush and he looks up and there's a ram stuck in the thicket and the ram was the intended sacrifice, not the child.

A.J.: That's the biblical story of that. Through that example of how Jesus is our substitutionary sacrifice like that ram was a substitutionary sacrifice for his sins, while Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins. And there was something in that truth and through the spiritual thing that I really at that point realized that Jesus really ... That convinced me. There was a whole series of other things that I had bumped into before that. But that's what really got me to the point of really accepting Jesus as my savior. And it was a world changing thing. It was a life changing thing. It's just from that time in 1989 until now, it's just my faith has grown and grown and grown. I've spent a lot of time in it.

Ben: And can you just kind of talk about in terms of then finding that to then going, all right well, it's another thing to then say, I have a personal religious experience or I can practice faith maybe privately, to then going to a church and then finding where to go. And why I'm asking this is I'm thinking about that a lot of conversations and people are asking of, it's just kind of what's the first step? If I want to kind of take that first step. Maybe I am privately religious here and I have ... Whatever the religion is, and kind of what is that first step in Maine to kind of do that? So how did you find that first place to go, I decided to worship somewhere, and then finding what that right place was? Then you've also been seeing other people trying to find that place and has that changed I guess is my question there?

A.J.: I think that the decision to want to find a church is more driven on a calling as opposed to a desire. Like, I would like more community or I would like to do something different, I think is not sustainable. I don't think that people will continue to pursue a faith or go to a church on a regular basis and get super involved without essentially a calling. I believe it's a spiritual thing. I believe that people when they start really feeling something in their life is missing, there's either questions that aren't answered or there's loneliness or something going on in their life, that's what driving people to churches.

Ben: And can I pause you? When you say questions, what type of questions maybe that you were experiencing or you were asking maybe prior or what you're seeing people ask as questions that are driving them to seek that out as a calling?

A.J.: Ravi Zacharias I think has a good ... Ravi's one of the great thinking and philosophers in the Christian world. Ravi has this four point approach that every world view needs to be able to answer these questions in a way that makes sense. And so to answer the question of origin or beginnings, meaning morality and destiny. So every world view, whether we think about it or not, answers those questions. So a secular word view, an atheist world view, Hindu, Muslim, they all answer those questions somehow. And the question is, are they logically consistent? Are they empirically adequate? And are they experientially relevant? I think you have to apply those three standards to each one of those four points. And when you do that that really is what answered to my ... That was what I was seeking is who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? Where's my destiny? That's the origin of destiny. And then the idea of meaning, I just never felt could be random. I thought it had to have been something more than random. And morality can't just emerge out of a rock. The morality came from somewhere.

A.J.: My own personal DNA, I'm always interested in history and have been since a kid. I was not a great student. I was great in history though because I just loved it. And a lot of that drove me to looking at some of those same questions from a historical perspective. But I think that's it. So I was trying to find answers to those questions. Other people that I see coming to church, looking for a church, looking for some sort of spiritual relationship, are trying to answer the same kind of things. Why am I going through this life? Why am I going through this kind of work? The suffer? What is it all about? Those types of questions. Or, a lot of people have hit rock bottom. They discovered that they're a substance abuser or they're alcoholics or they've had three failed marriages or life just isn't going well. And they think, what is going on? What is out of sync here? Other people are just massively lonely. They just don't have a connection with anybody or anything and they don't know what to do. So those are the kinds of questions that I see people needing to find a response to.

Ben: And when they're seeking out those answers to those questions, how do they ... Maybe religion seems like maybe an obvious answer, maybe it isn't for some people. Is it they're generally going to a friend and then a friend saying, "Hey, I had those same questions and here where I found those answers?" How do they go from I'm here and I'm in a place where I have a need and something's missing and I don't have answers to things and I'm not meeting the rubric you described, what's the push? What's the push to kind of go, here's where I go?

A.J.: Yeah, it's multiple. So in some cases that exactly, it's a friend. I had somebody that ... I'd lead the classes at my church. I'm on the leadership team and so forth. And one person that I had the opportunity to actually baptize this past fall was in one of my classes. She came to a church because her friend's father passed away and the funeral was the church. She came to the church to support her friend. She didn't have any sense of calling, any sense of anything going on in her faith life. She came to the church. The pastor who preached the sermon at the funeral said something that got her thinking, wow, there's something else going on here I don't even understand. She signed up for the class that I teach. It's called Starting Point. And she came in with just a whole bunch of questions. I had to spend a lot of extra time with her answering questions. She ended up through that nine week process of becoming a full blown believer. So it just was an amazing thing.

