Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Thanks for listening today. I really hope you'll enjoy this episode. If you want to hear more stories of lives transformed and people kicking against the darkness, head to BleedingDaylight.net where you'll find dozens of other episodes. Please leave a five-star review for Bleeding Daylight on your favorite podcast platform.
We love hearing redemption stories like those my guest will share in a few moments. But did you know you have a story worth sharing too? We'll talk about that in today's episode. Today, I'm joined by David Lutes, whose remarkable journey from small-town America to international ministry began with a profound encounter in his later teen years. David had never held a Bible or stepped foot in a church until a life-changing experience during a youth camp.
A talented baseball player who turned down offers to play professionally, David chose instead to follow a divine calling that led him to minister in various countries. Today, he advocates for authentic faith over religious formality, encouraging others to live under new management and being available to help restore God's image in the world through genuine relationships and meaningful action. David, welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thanks very much. It's an honor to be here. Thank you.
You've got me intrigued. Tell me about that life-changing moment for you. I've had the opportunity and the blessing to share my story probably a thousand times in the last 50-plus years. And it never ceases to give me goosebumps and maybe bring a tear to my eye because it was so utterly profound given my circumstances. Now, my circumstances were small-town USA. We had 1,200 people in our village. Still, to this day, don't have a traffic light. Everybody knew everybody else's business.
My mom and dad were famous teachers, very popular teachers. So small was the school, I had my mom twice and my father four times, my uncle the other time in mathematics. It was very easy to be popular and to be regarded as a star, both academically or in sports or in other ways. The baggage I picked up in high school though was that I'm going to make my brother, if he ever listens to this, he'll shoot me.
He was the all-star stud sportsman in all three sports, basketball, baseball, football, American football. And he was a babe magnet and he was incredibly popular. Until he left high school and went to college, went to university, I was known as John Lutz's brother. That bothered me immensely. If I went to a dance at a school nearby and I saw a pretty girl and I asked her to dance and she would say, okay, fine. And then she'd stop and say, you're John Lutz's brother. Is he here?
There was a thing that was going on with me in terms of I had to perform. This is talking about the pressure I brought on myself. Performance was everything. Success was everything. Being seen to be in the limelight. I mean, when I was younger, I was the wise guy, smart mouth kid who was very popular and got things done, that I was always upfront. And in high school, it was no different.
President of the school, honor society, captain of clubs, model United Nations conference, selected to all kinds of awards and groups. But the pressure was on for me to maintain that. And in my final year, actually my third year in high school, the pressure got so much, believing that I was being watched and followed and admired. And I'd so much wanted that. I started to cheat on school work because I wanted to be popular with one group of guys. I started to do shoplifting. I started to lie.
I started drinking. In the grand scheme of sin, spectrum of sin, eh, not so bad. I wasn't really that bad, but I carried this load with me. When in my final year, I was selected as a Rotary Exchange student to go to South Africa. That was a big deal because it was really helping me to escape not only from this thing I'd built up myself to be, or should be, but also I'd done something really, really stupid that brought a lot of embarrassment on my family and myself.
And it was good for me to get away. That said, when I arrived in Cape Town, I was 18 years old. They put me in a private boys' school. It's in the heat of apartheid, by the way. So we're talking about segregated South Africa. I'd had some exposure to somebody from Cape Town, actually a student who stayed with us for a while. So I knew something, geographically maybe, or population-wise, but I had no idea of the politics or anything else.
So that aside, they put me into four families for the year, and I decided to let my proverbial short hair down big time. And I became a real royal pain in the backside to my family, to the school, to the Rotary Club. And finally, after only two months, the Rotary Club was considering sending me back, which would have been the first time in history, their history. My host father called me in and said, we're going to send you to a camp, a boys' camp for a week up in the hills north of Cape Town.
It's a Christian camp. And I read the pamphlet and I said, no way. Up until this time, as you mentioned in the intro, I had never been to church. I'd never been to Sunday school. I didn't know a single person who talked the language of church or Christianity. I used to get a little weepy when we did the little drummer boy song during Christmas. And my great-grandmother used to push me to say grace at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with all the cousins and everybody there.
