Eden: Today on the podcast, I had the privilege of hosting Bill and Jo Schuster, and they are one of the most impressive couples I’ve ever met. They live on mission for Jesus so joyfully. They love others with such intentionality, and they have great faith. And I asked them to be on our podcast, because I wanted you to get to experience their faith in Jesus and to hear their really incredible story. They shared the story with me the first time that we met, [which was] providentially at a friend’s wedding during cocktail hour. And since then they’ve become really dear to me. In a very hard season of my life, they powerfully ministered Jesus’ love and truth and wisdom to me as I experienced a weekend at their home, their outstanding hospitality, and intentional conversation. I tell them now that I’ve adopted them as my grandparents. So I hope today that you get to experience their ministry and the love of Jesus through them as they share their story.
We’ll start with you, Jo; with what are a few things that bring you joy?
Jo Schuster: One thing that brings me a lot of joy is when I see women that I have discipled and taught for many years stepping up and helping and taking over leadership of Bible studies and stepping into a lot of work and doing that willingly, because they have been taught for so many years. That gives me great joy. And that did happen to me in this last year when after begging for probably ten years, finally, some of these women in the Precept Bible study felt like God was speaking to them about stepping up and helping. And so now we have four different leaders, and it’s a great joy to me to see them, because they all have a different personality and a different way of leading a class, which is very healthy. And for me, it gives me more time to maybe go visit and be grandma to grandkids and to get away and to not have that weekly ongoing feeling like you were at the university, which I felt like. So, that gives me great joy.
The other thing that gives me great joy is to see our children all together engaging each other.
Eden: And what about you, Bill?
Bill Schuster: [I am] totally different probably in approach [here]. I was out splitting wood. I’m by myself. I’m working by myself. It’s quiet; it’s cold; the wind is blowing. I’m all bundled up in a coat and everything, but there’s absolute stillness. And I stopped and watched some geese fly overhead. “Thank you, Lord, for creating what you’ve created.” It wasn’t [that] there was any one event going on or any one individual, but it was the aloneness of [it all] but also of stopping to rest and take everything in around me in the woods. And I’ll say it’s a mix of joy and contentment. So that’s one thing. Sometimes it’s really, really little things that go on that we see that God does in our lives.
Seeing how God works in other people’s lives. I mean, even bringing people together. That’s joy. Sometimes it’s unexpected. So I can’t really say, “Oh, yeah, that’s going to bring me joy.” It tends to come in unexpected ways. As Jo says, you know, seeing your kids do things, sometimes you’re back, you know, twenty to thirty feet away from your kids as they’re dialoguing with one another. And you’re going, “That’s really cool. That’s really neat that they’re doing that.” Other times it is seeing other people that you’ve discipled and seeing what God has done. And I think more and more you recognize the things that bring you joy aren’t things that you’ve been involved in directly. You’re the beneficiary of seeing God’s mercy or God’s hand at work somewhere. Does that make sense?
Eden: Yeah, I think it shows us something of what God is like. And you mentioned discipleship—helping other people come to learn the truths of God’s Word. Is there part of God’s Word that’s especially precious to you?
Jo Schuster: Well, a lot of it is very precious to me. But I do have a favorite verse, which is probably the most precious thing to me, and that is in Hebrews 10:14 that says, “for by one sacrifice he has made perfect [forever] those who are being made holy.” And that tells me so much about God, because in his view, I am perfect by that one sacrifice. So I’m covered with the blood of Jesus. So when God looks at me—as bad as I am, as imperfect as I am, as needy as I am of sanctification—when God looks at me, he sees me as perfect, but I’m still being sanctified. So in his eyes, I’m perfect; he sees the end result. That’s the beautiful thing about God. And I think that’s true.
I’m seeing that a lot in the Scriptures, where he sees that for the Israelites as well: “This is how it’s going to be, but in the meantime, you’re going to mess up.” And so he sees that, but it doesn’t surprise him. And he knows that we are frail, and he knows that we still buy into “taking the old man and entertaining him for a while,” but more and more so purging that out of our lives. And so you see him working and making you holy. But on the other hand, he doesn’t look at us as being these lost people that we are. He sees us as being like Jesus. And to me, that is very precious.
Eden: Bill, is there a part of God’s Word that’s especially precious to you?