A.J.: So she came though ... To get to your point. She came to support her friend at a funeral. If you know people that are in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, and go through a 12 step program, they don't speak of God in a sense that I would as a Christian. But that it's a higher power. With a higher power, a lot of people are trying to figure out what that is. So that will drive them to a church. How they find out about it? Asking friends. They find out about it online, radio. They will sometimes do a deliberate search for it. We find that less than people being invited or they're in some kind of a program that they have met somebody that goes to that church and they'll do that.

Ben: I guess on of the questions I'm interested in is, is kind of the search for the right church. Obviously there's different variations of lots of different religions. It's the kind of figuring out well if I'm in Houlton, if I'm in Machias, if I'm in Cherryfield, I'm in wherever. Is it hey, it's convenient and here's the one in my home town and maybe it's not exactly the answers I would be agreeing to or thinking about but it provides me other things and ... I guess my question is, so you're in Portland and your church has been very successful here and growing and getting more popular. What do you find is happening with the growth of churches or maybe the shrinking of churches? It's kind of that, how are people finding where to go?

A.J.: Your question's very, very broad. To the listeners, this will take at least three hours. That's a big question.

Ben: Hit pause. Go get some popcorn, come back.

A.J.: That's right. Go relax. This will be good. Actually Ben as you and I were talking you had sent me some notes to prepare for this. You'd put a link in to crosswalk.com church. 10 questions to ask before joining a church. Actually that was helpful. I saw that and I thought, oh boy, this is going to be cooky. It really was pretty good. I think those are 10 good questions that you ask. So there's some online resources that are helpful. You're going to find churches of Christian ... It's really complicated. Because you have ... That's why I'm saying it's more of a calling. There needs to be something calling you to something. Because it's very, very complicated. In the Christian world, the two big divisions are Catholic and Protestant.

A.J.: So Catholics, those of you who are raised Catholic and are interested in that, they're more similar than different. So you go to one Catholic church or another one, I think if you like the priest or something. It's going to very, very similar. In the Protestant world, it's not at all the same. It's wildly different. So you can go to the old mainline Protestant churches like the United Church of Christ churches and the Methodist churches. Those are really dying. They're really losing membership. They're really shrinking, getting smaller. Those are all those really pretty old churches in the center of the towns and around Maine and New England. Those white steeple churches are beautiful and they just don't generally have many people coming anymore. The churches that are really thriving and growing are the independent Christian community churches with a very evangelical bent like my church. I go to East Point Christian church in south Portland. There's churches all over the state that are similar. That are trying to get rid of the traditions that maybe don't have meaning for the younger generation. And trying to make the message very relevant. The music is very relevant.

A.J.: So the community is very welcoming and non-judgemental. That's all part of what people are looking for. In fact, we use the word religion. You've used the religion earlier. If you notice ... I don't know if you noticed but maybe now you will. I almost never use the word religion, because in my worldview, in the Christian worldview and I believe what Christ calls us to, is not a religion. In fact, he actually was extremely critical of religion. Of the religious leaders of the day, that's who he railed against. He railed against the people that followed the rules in a hypocritical way. That they had all of the show and the pomp and circumstance, but their heart was really not at all good. He would rather hang out with the sinners and the tax collectors and the really bad people, because they needed him and they knew they needed him. And so what we like to say at our church, we don't have a religion. We have a relationship. So people at East Point have a relationship with Jesus.

A.J.: So what we're trying to do at East Point and at a bunch of other churches and kind of the independent contemporary Evangelical churches, really want to offer to people a chance to become Jesus followers. Look, we don't care what kind of baggage you bring in. We don't care what you wear. We don't care what you look like. We don't care anything. We just don't care any of that stuff. What we really know, is that if you start following Jesus, eventually you're going to start looking like him in your spirit, in your actions, in your behavior. That's what it's about. So you're going to start to conform. Your life will start to transform and conform over time to become more like Jesus. And that'll happen the rest of your life until you die because you're never going to make it. You're never going to get fully there. So that's the deal. So how do you look for a church? I would go to your friends, I would go to people that you know. If your friends are skunks and you want to get away from it anyway, you want new friends, then get online. You found a neat resource at crosswalk.com and start looking around and just google churches in your area and just see. Read what they believe, go visit some, see how it feels.