Father, we thank you for the night and for the blessed morning light for rest and food and loving care and all that makes the world so fair. Amen. And my great-grandma, my grandma, my great aunt, and my mom, tears running down their cheeks. He says that so well. And my cousins were all getting sick with nausea. Anyway, my host father said, we want to send you to the camp. I just said, no way. I'm not going to do it. It's Christian. It's religious. I want nothing to do with it.
Why I said that, I don't know. But he said, well, you really haven't got any choice. And to cut a very long story short, he took me to the bus stop in Cape Town where we would transport all the kids, about 90 boys up into the mountains. And I met the commandant. He was a famous lawyer in Cape Town. He came up to me and told me what was going to happen. Welcome. Glad you could be here. And I got right up in his face. And I said, sir, I want you to keep your religious mitts off me.
Don't come anywhere near me with anything religious. Not interested. He described me later as an angry young man, which was true. Put me in a tent with nine other boys, I think, and the Baptist minister who was leading the tent, the devotions, and so on. By about Wednesday, I think he wanted to quit the ministry. I was such a pain asking questions that I had no idea what I was talking about, but I just, that kind of smart mouth kid. Came Thursday night, I'll never forget it, October 7th, 1970.
Noel, the commandant, this lawyer shared basic devotions before we were going to have coffee or whatever and go to bed. He talked about Jesus as if he was real. He was authentic. He was relevant. He was historical. He knew about me. You've heard those stories. I was the only one in the room. And I just thought, no way. He's real. He's relevant. He's historical. Really? You mean the Christmas thing might be real? I got goosebumps as I'm telling you, man.
I went to him afterwards just to say, thank you. That was it. Just thanks very much. That was really interesting. That was all I was going to say, I thought. I pulled him aside and I ended up grabbing him by the shirt and the jacket and I shook him violently. I mean, really violently. Noel, this guy said later in my book, he said, I was really scared by what he, and I was screaming at him and my tears coming down my face and screaming at him. Why has nobody ever told me this before?
This is the most amazing news I've ever heard. Why has nobody ever told me this before? And Noel then took me aside and shared a few verses with me and prayed with me. That was it. That was the beginning. During the week, when I got back home, my host family were really nervous about what's going to happen because this I'm articulate, I'm pushy, I'm opinionated. Yeah, I was a pain. And about three days into the week, my host mother found me in the kitchen and she said, how was the camp?
And I said, fine. It was amazing. It was fantastic. She said, there's something different about you. The rough edges are gone. There's a softness. Something's happened. What happened? And I said, I don't know. All I know is that I feel like I've been born all over again. Now, Noel did not share John three with me. I didn't know that verse. All I know is that that was what was going on in me. And then Noel followed up that Sunday, took me to church, met his family.
And again, and the last thing I'll share about this, and this is such a special moment. I met his little girls, three years old and five, Suki and Karin. We were riding to church, Methodist church. What's a Methodist church? I don't know. I have no idea. Up to this time, I've still never been to church. The older daughter climbed onto my lap in the backseat and looked me straight in the eye and put her hands on the side of my face and just looked at me.
And she said, Uncle Davey, you don't know Jesus? And I said, no, tell me, please. And she talked all the way to church. In the car, she talked how he plays with her, with a dog, with her dolls, with her friends, and how they do this and that and the other. She talked about him like he was real and there for her life. And she said, you know, Uncle Davey, he's really funny too. And I was blown away. Now I have a high-profile lawyer telling me about Jesus for the first time.
And now I have a little five-year-old telling me about Jesus. And it's all these dots are beginning to connect. And I went to the service not having any idea what I'm supposed to do. Stan, Neil, I don't know any hymns. All I know is that the sermon that was preached that day, again, I was the only person in the room. It was like he was reading my biography, my diary out loud. That was it. So that was how that all started. And then I ended up staying in South Africa, a total of 14 years.
I find it interesting that at that moment, you're shaking this man saying, why didn't anybody tell me about this before? And we sometimes forget that there's pretty much a whole world out there that would say the same thing if they encountered the reality of Jesus. So how do we actually reach out to those people? Because for years, we've just been inviting people along to church, which there's nothing wrong with that.
But there's a whole lot of people that just like you would never normally step inside a church and they need to know this news. They probably would have that same sort of reaction. Why didn't anyone tell me? What would be your answer to that? How do we get out there and start sharing this great news with people? Thank you. That's a nice segue into my latest sort of thing that I'm writing. I'm writing, and I'm going to offend your listeners probably in saying this.