Bill Schuster: When I read daily, I’ll always read a proverb. And there’s one particular proverb that has always stuck out to me, and it’s a key verse in Proverbs 4, where Solomon [is] talking about guarding your heart because from it flows the wellsprings of life (Proverbs 4:23). And that’s one of those things to me that I’m always struggling with. I mean, I’ve got a sin nature, so how am I guarding my heart? How do I guard my eyes. How do I guard my ears, so to speak? What do I read? Who am I hanging out with? The flip side of that is that’s the hope for my children as well. How are they doing that? How are my grandkids doing that? But it [Scripture especially precious to me] tends to be the whole book. But I shared with you, probably my favorite book is Ecclesiastes. The older I get, it puts life into perspective a lot more. That whole thing about life between the dash, which is cliché, but nevertheless, that’s what Ecclesiastes is. Ecclesiastes [causes us to] think about what that dash is.
It really helps me when there’s different events that are happening in our lives—good and bad. What’s my response? How am I going to react? What is God disclosing, or what is God even hiding from me? And so, I look at Ecclesiastes, and I really value that in terms of the overall instruction. And it’s probably this way for you too: You can read something at one time, [and] there’s a verse [that] really jumps out at you. And it’s probably because of whatever’s going on in your life. But two or three years later, it’s something else. It’s like, “I never read that before. Well, I know I’ve read it, but it never really jumped out at me. But now it means so much more.” And I think that’s what you really start to draw out of both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Different things at different periods of time in your life are going to impact you. That’s God’s Spirit working through God’s Word.
Eden: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, God can work through a whole book of the Bible that you marinate in and read your whole life, or he can work through one verse. Yeah, all of it is powerful.
Bill Schuster: And I think the thing that Jo and I will do a lot of times is—she’ll be studying here [and] I’ll be sitting in a chair and something will jump out at us—so we start to dive [in]. And as you said, it’s something that marinates in your mind, and then it’s like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And a lot of times, Jo will be in one place and I’ll be somewhere else [in Scripture], and yet there’s some intersection in the concept that we’re talking about, and it’s neat.
Eden: It’s so cool how the Holy Spirit works like that. Well, the first time that I ever met you, you both shared your stories of coming to know Jesus with me. And then you also shared how you guys came together. So, I would love to hear both of those again so that other people can hear those stories too? If you want to start with how you came to know the Lord.
Bill Schuster: I grew up going to church, grew up believing in God. [And in the] sixties and seventies, [I] did all the sixties and seventies things: the drugs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, staying pretty stereotypical like that and had the opportunity at one point in time to meet an old friend whose life had radically changed—radically changed. And I asked her about it, and she proceeded to share the gospel with me. I don’t think I had ever really heard the gospel, or if I did, I wasn’t truly aware of it. The basic Four Spiritual Laws that you would get out of Campus Crusade: [I] didn’t contend with any of it. The sinful part of it? Yeah, I’m a sinful person: I’m a bad guy. I’ve got a bad attitude; I’m a user; I’m selfish. But I had seen a radical change in her life. And after [her] sharing the gospel, I went back to my dorm and prayed to accept Christ, not knowing what that would look like. And a few days later, I had noticed a change in attitude, change in speech. Fortunately, I had people around me that started to disciple me on that. But there was a radical, radical change in my life, and I would have to sit there and say it was something that I didn’t try to do. Other people started to see it. I started to talk to other people about the Lord, to the point where my father even said to me at one point in time, “If you talk about Jesus anymore, you can leave the house.” So, anyway, quick story, but I’m not sure I’d really ever heard the gospel before, even though I believed in God.
Eden: Yeah. It’s a lifelong walk. And what about you, Jo?
Jo Schuster: Well, I did not grow up in a home where we went to church. We showed up “Christers” probably (people who attend church on Christmas and Easter only). In my house, probably Jesus was a swear word but never used with any reverence. I think my parents were basically pretty moral people. We were morally trained, I say, but not spiritually trained at all. So for me, I went through all that time in my life, [but] when I look back after I was saved, I realized that God was pursuing me during that time, but I didn’t realize what it was that was going on. So nothing really happened until I was engaged to be married to a gentleman at college, and we decided that we both grew up the same way and that we should figure out what was church all about. And I went to the dean of the religious department at this college, and I said, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting married, so I should probably ask someone, ‘what is church all about’ because I need to know this for my marriage.” And he said, “Well, it’s about the potlucks and about getting together for the fellowship.” And so, there I go.