Ben: I guess that's kind of the biggest thing right, is just go try it.

A.J.: You got to go try it.

Ben: Experience it and see what you like about it and see if you're receiving what they're saying there. Kind of get out. Okay.

A.J.: That's what I would say.

Ben: One of the things you just mentioned A.J. was, obviously with churches and there's different vitality of churches is, in what may have been popular 30 or 40 years ago and how certain communities responded really well to how a church was kind of functioning in the community, over time things change. How people want to interact with their church and their calling to that church. So really my question is, well in the state of Maine you have more and more functions and things that are rural and maybe more things that are really centralizing. And especially where you kind of as you express well, your church is growing and some of it's just because you're changing to the kind of how people want to experience the church. So say I was in this situation. Say today I started with a church and I kind of found that that was where I gravitated towards and I had a calling towards that church. But in 10 or 15 years that changed. And I have to start the process of kind of finding that next place to go. What's the process to do that? Again, is it the same of just like you would find it the first time? Is just go interview them and figure that out? How does that work?

A.J.: Yeah. So our culture in the state of Maine as well in the rest of the country and actually the rest of the world, particularly western Europe and the U.S. is very similar in this stage in that we're now out of a cultural Christian sort of normative culture experience. We're now in what's being referred to as the post modern era. In the post modern era churches that rely on tradition and religion and kind of a cultural force to pull you into the church. Because you go back 50 years and you lived in a small town and everybody went to the same church and you all did that and that was part of being in the culture. That's not the way it is today. So for churches to survive and thrive and grow, they have to be meeting people's needs. This need of when you're 20 years old or when you're 70 years old is the same need. The need is to find meaning in your origin, meaning, morality and destiny. What are you here for? Where do you come from? Where are you going? Those types of essential big questions, big metaphysical questions, are really what people long for. I actually would submit that all people long for this.

A.J.: Some people fill it up with other activities, some people fill it up with drugs and alcohol. I think everybody's looking for that sort of connectedness and bigger, broader meaning in their life. So what you'll find are that the older churches, the churches that really relied on that tradition, are just shrinking. My church East Point Christian has only been in existence for 14 or 15 years and we have an average attendance of around 2,300 people. We're growing very rapidly. They started out the church plan, a pastor and his wife and a few other couples came from Ohio. They felt called to New England and they had a church planning group that planted the church, gave them some funding and they raised a lot of funding. And started out with just a handful of people and we're growing very rapidly. And why are we growing rapidly? As well as other churches are. There's one here in Bangor. I know Cross Point church has done real well. There's the Rock Church and other ones that are of very similar natures. We really tried to meet needs for the people in a very relevant fashion.

A.J.: If people today are walking into a church ... Let me start it again. If people today walk into a movie theater, they expect good lighting, they expect good sound, they expect comfortable air conditioning or heating. They want to have a coffee or popcorn or anything else. You take those same people that do not come out of a Christian background and in this post modern era, they're going to walk into a church environment and they're going to expect at last what they're going to get at a movie theater. I mean come on. I have to at least have the environment feel comfortable or I'm not going to listen to anything. If it's spooky and it's weird and it's full of weird language, then they're just going to turn around and leave. It's just this is going to be too much of a bridge to get across. If they can walk into the church and they feel something a little different. There's some spirit thing going on here that's a little different. People are friendly, but they don't seem fake. They don't care what you're wearing. They don't care that you're carrying coffee into your seat or you go ... Our church has a 100 seat café right when you walk in. You can go get something to eat and walk over and go sit down. We have a soccer field when you walk into our church. Indoor soccer field.

A.J.: This is stuff that just people don't expect in what you consider the old traditional church. So we're appealing to a culture that doesn't have a Christian background. So it's really fascinating. So those churches around the state and around this country, those small churches that are clinging to kind of that old traditional hard wooden pew, we're going to give you the message and you're going to like it or whatever. They're just not doing well. The other churches are not doing well are those that have tried to become relevant in a pluralistic way, maybe even universal. So they've taken the message of what Jesus Christ taught. Jesus called himself ... He said I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father but through me. Either that's a truth claim that's true, or it's a true claim that's not true, which would be an untruth claim. That's kind of one of the tenets. The fact that Jesus was born of a virgin is another one of those central truth claims. The fact that there was a creator in the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Either that's true or that isn't true.