And I'm trying to be witty and clever when I say this. I'm writing a new book or an article called Unbutton Your Pew. But I've broken the word button up into two pieces, unbutton your pew. Okay, forgive me. And basically what I'm saying is, He has saved us. He's called us. He's saved us. He's equipped us. He's got inside us. He's changing us from the inside out. He's transforming us into new creations. And He's given us words and life.
And that old adage says, if you're going to preach the gospel, do it as much as you can. And if you must, use words. And it's about living a life. Get off your pew, get off your knees, get off your backside and get out the door. He needs willing, available partners in this mission to transform the world. And that's what He's called us to do. Now, we're very good at inviting people into the big gathering.
And I've seen them, been there, done that, where people disappear anonymously into the crowd. And it's a great performance and a great show. But I'm kind of convinced to the point where, you know, like the old adage is that Elvis has left the building and rock and roll died when he did. My story is, you know, the church has stayed in the building. That's how the gospel is dying. No offense to the big meetings.
But I believe that if I would hang that sign around my heart's neck that says I'm under new management, which is what you mentioned in the beginning, I mean, I'm available, God. I honestly believe that if I walk out my home every day, any day, and make myself available, a smile, a hug, a text, act of kindness, He will bless it, He will anoint it, and He will use it to bring daylight, to bring light into people's lives. It doesn't take much.
All it takes is a willing vessel that He can work through and use. He could do it Himself, but He chooses not to. He chooses to use us. I started talking to myself like this and say, okay, brother, put your money where your knees are, where your mouth is, whatever. I was in transit from St. Louis to Saudi Arabia. I'm sitting in Chicago. I've got a four-hour layover. I go to the cafe area to find a place to put my laptop down and plug it in and do my thing.
There's a lady sitting on the other side. I said, excuse me, can I plug in? Yes, no problem. And after about four or five minutes, she interrupted me. She said, excuse me, my name is Grace. Can I ask you a question? And I said, okay. What do you think happens to people when they die? Just like that. And so what am I going to do? I'm going to talk to her about the latest rugby score?
No. We talked for two hours about what it was that she was so afraid of, or worried about, or scared, or yearning for, or the hope that she was hoping she could discover. And around the same time, I'm flying back from a contract I had in Washington to where I live in Missouri. That morning, I had consciously said, okay, got them available today, but I'm tired. I get on the plane. I got two and a half hours to sleep. And I cuddle up on the window, in the seat next to the window.
I've got two guys sitting next to me. We reach cruising altitude and the lady in front of me puts her seat back a little bit too aggressively, she thinks. And she looks back between the chairs, the seats, and says to me, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I apologize. And I said, hey, dear, don't worry. Don't worry about it. It's okay. God bless you. And I started to go back to sleep. The guy sitting next to me woke me up about five minutes later, I guess. And he said, can I ask you a question?
And I said, sure. And he said, you said to her, God bless you. And I said, okay. I did. She could have sneezed, you know, but nevertheless, he said, you meant it. And I said, yes. He said, are you a born again Christian? And I said, you tell me your definition of what you think that means, and then I'll give you my answer. And he told me what he thought it meant. And we talked and certainly this guy is searching. He's trying to connect some dots in his life.
And we talked for an hour and I'm, you know, get his name, get his number. He lives near me. And after an hour of talking, the guy sitting next to him interrupts us and said, I've been listening to what you guys have been talking about. He said, I've just finished Bible school. I'm looking for where I should be ministering. Can you help me? Okay. No sleep. But this is just, just in the last week, this has happened where I'm wandering through a parking lot.
I try to help some lady with her cart, and we end up talking and praying in the parking lot. No, I don't go out there wanting to cram the Bible down people's throats. I'm not preaching on the street corner. And I'm not making a big deal out of Dave Lutz being some Superman of God, who's heavily anointed. Authenticity. Live your life consistently, transparently, and authentically. Just be yourself as unto him under his lordship, be available. Finish. That's it.
And you'll be surprised at what he'll do. And that's anyway, that's my theme tune at the moment. The key to that is obviously saying to God, I'm available. Because most of the time in our thoughts, in our actions, the way that we conduct ourselves, we're giving God this message, I'm definitely not available. And yet it's a matter of saying, God, I'm available and asking for him to bring the opportunities to you.