So another pattern of years went by. So, [I] asked a lot of questions: I asked my dad, “Who was the Holy Ghost?” And he didn’t know. And so, I did ask a lot of questions but never got answers. So then, after I’m married and we have tried to go to church, and that isn’t sensing really well in our spirit, we quit. And then we had gotten some letters from some people that we had known in the Air Force. And they had gotten back to California, gotten back in church, and they were kind of preaching the gospel to us through these letters. But the problem was, I wasn’t interested in reading that part of the letter, so I skip over that. But they did send us that little brochure, The Four Spiritual Laws, which was very popular at that time. But I didn’t read it. I put it in the drawer. I had no idea what it said. Why did I save it? Well, that’s God’s sovereignty.
And then sometime down the line, when my husband was leaving once again for a long business trip, I came unglued, being pregnant with our second child and having a business to run along with the home. So I said to him, I think there’s something in this little booklet, but I don’t know what it says. So we got out the little booklet and we read it together, and we said, “Yeah, we agree with everything here.” So we prayed the little prayer that was in the booklet, and he went off on his business trip, and I stayed there. And I could tell gradually things happened. But when we finally got around to telling the people in California who had sent us the little booklet, they went crazy. And [we] couldn’t figure out why they went so crazy, because we didn’t know it was such a big deal. It was like Bill [said]—you don’t know what this means. And so, that was the beginning of our walk, which was out in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1970, which is almost the same time he was saved at Iowa State. He was saved a little earlier.
Eden: Were there any ways that you saw him prepare you for that?
Bill Schuster: Jo mentioned [that she was] spiritually seeking prior to really hearing the gospel. I would say there was probably a little bit of that in my mind. There was a real sense of futility, thinking, “Well, if I do this, I’ll be happy. If I do this, this will work.” [I] tried to salve the conscience, if you will. Obviously, God is all through all this is in the back, prodding and going, “See that doesn’t work. See? That doesn’t work. See? That doesn’t work.”
Eden: Yeah, which he also says in Ecclesiastes very clearly.
Bill Schuster: I’m looking at it with a little help now.
Jo Schuster: I remember as a child memorizing the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). Where did that come from? Nobody in my family was reading the Beatitudes, and I wasn’t going to church. But for some reason, I memorized those. You don’t know why. You don’t know why I was even drawn to that. But I was, and I asked a lot of questions and did not get answers for a long, long time.
Eden: Yeah, and that’s probably still a blessing today to have that memorized.
Jo Schuster: Yeah, because we just studied that in Bible study.
Eden: That’s so awesome.
Bill Schuster: I think what we’re aware of now, obviously the age we’re at, is we can look back, and we see different things, even after being a believer. How God cultivates different things and establishes different things that you look and say, “Hey, this happened twenty years back, and because of that, that’s what’s happened today.” And you start really looking at God’s sovereignty in a totally different way: how expansive and how complete and how thorough it is.
Eden: And if you were to explain for someone that maybe didn’t grow up in church, how would you simply explain what God’s sovereignty is?
Bill Schuster: I’ll start this way with it: If you look in Scripture, [it] says that God holds everything together by his Word (Hebrews 1:3). Everything that I see that is solid actually was energy at one time, and it’s light. And it’s being held together, because God’s decided he’s going to run electrons in a certain way. Nevertheless, I look at the fact that God has spoken everything into existence and created everything (Genesis 1:1–31; Hebrews 11:3). For starters, he’s holding it all together (Colossians 1:17). Well, if he’s that great, and he can create it, that means it’s very, very easy for him to control it. And so when I look at God’s sovereignty, I look at it in terms of control. And it’s really, really hard for me and my finite mind to think of somebody that can control everything that goes on in the world, let alone the universe. But there’s these little proofs that come along in life experiences. And you realize there’s a pattern. These are not things of coincidence. There’s a whole rhythm to this whole thing that’s happening, and there’s a purpose to it. And probably the older you get, the more you see that. And you recognize that as a sovereign God at work, not only in your own life, but in the lives of everyone around you.
Eden: Yeah, that’s a beautiful answer. I like how you talk about God’s sovereignty not as a concept, but as something that’s personal, as the work of a person—the most powerful person— but the work of him in our lives.
Bill Schuster: Yeah. And the big thing about our faith is the personal aspect of it. [God’s] not this distant, gray-haired dude.
Eden: Speaking of God’s sovereignty, would you be willing to share how you guys came together?