A.J.: The churches that have kind of taken those and tried to bend those to sort of the politically popular belief or the cultural view aren't doing very well. We're finding just their attendance is just dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping. Because I believe what's happening is people walk in there and there's no real message being proclaimed, there's no answers really to the big questions in life. They can get the same stuff by watching CNN. They don't really need to go to those churches. So you go to a church like the Rock Church or ... I don't know. Yeah, so I know people in the Rock Church, our church or other churches, you're going to hear a very different message. One of hope, one of acceptance, one of grace, one of love, that the culture does normally hear. You're not hearing that in the movies. You're not hearing that in your normal walk and it's very refreshing and it's very great for a lot of people.

Ben: And when you kind of use the universalist message there, do you think because ... Here's the four rubric, right. Here's these four things and maybe they're only teaching morality. It's just, people maybe have larger questions or maybe more broad questions that answers all those four things and they're only getting one and it just feel like okay, I feel like I got that piece of it that I needed and I'm just getting reinforced in this and not getting maybe all of the other questions that I have answered.

A.J.: I think so. That's probably right. It's something like that. It's something to do with ... Yeah, there's just not really answers here. Yes, it's find that whatever this dance is on whatever the political issue of the day is, but is that really answering those felt needs of origin? Meaning morality and destiny? Probably not. Again, that's a really long ... I could go on and on and on about that. But I think that's probably something close to the truth. They're just not getting their needs met. And when they walk into a place where they're all of the sudden getting some answers or seeing things a little differently or a lot differently, it's compelling.

Ben: So I kind of had the question that I wanted to queue up for you which I think we covered was, in today's churches, what are churches really doing well? What aren't they doing well? So I know we kind of covered that. But maybe just fast forward then going forward, right. So you have this post modern era where the experience really is more of ... It's one of comfort and meeting people to be ... If they're comfortable they're able to receive messages. How do you kind of think then going forward? Maybe specific to your church, what are you guys doing really well in that and where are you trying to improve yourself? But then going forward, what do you think also need to keep refining so that environment stays, so that people keep coming to that place?

A.J.: People need to keep growing in their faith for it to make sense. So it isn't a one and done. It's not just say, oh I'm now a Christian, I've accepted Jesus and that's it. Check that box. I'm going to go do something else. You can do that, but you're not going to grow, you're not going to have those needs of relationship and love and so forth met. The golden rule or the two largest or most significant teachings in the Judaeo Christian ethos is, love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and body and love your neighbor as yourself. Within that you've encompassed a relationship that ... You're going to have a relationship with your creator and a relationship with others and you're going to serve others. You're going to do good for others. There's a whole purpose there of, we're created to do good things. In the first chapter of Genesis when God created men and women, God created and immediately put Adam to work. You have to go name all the animals. You got to get going. Come on. Chop chop. So he had him doing work immediately. So work is significant. Doing things for other people is significant. Having relationships with God and with others is really significant.

A.J.: So if they walk into any church and don't start upon a path of continual growth and change and moving towards that goal, it's a brutally difficult thing to do to those two things. Love God and love your neighbor. It's brutally difficult. And we can plumb the depths of that for the rest of our life on how to better do that. If you're not moving in that way, then you're not going to stick with a church. I think the people ... We'll see people drift away. So the challenge that I think that the contemporary Christian churches like East Point have, are that we can get 2,000 people a Sunday. We can get 4,000 people a Sunday there. Because the message is relevant and it's meaningful. However, people don't get engaged in a small group relationship setting where they're part of a much, much smaller group, 15, 20 people, where you can kind of really live life out and live your faith out and deal with the tough questions you can't deal with in a group of 2,000 people. You're going to deal with it ... Your kid gets sick and you need help and the 2,000 other people sitting there aren't going to help you. You know what I mean.

Ben: Sure, yes.

A.J.: Theoretically they could but it's really that small ... We call them life groups at our church. But others call them some other things. But that's I think really where it has to be. People have to keep growing in their faith and it's going to have to be in that type of life group kind of small group setting that will just continue to have to be nurtured.

Ben: And this is just a question. We've kind of covered this lots of different ways in previous iterations of this podcast. Is that looking at a rural state, it's really tough for people, especially where you're aging and you have mobility issues and maybe you're not able to drive anymore or you're just rural in general and you just can't do ... You have a calling to go to somewhere, but you're unable to go for whatever reason. Do you feel like in terms of that small group, that that's maybe another evolution as well, is that maybe more of these small groups, that maybe isn't just geographically focused to that specific place? Is that something that's being talked about?