And that actually says another thing to me, in that if it's God that's bringing the opportunities to us, we don't need to be afraid that, oh, I won't know the right answers. I won't know the thing to say, because if God's setting it up, he's already equipped you, hasn't he? I believe in walking in the amount of life that you've received. Now I've got 54 years under my belt, and I've learned the language and the lingo, and my radar is up probably more or better if you like, than other people.
But on the other hand, he's given you enough. He's given us enough for the circumstance. We don't realize that he's gone before us. There's absolutely nothing that catches him by surprise. It's not like we walk around the corner and he goes, oh no, I didn't see that coming. What am I going to do? He knows where we're headed. He knows why we're headed. The problem is our lives have become so cluttered and we've allowed the church, no offense church, I'm part of it, I'm in one.
We've allowed the church to do so much of what we really should be doing on a daily basis. And again, let me emphasize, I don't mean preaching on the street corner. I don't mean getting all excited and frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues in Walmart. I was in Walmart.
My wife works in Walmart just a couple of weeks ago, and I'm walking through the self-checkout, and I see a young lady who I've not seen before, and she's really being kind to all of the people who are checking out, asking if she can help and have a nice day. And it was sincere and it was really nice. And she came over to me and said, sir, can I help you with anything? She must've been about 25, I guess. And I said, no, you can't help me. You've already done it. She, what do you mean?
And I said, your smile, your warmth, the sincerity with which you're asking people if you can help, you're just blessing me out of my socks just by being nice. And I just showered praise on her and just complimented her on her style. And she said, wow, thank you very much. And then this little bell goes off in my head as I see some tears in her eyes. And I say, but everything's not okay, right?
She said, no. And she started to say, but she tried to sort of dodge it, and we got into a little bit of a conversation. And I said, look, I don't want to embarrass you now. Let's not go into it now, but let me give you my number. You can call me. My wife's over, manager of that department, go and check with her. I said, I'd like to pray for you. Meaning, I'll go home and pray for you. Thank you.
Yes. She grabs my hands and puts them on her head to pray for me now, in the self-checkout in Walmart. And I'm praying for this dear girl who I've since found out is have unbelievably difficult life at home and with a relationship. She's so much on my heart, and I've not seen her. I'm really trying to track her down. But here again, I'm not there to solve the problem. I'm there to sow a seed. If I'm not available with a word, a smile, an act of kind of something, who's going to do it?
Can you imagine the Lord? I'm not going to humanize him for a minute, but he's kind of looking down. He said, whoa, I've got a group. I've got a group of people in Wentzville, Missouri, who've just walked out the door with a sign around their heart's neck that says they're available and they're under my management. Good. I've got somebody I can work with. Now we're in business. He's gone before to prepare a heart, to set somebody up.
And the only thing that I'm encouraging people to do is find out, what's your story? You have a story. You don't have to have it slick and polished and have three verses and a conclusion, but it's got to be yours. And if you can tell your story and be honest and authentic, I ain't perfect. I'm still working on it. God and I are still having some issues, but I know he loves me, blah, blah, blah, whatever you want to share. But how did it happen? What's happening now?
It doesn't have to be extravagant. It just has to be authentic and yours. Start with that and God can use us. I'm convinced. I'm preaching to the choir here. I am reminded of the story in scripture where Jesus heals a blind man and then they take him before the authorities and they say, oh, so is he who he says he is and all of this? And he's like, well, I don't know. What, do you want to follow him as well? And at that point, his only encounter was I've met this guy.
He made me see when I couldn't before. Once I was blind, but now I can see that's the only story I've got. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't realize that that's the story we tell. It's like, how has Jesus impacted our life to this point? And I know that there's this myth that we tend to latch onto and believe, because we will get people who say, no, I'm not interested and reject what we're saying. But there's this myth that the enemy tells us that most people are not interested in spiritual things.
And yet there's a great hunger for spiritual things. If only we're, as you say, available to God to direct people towards him. And again, I'm no paragon of virtue here, but it's happened enough in 50 plus years where people have come to me or said to others who know me that there's something about you. It's not what you said. It's not that I was preaching or sharing a story on the platform or something, but there's something authentic about you.