Jo Schuster: Well, let’s see, my family was living in Brazil, and we were being moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So we came here in April of ’79. Bill’s family was living in Des Moines, and he was being moved here for a job as well. And that was at April of ’79. And both our families were visiting church in Cedar Rapids on the same morning. And it happened to be Cedar Valley Bible Church. And we didn’t meet each other until one of the women there at the church who had met both of us, because she was so hospitable and inviting, she realized that we would get along really well. So I think she said to Bill, “I just met some people you are absolutely going to love, and I want to introduce you.” So out under the portico in front of the church, the Kelleys met the Schusters, and we became very, very good friends. My children babysat his children, and we did a lot of things together. We took vacations to Michigan together. We sailed together.
Bill Schuster: Well, Art and I had a lot of similar [interests]. Art became my best friend.
Jo Schuster: So there was a very close similarity between you and Art. Not so much between me and Karen. Karen was more of an antique collector and dreamer, and I’m really practical and don’t care about those things. But we did have our areas of sharing, and that was probably God’s work.
Bill Schuster: But you were still close with Karen.
Jo Schuster: Yeah!
Eden: So God moved both your families to Iowa at the same time.
Jo Schuster: Now isn’t that a coincidence? And so here we are, living in Cedar Rapids. But then the Schuster family moved to Chicago sometime in the early 80s. I can’t remember exactly—mid 80s—somewhere in there. And so, we were still here. But then they would visit and come and stay with us, and we’d go and stay with them.
Bill Schuster: Art I would see each other all over the country. We wouldn’t even tell each other. We wouldn’t even have communicated where we were going to be, and we’d end up in the same hotels.
Jo Schuster: But they were both marketing guys, so they had that same way of thinking. And they were both pilots, and they were both in the Air Force. And so they had so much in common. My husband was diagnosed with cancer—so it was four and a half years—but in 93′, in the fall, he died. Still very close to the Schusters, we were visiting you that summer [before], and we said, “Okay, we’re asking God to allow our families to sail on Lake Michigan in our sailboat that following summer.” It didn’t happen. My husband died, and then his wife was killed in an automobile accident ten months later. Now all of a sudden, we’ve got two widowed people. But you were in Chicago with two teenagers, and I was here alone, because my kids had flown the coop. Keela was a senior in college, and Parker was living in Montana. So, I was living here as a widow for a couple of years. Bill then became a widower in Chicago.
Bill Schuster: And Jo and I eventually became a couple. But I had seen in Jo’s life how she had cared for Art for all these years. Because not only did Jo care for Art, but then Jo was battling breast cancer herself and had to go through that. And one of your daughters, named Keela—our daughter—had Hodgkin’s disease. So, there was a lot of different illness going on. So what I’d seen in Jo was her character in all the unpleasantries of life.
My first wife would have bouts of depression. They’d get really, really serious sometimes, to the point where I’d come home wondering if she would be alive. Jo saw how I’d care for Karen through that. When we finally started to talk about getting married, we looked at it as a couple of things. First of all, we said, “Hey! We get do-overs, because there’s things you do when you’re married that—even as believers, we had good marriages—but you’re going, ‘That could have been better.'”
Jo Schuster: You get stuck in a way you do something, but it’s hard to create that when that’s the way you do it, and that’s the way you respond.
Bill Schuster: We had some really hard conversations about, “Okay, these are things that you shouldn’t do or I shouldn’t do.” The other thing that was really important for us is that we’re going to blend a family, and who’s going to be the most important in this family? And we reconciled from the beginning that it will not be our children, because our children are going to grow up and move on. So we could let our children become wedges in our relationship. So, we were reconciled to being a successful team. We had the blessing of being friends for fifteen years before we were lovers. And not many people get that opportunity. Along with being friends, we knew each other’s families. [The] first husband’s father, I called Gramps. We knew a lot about each other’s backgrounds and histories and things like that. So there’s a privilege there. So we married friends. So, it’s cool.
Eden: Yeah. It’s so cool.
Bill Schuster: Again, that’s God’s sovereignty, I guess when you look at it.
Eden: It’s such a neat story, seeing from where you are now and looking back. But I imagine that during it, there was a lot of pain. Second Corinthians says that with the various trials that we go through, God always applies comfort—that he comforts us in all of our afflictions (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Are there ways that you individually saw God manifest his comfort to you during those times?