A.J.: I'm not sure in know what you mean.

Ben: So in regards to the small groups taking place at the church or going to, hey well here's a satellite center. It maybe 20 minute out of where the church is physically located, but we have a group of people that 15 of us get together and we have that, in your case, maybe the life group or we can kind of create some of the church without having to be at it. So allowing that expansion.

A.J.: Yeah, very much so. In fact ours all meet in homes. Maybe a couple meet at the church. But we have many, many, many of these in our church. These groups. And we meet in our home. For instance my wife and I lead a life group. That's right. And in fact, from the perspective of this podcast of retirement success in Maine, if you're feeling called somehow to get back to your faith or searching for a new faith or trying to find purpose in your situation of whatever stage of life you're in, whether it's in retirement or nearing retirement, I would urge you to seek out a church and really start to explore. Do some reading. Pick up the bible and there's some great reading plans that you can read. Just reading it cover to cover is difficult. But there's some great plans that you can pick up online or there's all kinds of resources. Start doing that. Because if you can get engaged in that community and really in that sort of real living church sense and you're really are living out your faith, it's exactly as you said Ben. What happens is we all meet in homes. In our life group we have, I think the youngest person is 23 and our oldest person's 81 in our life group. It's really wonderful.

A.J.: And we help each other out. Last year, one of our group members, they had a lot of flooding in their basement. And so some of us when over there and started helping out. It gets very practical. So in that case, if somebody becomes kind of housebound and can't really get out to church, wonderful. Let's go meet at their house now once a week. Another neat thing about the modern technology and modern churches, is we stream our services. So somebody could go over and help them get it setup on a computer so they could actually watch and be part of the service. Our church actually by the way, we stream services into the Cumberland County Jail. Because we want those people to realize that when they get out of jail, they have a community that they can join. That they can become part of. So we actually have people over at the jail every Sunday and we have a video feed in there. Right now we're actually doing a one week delay because of some of the technology issues on the prison side. We're not the only church doing that. And we actually had one of our ... We just had a prisoner released recently that came in and said hey, I've been watching this for a while. And we said hey, be a part of the team, come on in. You're welcome.

A.J.: And so people need to be accepted and all that stuff. So geographically in a rural state like this, this can be very meaningful, very helpful and get out to them as opposed to making them try to come into a church.

Ben: Gotcha. And I know obviously we've kind of covered lots of different topics in our show so far, which is why kind of religion is kind of a pretty good weaving of all these themes together. It's all life purpose and what are you trying to accomplish and where do you fit? And for some people they may pick specific things. Maybe there's a passion that gives them purpose and meaning. Or there's a service or something and we talked to Mary Marin Lyon about volunteerism and what does volunteerism look like and how do you get engaged and involved. For church there's sometimes all that can kind of wrap all into one. You can kind of find that in kind of one place and maybe it's a little more efficient from that finding and that soul searching side. Kind of like that is why we wanted to explore it. And for some people that say hey, I'm maybe I've just not answered these questions in my life at this point and I get to retirement or I'm pre retirement. It's never too late to start that process. To kind of start growing towards it.

A.J.: Yeah, I think on of the great purposes when you're from a Christian perspective ... I really can't speak of other faiths.

Ben: Sure.

A.J.: I've never been a Muslim, I've never been Hindu, I've never been Sikh. I have very, very good Jewish friends. I'm quite familiar with that culture. So I'm really only speaking from an evangelical Christian perspective. So take that into account. But we believe that our mission is much bigger than ourselves. To your point of kind of desire to give back or have meaning in your life is nothing. And from the Christian's perspective, it's more meaningful than service. And as you said, through the church, if you're really following what you believe you're going to be compelled to go out and help people. And it's not just help people. It's go out and share the message. The saving faith of Jesus and the message of grace and love. And so it's just nothing. There's no bigger kick in my life than when I can get a chance to share that. And that will be with me the rest of my life. In my retirement years, there's an endless amount of opportunities to serve through the church and so forth. And as churches change and so forth, I may not always be at East Point. It could be something changing and we move or something else and we'll go to another church. But yeah, it's really neat. There's just no end to the drive to serve other people and bring this message to other people.