Or that wasn't the word they used, but you're real. What is it? And one guy came to me out of the blue once. He said, there's something you're supposed to tell me, and I don't know what it is. What am I going to do? Share the rugby score with him? Again, it's not that I'm walking around with a halo around my head. I'm just trying to be a normal guy. I wear a baseball shirt into the marketplace. And because the local people don't like my team, I get all kinds of fun abuse about that.
But actually it's led to so many interesting conversations about why are you wearing that shirt? They said, well, and then I get a chance to share something about my life. I used to play baseball in South Africa. I turned down some pro offers, blah, blah, blah. And really why? So it's almost to the point where I'm just saying, have something to share. And it doesn't have to be verbiage. It doesn't have to be scripture. It doesn't have to be long-winded. It just has to be real and authentic.
And one word anointed by God can be a seed that's sown. And we have no idea what's going on in people's hearts that he's gone before setting them up, nudging them, wooing them, calling them. And they say they're not interested. I wonder sometimes how much God hasn't already begun to prepare the soil. If we rely on the big meeting and the performance and the personalities to do the work that has its place, and I believe in it, and I would love to get a chance to preach on some of those stages.
But at the end of the day, I'm enjoying sowing seed in Walmart. And again, it's not the accolade. Look how many people I led to the Lord this week. It's not about that. When we do have the opportunity to play a part in building the kingdom, it's incredible that we get to do that, that we get to be about our father's business. But there's something in it for us as well.
And I think one of the keys that you've really touched on is right back then when that man spoke to you and you recognized he was talking about it as if it's real, then his daughter starts to speak and it's like, well, Jesus is real. And I think that's the main message that people need to hear. We've heard this folklore, these old myths about this God, and that's all it is to people until they realize, no, no, He's real.
And so it's up to us to bring the reality of who Jesus is to people, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And following on from that experience with his daughter, I still didn't go to church for the next two months. I didn't know what it meant to find a church. He lived in another suburb of Cape Town and I couldn't go there. He's a busy lawyer. He couldn't take me each week, but I didn't know how to find a church where I could get whatever it was I thought I needed.
What happened was, is my second host family went on a camping holiday and the very last night of the time we were there, I met a girl. Cute, blonde. Oh, she's adorable. Anyway, we kissed goodbye. I was leaving the next day to go on a trip. The next morning I saw her, she came to say goodbye and she said, Dave, I just want to let you know something. Number one, I like you. Number two, it was a good kiss, pretty good. And number three, you need to know something.
I'm a Christian and I love Jesus and He's number one in my life. And if you can't handle that, or if that's not where you want to be in a relationship with anybody, well then we'll say goodbye right now. So the three people that I met who I was really sort of had an encounter with, if you like, and I was, you know, I'm a young guy. I'm interested in girls. Sure I was, but I had had no experience. I'd had no dates. I'd not seen a girl I liked.
And the one I meet, the one that I'm interested in, she loves the Lord. She's a Christian. And it was later that she gave me my first Bible. First Bible I'd ever had in my hand. And it was she and her sisters that actually discipled me during the rest of my exchange year and got me going to church and got me to sort of ask the questions that were relevant in terms of shaping my life. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable.
And the beautiful part of that is that there are several people in that journey that have each played their own part. And so if we believe that we have to do everything with the person that God puts in front of us, we might be scared off. But if we realize we just need to play our part, that's something that we can all do. David, I'm sure that there are people listening who this brings an excitement to them, an opportunity that they can serve the Lord in the way that He chooses.
If they put that sign around their neck of, I'm under new management, if they let the Lord know I'm available, that He will provide those opportunities. If people want to learn more about what you're talking about, if people want to get in touch, where's the easiest place for them to find you? If you go to my website, under-new-management.com, but it's not all one word, new management. It's under-new-management.com. And there's anything you might want to find.
And there's a contact form in there if anybody wants to reach out to me. I do coaching as well, both spiritual as well as career, as well as just life coaching. All the information they'd want about me and the kind of things that I've shared, they can find there. I would be truly honored if somebody did. I will certainly put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can get in touch with you.
But David, I want to thank you for outlining a way that we can be part of our Father's business, that we can do that and that it's not as scary as the enemy might try and tell us it is, but that we can actually have a part to play in building God's kingdom. That's exciting. And so I thank you for sharing your story, and I thank you so much for spending some time with us on Bleeding Daylight. My honor and pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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