Jo Schuster: Well, for me, the comfort and help and lifting up and caring when I wound up finally being a widow and being alone, came through the church. There were so many people at Community Bible Church and Cedar Valley Bible Church that reached out, and people came out here. There was a group of men one time that came out and took a tree and cut it down, split it, stacked all the wood on the back porch, brought their splitters, and I didn’t ask them to do anything like that. There was another time when a guy came over with his son and he said, “I’m over here to do some handiwork for you, but I want my son to see how you serve a widow.” And so I had a lot of that. And even during those last months when things were really, really hard, I was so lifted up in prayer that I floated through the whole thing. I was almost not landing. So, I think it was the prayers and the service and the kindness from the people from our church body and other church bodies as well, that were great comfort to me.
Eden: Yeah. Yeah, which I love. You mentioned them as the body of Christ. And I get stuck thinking of that again like a concept, but he calls them his body because it’s a manifestation of who he is. It is Jesus caring for you through all those people.
Bill Schuster: And many times it’s people you’ll never meet. I’m sure you do this. You find out about somebody somewhere else in the States or something, where they’re asking for prayer for some particular thing. And you pray for them. But as Jo said, you can feel buoyed up by it. Sometimes you’re going through something and you sense, “Why is it that there’s this sense of comfort or calm that I shouldn’t have, but it’s there?” And you realize that’s the prayers of other people. It just is.
And that’s ongoing. So the body is more than the local body, although the local body is the one that’s the most accountable. But we see this even when we travel internationally. It’s a lot bigger. It’s a lot closer. There can be a dynamic with a believer—you may not even speak the same language—and yet there’s a chemistry there that you sense.
Jo Schuster: It’s the Holy Spirit.
Bill Schuster: And it is the Spirit that does that, and that’s part of the body.
Eden: And Bill, were there any ways for you that you felt like, other than prayer, that God really ministered comfort to you?
Bill Schuster: When Karen died, first of all, I was fortunate that I had a group of three other guys [who] would meet weekly, and those guys came around me immediately. I was an absolute wreck. Jo had some heads up that Art was going to die, and she could process and prepare for that. For me, I was sitting in an emergency room, and a doctor came in and said, “I’m sorry, but your wife’s dead,” and it’s a punch in the face type of thing. Normally you would respond differently. You’re like, “This is a bad dream. When am I going to wake up?” But these guys help me. Obviously, I had some family that helped. There were people praying for me, and I would say the same thing we’ve alluded to—the first couple weeks, there was something holding me together. There was nothing I had any control over. But as reality was setting back in, I was getting counsel from some pretty strong believers. Plus, I had these three guys that were coming around me. So I had some support that way. That’s always important to have some people around you like that, that you can share your heart with and feel safe to do that, especially for guys. It’s easier for women. That may sound stereotypical, but I really think that’s the case. It’s harder for guys to be relational like that. So, if as a guy you’ve got some other people like that, that you can do that, that’s huge. That really helps.
Eden: And in light of all that you have experienced—that and then things in more recent years, in what ways over the years would you say that Jesus has become more precious to you? So you talked about not knowing what you were getting into when you first met him or surrendered to him. How has he become more dear to you or shown himself to you in more powerful ways since?
Jo Schuster: I really think it’s come mostly through the study of the Scripture. I’m okay with reading the Scriptures. That’s valuable, but it’s not nearly as valuable to me as when I dig in and when I get academic about it, because now you have that broader understanding of what the author is really saying. You’re looking into the Greek; you’re looking into the Hebrew; you’re looking into the culture; and you’re seeing that bigger picture. And so for me, it’s been a process. Well, it’s been Precept upon Precept upon Precept (Bible study) over many, many years that I’ve seen God more and more faithful, and I trust him so much more, because I study about him in the Scriptures and how he wants you to trust him. Why should we not trust him? He’s always trustworthy, but sometimes we pull back and we think, “No, we can handle this one by ourselves.” But learning to allow God that freedom to take over and [for me to] rest in him, it’s easier for me to do now than it was back when I was trying to pull all the strings and run the marionette show, so to speak.
Eden: I love how you said the more you learn about him from his Word, the more you trust him, because you see his faithfulness not just in your life but also in the Scriptures.
Jo Schuster: And in people’s lives in the Scripture.
Bill Schuster: Why don’t you repeat the question again?
Eden: So in light of what you’ve experienced, how over the years has Jesus personally become more precious to you?