Ben: One last question for you. And we like to wrap up the episode with this question for everybody. For you personally, obviously you just kind of answered some of that with being active in your faith but in retirement for you, retirement success, what's maybe the big hairy audacious goal? What's that thing that you're like hey, I always wanted to do or wanted to accomplish and I could see my self doing, and that would leave me very fulfilled and kind of that feeling of being accomplished and that? So what would be that for you?

A.J.: I have hobbies that I enjoy a lot like fly fishing and all related matters to the fly fishing. It's great fun. I can't say that it fulfills a great ... I don't feel particularly that that's a purpose of my life. So it's a great thing to do and I'll do it as long as I can. But I'm not sure that I derive a ton of purpose. I think what I really do, is I really feel more connected to my creator. When I'm standing in the river and I'm dealing with the fish and I'm dealing with the insects and things, it's actually just so awe inspiring to me. And so I'm filled with wonder at nature. So it's really another aspect of my faith journey is when I do the fishing. So the big audacious goal is really I would just be able to spend more time focused on bringing the message of the good news of Jesus to other people and serving other people through the church and outside of the church. Our church serves people in many, many ways. Financially and physically and all kinds of things. Yeah that would be it. I am never going to ... You and I have talked about this in retirement. I'm still a ways away but I can at least see it from here. I will never have to wonder what I'll do in my retirement years. This is a life long quest and it has meaning.

A.J.: The nice thing about the Christian worldview is that our belief is that we're created eternal. That our souls are eternal. We're either going to live with God or not with God. That's a big deal. But we're going to live. So that's a pretty cool perspective. So what I'm doing on earth I see as only just I'm in this particular body but my soul is going to live on forever. I don't believe that we can have those big metaphysical questions and discussions and all that kind of thinking. I just can't believe that happens on a temporal being. So anyway. This is cool. So I have this whole eternal perspective that I look forward to, it's going to be great and eternity is going to be better than here.

Ben: Which is why I think in this show where we kind of hear, and some from our client perspective is, is they're going into retirement kicking and screaming. There's kind of a fight against the aging process. There's a fight against change and they've been very comfortable. That just kind of moment, right. I think maybe they just don't feel peace in some of those answers. They kind of don't feel peace towards that. Again, what are you migrating towards? Again, which is what we find out a lot I feel like.

A.J.: The tricky thing is, I think there's great nobility in work. I think we're called as I had mentioned. And from Genesis through the rest of the scriptures, we're called to be workers. That's what we're supposed to do. So it's not unusual that people try to find meaning in their work or try to do ... Or like you said, they ... How do you let it go and go into retirement? I would never advocate that. I would just advocate to have people consider why they're working.

Ben: Right, exactly.

A.J.: And what kind of is that work accomplishing. Right now I'm working and I get paid. There will be a day when I'm not getting paid for it but it probably will be more meaningful altogether. Work is a wonderful thing, but why are you doing it? I know why I'm doing it and I know what I'll do when I stop getting paid working here.

Ben: Yeah. A great insight. A.J. appreciate you being on the show today and thanks for spending some time. Again, religion's always a tough thing. It's very personal to everybody and it just can galvanize people in lots of different directions. Again, we wanted to just explore it from maybe more of a holistic manner and I think you did that really well so thanks for coming on today.

A.J.: Thank you.

Ben: So, interesting today's topic of kind of finding your faith and kind of approaching religion. And we know when you kind of hear that from some people it's like, okay, here's the eye roll. Here we go. This is going to be something that is going to get preachy and it's going to be judgmental. That was I think the opposite tact we wanted to take today. And that's why I think people can get very passionate about their own personal relationship with faith and they can get very defensive about that. Which is why I think when we wanted to approach this topic, we were thinking about having those guard rails in place. This is more about systematically how do I approach the subject? How do I think about this? How do I find the right place for me? Again, lots of different religions out there. Lots of different places you could worship. Whether it be privately or publicly, in a group or with family, whatever that may be. Or maybe not at all. And that was something where ... All of these podcasts are meant to be exploratory. And we're kind of get to that point of helping people just to explore the topic a little bit more and identify those fears.

Ben: So again, A.J. was really good from that end. Of course he works with us on a daily basis as part of our team. And we work with him on the other side of our business which is more on the retirement plan space offering corporate retirement plans. So he's there. But obviously we get to know each other and we all have different bents and different things that makes us unique. And that was one that we thought that would be a perfect entree to him.