Bill Schuster: I’m going to take a step back here first of all. I tend to be pretty pragmatic, probably not as compassionate as I should be at times. That being said, I’ve seen God really work in my life in areas like that—to change my heart in terms of having a much more thankful spirit. I don’t want to say introspective, but I would say God reminding me of things that he’s done in my life to protect me or to bless me. When I say protection, that doesn’t necessarily mean physically or spiritually, but I mean in terms of different life events affect me in different ways. And I look at it and go, “This is God’s hand at work,” because I’ve had no insight in some things. And so I tend to be a person that counts my blessings more, on some really simple things.
I also see that God has worked through me as an instrument, but it’s not been of my own doing. Seeing what he’s done in other people’s lives and being involved in ministry in different ways, [I’ve] realized we have that privilege of being used, of being a tool. [I] feel really comfortable about [that, thinking], “Okay. I’m good to go with this.” I think we’ve talked about this before about being faithful, available and teachable. And at different points in time in my life, I felt teachable. [There have been] times when you feel very faithful and other times when you’re on your knees because you’re at [your] wit’s end. And there’s times when you’re available and other times when you’re glad that other people are available to care for you. There’s a big picture of how I see God working, in different ways all the time. And I think it varies from day-to-day, sometimes I would say hour-to-hour, depending on some days. But there’s really a faithfulness there that I observe. [I will experience] the “why me?” thing: “Why are you caring for me like this? [Because] I know me, and I don’t like me sometimes.” You know what I mean?
Eden: It’s like 2 Corinthians 4 talks about the treasure of the gospel, like we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power doesn’t belong to us, but to God, and that he uses cracked, dusty jars to shine his light through (2 Corinthians 4:7).
So you mentioned being used by God and being involved in ministry now. What does ministry look like for both of you in this season of your life? How do you see God using you?
Jo Schuster: Well, what am I doing these days? I am still leading Precept Bible study but not on my own. Praise God! I have this great team, and we share, and it’s been wonderful. But the classes continued on. So that’s a big part of what I do. And I also volunteer at the local pregnancy center once a week. And over the years, I’ve been everything from [being on the] Board of Directors to a counselor or as a client advocate now. I’ve taught many, many Bible studies there over the years. and right now I’m working in client services, which means I connect with the clients who are coming to get their benefits from coming to classes. So, I get to visit with them, many of them I’ve had in classes over the years. So it’s a great old home week pretty much every week when we get to share what’s going on in their lives. And I do that for one afternoon a week. There’s a lot of heavy duty work there as well, [which] wears me out.
And aside from that, I have individual people that would come from different areas that I would connect with during the week. We would visit, or we’d go out for lunch or make that connection. I scaled back some, because I used to lead two Bible studies a week on my own. And so now I’m feeling a little freer to do other things—to connect with people in other ways.
Eden: And Jo, you used the word “discipleship.” If someone’s not familiar with that term, what does that word mean to you? And how would you explain that to someone that maybe had not heard that before?
Jo Schuster: Well, if you look in Scripture and you look at the people we call the disciples, they were followers of Jesus: They were living with Jesus; they were watching his life, seeing how he responded, taking in his teaching, duplicating him in a way. (You could perfectly duplicate him; you wouldn’t want to do that with me.) But it is teaching, and it is being real, and it is sharing your life, and it is asking lots of questions and preparing these people to take [on] the mission on their own. And so for me, discipleship is passing on what God has imparted to me in how to live, how to study, how to order your life, how to think about things, and [then] passing that on to other people who can then pass that on to other people, who can then pass that on [again]— like we’re supposed to be teaching our children at home, like we’re supposed to be teaching our grandchildren when we see them. And so to me, that’s what it is.
Eden: Yeah. And Jesus’ mission—we can be fulfilling that wherever we are at any stage of life.
Jo Schuster: And Jesus did it perfectly. And we don’t, but that’s okay.
Eden: Yeah. And he’s with us to help us. So Bill, what would you say your ministry looks like today?
Bill Schuster: It really is a case of being ready. Just a little background: when Jo and I were first married, we’d take on thirty junior high school kids. But we would do different things, [because] we had more energy. So, we would engage and we’d do things and go on bus trips and take kids to different towns or different states—Chicago or Washington DC. So, I mean, we would do that. At this age, we’re going to let somebody else do that. But the point is God deals certain things in your life, [and] how are you going to optimize what you can do? And obviously, with this point in time and age, what we have is a lot of life experience that we can interpolate into things for other people. The discipleship thing that Jo talked about is really a key thing for me as it is for her, being available when there’s a phone call or a text, or “Can you see somebody next week regarding this?” And a lot of times for both Jo and me, we’re not problem solving. A lot of times we’re not even teaching. Sometimes it’s listening. Sometimes it’s literally sitting with somebody who’s in the hospital and you’re there. [You’re] not really saying much. Or it’s a case of asking a question and allowing God’s Spirit to really press into that person’s heart. I think there was a time in both of our lives where it’s like, “We want to fix this. We’re going to get this done.” And what we’ve realized [is] we’re not going to get anything done. So once again, it’s “How can I be used by the Lord in ministry? And how is the Lord going to use me as the tool” type of thing? I might have some insight on [it], but I’m going to ask the question, [and] I’m going to let God go ahead and do that. Or maybe it’s God’s Word, pointing somebody to God’s Word. You brought up a couple of neat verses during our talk here, and you’re going, “Okay, how do you effectively use God’s Word?” Lead somebody to that. And then take the step back and let it go.
Jo Schuster: One thing I forgot to say is that we have a small group, which is called a growth group. So we do have a group of ten adults, but with children, it’s twenty. It’s intergenerational. And we meet, not on a regular basis, but when we do meet, [we read books], like we read through that book, Living Life Backwards. Right now we’re in…
Bill Schuster: Randy Alcorn’s book on giving.
Eden: The Treasure Principle, which is over there.
Bill Schuster: And that’s a touchy one to do, because as an intergenerational group, we’ve got people with newborns.
Jo Schuster: They haven’t built their first house yet but are planning to.
Bill Schuster: They’ve got different financial needs, goals, thoughts. And then you’ve got old people like us, and we’re in a different situation financially. So you’ve got to be sensitive when you’re leading a group like this and [with] their needs and where they’re coming from, but you still need to be able to press into them to give them an eternal vision on how they’re managing the money that God gave them, because a lot of people don’t even think about that.
Those are other ministry things we get into, like small group type things. We may not have a regularly scheduled job that we go to, but we are always going to be available to serve in some way. And I’m convinced we’ll do that until the day the Lord takes us home or physically or mentally we can’t do that any longer.
Eden: So you seeing life that way—life on mission for Jesus—is also seeing life the way the Bible describes it as. We’re in a battle that doesn’t end.
Bill Schuster: But to go along with that, and it’s not an original thought by me, but I remember a person talking about the thing and saying, “Do you realize that the people that you talked to about the Lord are actually prisoners of war? They’re the ones that are trapped behind this fence?” [It’s] effectively a fence of sin, but they’re the ones that are captured. We’re the ones on the free side of the fence.
Eden: Yeah.
Bill Schuster: And it’s hard to think about that sometimes or perceive that. But indeed, that’s where we are on that.
Eden: Yeah, that’s like what Ephesians 2 talks about.
Jo Schuster: In our recent trip to Spain, we prayed that God would open up some doors, and eventually he did when we were in Toledo. The guy that was showing us around—initially he seemed very aloof and very much in a hurry and very “your time is almost up” kind of a guy—and then, something switched in him. And he said, “You guys aren’t like the other tourists I show around at all, because when I share that I’m an atheist, they cringe and then they feel uncomfortable, but you engage me with that,” which we did. And so it wound up that he stopped looking at his clock. The next thing we knew, we were [about] an hour overtime, and he was still showing us the intricacies of the interior of this absolutely glorious cathedral—the most glorious one we saw over there. And then he wanted us to meet his partner, who unfortunately was out to coffee with a friend. And so then we invited him for lunch. And so it wound up we got to share the gospel with him. At one point he said something [like] he didn’t need God, and I still remember looking over at him, patting him on the shoulder, and I said, “You just don’t realize it yet, but you do.” And he looked at me like, “What?” After that, he really started to open up. Of course, that was a one-time deal, and so we have no way of connecting with it. But that’s a seed planted.
Eden: And you’re available wherever you go. Jo, how does your relationship with Jesus impact your understanding of your role as a grandma?
Jo Schuster: When we had younger grandkids, which was a very different scenario than it is now, we would send their parents away on a weekend, like a marriage conference or some type of activity where they could together learn and get away from the chaos of the children. And then we would come and stay with the children, and we found out many things. So, we found out a lot about how much fun we could have with those grandkids and share with them and read the Bible to them and teach them in our own fashion. We also talked about how we very much wanted our kids and our grandkids to remember us as people who read God’s Word and who were people of prayer. So we wanted them to see that happening in our lives, not try to hide it. We wanted them to walk in the room, and we were praying or walk in the room, and we were reading the Word, because that’s discipleship; that’s setting that pattern for them.