Curtis: Yeah. And like you said Ben, we came into this episode wanting to be very ... I don't know if careful is the word. We didn't want it to sound like this is right, that's wrong. I think A.J. did a really great job just kind of explaining the topic as a whole. Religion is a big part of his life but he didn't make it seem like his way was the right way. I was very glad to hear him speak about it.

Ben: I think one of the highlights for me was the worldview, the four point piece of that as the origin and meaning and morality and destiny. And you kind of go ... And they start applying logically consistent, empirically evident and then kind of the other pieces of that apparatus. You go, man a lot of what we're doing with this show is kind of attempting to do that. It's purpose driven is what we're trying to do in the show. And what's meaningful to you and where am I going? Obviously I think he was approaching it more grander than that, but all of us kind of search for these pieces and trying to make those little pieces that we feel that are missing fit. And sometimes we miss pieces a long the way and sometimes we gather pieces along the way. I really like that actually from a perspective of, here's something of well, why did I always want to play guitar? And I always was musically inclined. That was something in my life. It enriches me because it allows me to connect to my past or it allows me to connect to people and there's purpose there. Those sorts of things. That's what I really liked about that.

Ben: And for some people the church just checks all the boxes. And some people they just need to check one box. So they can kind of take and get what they want out of that. And I think that was really kind of a neat part of that conversation today was how accessible it is and where it's going.

Curtis: Yeah. So one piece for me or a big piece for me or a takeaway from this episode ... So full disclaimer, religion is not a big part of my life and there's no rhyme or reason behind that. It's just not a big part of my life. So hearing A.J. talk about ... He mentioned his church and I think just churches in general. He referenced the old churches, they're struggling. The steps that churches have made in the sense that I can walk in and grab a coffee and a bagel and go into church, it's very less structured. Obviously there's structure in the church.

Ben: Maybe a little less formal.

Curtis: Yeah.

Ben: This idea that kind of come as you are a little bit more. And it's like, well this is a gathering place and it's supposed to be a friendly place. And it's not like I got to put on my Sunday best and the whole family gets dressed up. We have to sit in very uncomfortable positions for a long period of time. It's that the user experience of the church is changing.

Curtis: Yeah. Even he mentioned ... I don't know if it was on the episode or when we were kind of doing our prep conversation, he mentioned they actually live stream their ... His church live streams their services on, I think he said Facebook live or on their website. So the fact that if I can't get into church that particular Sunday, I can turn on my TV and be a part of the service. And that's kind of a general technology kind of taking over the world. I just thought that was really cool how the evolution of how these churches are doing more and more to stay relevant.

Ben: And in Maine too that's especially important because of how geographically sparse we are. So here's a church I'd want to attend or that's the type of church I would identify the most with, that because I'm in Houlton that I can't go and attend a church in Portland. You could. Maybe it's not the same relationship but you can have an relationship or the relationship with them in a different way. Or by the way, we're in Maine and it's winter and you just had a six inch snow storm. And I would normally travel 30 to 45 minutes for that experience. I can't today, it's really not safe. But I want to have that ability to maintain it and not feel like I'm missing out. Neat right?

Curtis: Yeah.

Ben: It's a neat way that we're not going, if you are not within five minutes of our church, you really is not the best place for you. That model is changing and that's kind of ... Which all of the models in life are changing. It's for that reason. So I like that. That was kind of interesting to hear. Evolutionism impacting faith generally across our state especially.

Ben: So appreciate everybody tuning in today. Again, I appreciate kind of going along with it and kind of having an open mind as you go through it. As again, we wanted to make sure that this is not a particular faith that we're advocating for and that we're being very careful about it. But in terms of I think there's things we can all learn from methodology and kind of approach. That's what I think I really loved about what A.J. shared with us today.

Curtis: Yeah.

Ben: So for more resources, you can go to our blog. Blog.guidancepointlc.com. This is backslash 13.

Curtis: 13.

Ben: So our first entrée into being a teenager.

Curtis: That's right.

Ben: Yep. And if you need anything in terms of questions or if you want to connect with us, love for you to that. We're on Facebook as well. So you can search for us on Facebook in addition to our blog. And love to see you next time.

Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen you've just listened to an information filled episode of The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness, Guidance Point Advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you're wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45 minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you checkout Guidance Point Advisors on our blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify. And of course, keep on finding your retirement success.