As the kids got older, then we started taking our family to family camp, and we’re blessed to be able to pay for that. But we do sponsor that, and so we all go to this great Christian camp where there’s great teaching, [and] there’s activities. Everything is about Jesus there, and it’s all age appropriate. There’s activities from nursery to the challenge, high ropes, and then you can do other things.
And the other thing we’ve done is take a group of them—now we don’t take them—we bring them. When we’re in Florida, we would bring a group of three or four of our grandkids. They had to get on the plane by themselves—no parents—and make that trip down to Florida. And we would pick them up, and they’d stay with us for a week. And we always have a spiritual component to everything we do. So we taught them the Old Testament walk-through in five days, which is kind of fire hose, but we cut it down. And so, at the end of those five days, those kids could walk through the Old Testament—do the whole history. But I would say now, with most of them, it’s texting them and hoping they answer.
That’s about where we’re at right now because they’re busy, busy, and they’re in college and they’re upper high school and they’ve got jobs.
Eden: But I love you talk about discipling people. And you mentioned people at church. You mentioned your Precept group. There are a lot of people that you are discipling, but you also very intentionally prioritized the discipleship of your family, which is super important.
Well, last question: You mentioned Living Life Backwards on Ecclesiastes, which is really great, and The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn, but are there any [other] books that have been transformational in your walk with Jesus?
Bill Schuster: I have one, but it’s an apologetics book. It’s by a guy by the name of John Blanchard. And it’s called, Does God Believe in Atheists? and if you’re a history person, you’ll love the first hundred pages, because it basically recaps the general world beliefs that people have had—religious beliefs, all different types of things. And then it starts to evolve. And this is from 2000 years ago. And Blanchard does that to give you this historical background about where we are today and why people think the way they do. It’s not a wisdom book. It’s not a life-application book directly. But what it does help you to do by the time you’re done with the book, it helps you to really understand more where the people are coming from. And rather than press away from them and go like, “Well, you don’t think what I think, so stay away,” it helps you to see why they’re thinking what they’re thinking, so that you can then take Scripture and use different concepts in Scripture and press into where they’re coming from to make them think. So that’s why I like the book. But it’s one of those books that you can read and you can sit down and then ponder for a while and pick it back up. But that would be one that I always, always need. But Living Life Backwards, that’s an easy read.
Eden: Yes. What about for you, Jo?
Jo Schuster: I’m sure I read many books that have been very influential, but at present, what I think I enjoy reading the most is reading historical fiction, because it helps me with the history I never learned when I was in school. And the type that we read have a Christian thread through them, written by Christians, although they’re very much real life, very much involved in that time and place and history. So, you have the historical figures, you have Christians that are mixed in with them, and then you have fictitious characters that are mixed in with them. And so for the last number of years, we’ve found quite a number of series I should say—one by Gilbert Morris, which goes on forever—but [I] learned so much.
But what I like the most about it is that there’s an intergenerational thread of faith that travels through these families. And maybe these kids went astray over there and went astray over there, but then eventually they come back. And then you see this thread coming from this great grandparent heritage or great grandparent and down it comes. And it takes itself throughout this family, and it gives you encouragement, I think, as grandparents, because sometimes we think this whole thing is just going to [come] to an end. But it doesn’t, because in those people’s families, eventually these people turn around, and eventually these people recognize what this faith was about and they grasp on to it themselves and then pass it down.
Bill Schuster: I want to interrupt for a minute. Jo and I are both first generation Christians. So what Jo’s telling you—and reading this in the book—we’re projecting forward, thinking, “Our kids, our grandkids, our great grandchildren: What are going to be the spiritual circumstances—down the line—from fledgling believers like ourselves?”
Eden: That makes me think of a psalm where the psalmist basically says, Lord, don’t take my life until I proclaim your might to another generation (Psalm 71:18).
Bill Schuster: I think we look at that kind of thing and wonder, “What’s God going to do?”
Eden: It’s a wonderful thing to think about.
Jo Schuster: It’s exciting.
Bill Schuster: I can pray about it.
Eden: Thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. If you enjoyed our conversation, I would encourage you to like or subscribe to our podcast so that you can hear the next conversation. And if something that you heard today spoke to your heart or got you thinking, I would encourage you to not let the day go by without talking to God about what’s on your mind. We believe that he loves you and that he’s pursuing you today out of that love.