Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RGW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. And this is the first time that anyone has ever heard Houston Christian University on this podcast because the school just went through a name change as of uh about a week ago. It was announced that Houston Christian was uh a better reflection of the school's identity uh today. And and so I'm I'm excited about the change and as is everyone else in the HCU, formerly HBU community. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Tom McGee. Tom had the privilege of working with Bob Bufort and Lloyd Reeb to help launch the Halftime Institute, which has been equipping leaders for the past 20 years. He's currently the co-executive of Halftime. He began his career by serving in the Marines for 12 years. During his service, Tom commanded two special operations capable units and served at the Marine Barracks in Washington, DC. That must have been a pretty sweet assignment. I was just there.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00After the military, he served as a partner with Ernst and Young and launched his own company in 2001, focusing on strategy facilitation and collaborative work. His work extends over 25 countries and has carried him from some of the biggest boardrooms to some of the world's most innovative churches. He attended Auburn University, where he met his wife, Elaine, and they live in Dallas with their three children and 10 grandchildren. Tom, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks. Pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_00When did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in business?
SPEAKER_01You know, it it I think it actually started before that. I mean, I was fortunate. So I grew up in Colorado Springs. My dad was in the Air Force, and I claimed Colorado because that was high school. And in the high school years, I really started spiritually searching. And I wanted something to apply to daily life. So I became a self-proclaimed Buddhist. I studied transcendental meditation. I was trying to do things to make me a better person, those kind of things. But I was really searching. And when I was at college through campus Crusade for Christ, now crew, um, uh, that's when I really understood this idea of a relationship with Christ over a religion. And fortunately, I did that at college before I started making big life decisions. So I've been able to since then prayerfully hold up, you know, who to marry, what to do, when to move, all those kinds of things, and have really tried to step out and follow God's leading, not my own plan. And and, you know, I'm a uh I was much more of a reactive. I'm I'm not uh I uh have not been super intentional about planning my life, but I've been very tried to be very reactive to where the spirit has led. And he's taken me, you know, on a ride I never could have imagined, right? I thought I'd be a career marine and retire like my dad was a career Air Force officer. And he's taken me on a journey from that to large corporations to global partnerships to being an entrepreneur and now uh at the helm of halftime that I I am more uh at 66, I am more excited about the next 20 years than the last 20. And I just, you know, I never could have planned that out myself. So so I so I've always had God kind of integrated in it and and really tried to be true to that over my own plans, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And halftime has been around now for uh about 20 years, and uh a lot of people are familiar with halftime, but just in case the some listening might not be, what is halftime and what impact has it been making?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great. So so halftime was started by an entrepreneur named Bob Buford, and he built up a cable television company. Uh, he sold it, made a lot of money, and he and he uh famously said he spent the first half of his life being successful and wanted to spend the second half being significant. When he wrote the book Halftime about his journey, you had Rick Warren talking about purpose, and you had Bob Buford talking about calling, and that was really it. All these ministries that have come up over the last 20 years to help CEOs and businessmen live out their their uh Christianity in their work and do those kinds of things. None of those things were around then. And so his story that was what year? This was uh what late 90s, right around 2000, I think, when the book came out, like 98, 97.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01He started the Halftime Institute, started saying, how can we serve groups instead of just people coming to meet with Bob in the early 2000s? And you know, um uh what what happened is that this was a fairly new concept. And so people were reaching out to him saying, man, that's my story, and I just don't want to play golf the rest of my life. What do I do? And that's our roots, but over time, we have really moved, and our vision for the future is to not just serve that segment of kind of high capacity leader that's that's done well and now wants to do something else. We we really think we've got a lot of uh expertise and things we can share for people anywhere in their life as they're thinking about how do I live out a passion, a calling that's deep within me, either through work or in addition to what I'm doing. And so we're really trying to reposition halftime over the next few months. There are going to be some big changes on our ability to come alongside, hopefully, a wider group of influential leaders and uh support them throughout their whole journey. So that's kind of where we're trying to head with it.
SPEAKER_00When I interviewed um Jeff Spadafora uh probably about eight years ago, he was the the director of coaching at the time. And I remember him saying that about 90% of halftimers, when they come, their intent is to go work in the nonprofit world and do some, you know, some sort of uh charitable type work. But then but what what percentage actually leave the marketplace um and and then and then the others that um that stay in the marketplace with a new perspective?
SPEAKER_01You know, in in Dallas, from the the clients we serve there, uh halftime is a very loose confederation around the world. We actually have people that deliver the halftime programs in Nashville and the Carolinas, Dallas, Singapore, Sweden, South Africa, Australia. All of them are a little independent and different, but I'd I'd say probably 65 to 70 percent of those that go through the program stay engaged in business. So the majority really do. You know, this becomes a uh um either something they do in addition to what they're doing in their business or they figure out a way to leverage what they're doing to have more kingdom impact while they're doing it.
SPEAKER_00And and this is because do they typically come and they've got this typical sacred secular divide where I feel like I can't really make kingdom impact or or be in ministry unless I'm working, unless it's happening through a nonprofit entity.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, this is even, I mean, um when Bob wrote halftime, the this phrase of success to significance, you know, there are people that would argue that that's even theologically wrong, right? You know, that you ought to be having significance throughout what you do. But that was his story. And back then it was new language that most people used used to think about, you're right. I was you if I'm gonna serve God, I somehow need to be in nonprofit or ministry or something, and it's different from business. I think we've really shifted to a much more holistic view of how God has created us and what we can do for him. And so what we see today are people that come to us with with what we call a smoldering discontent. You know, they really feel like either they're being called to something else or they're being called to something more. And we want to help them get get clearer on that so they can get free from what's preventing that, you know, what's stopping them from doing it, so they can get going on what God's really calling them to do.
SPEAKER_02So that's kind of the the take on it.
SPEAKER_00And so what change happens in those who remain in for-profit companies? And what do you what do you put into the curriculum that fosters this kind of change?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so this idea of getting clear, getting free, and getting going, I think is a is a great place to start. That that where where it begins is getting clear on who you are and what God has made you for. I mean, what are your unique gifts and skills and abilities and passions and experience and and who are you? And who if if um uh if if Psalm uh 139 says that that we were formed specifically, you know, that God formed us in our mother's womb specifically for the way he wanted us. And Ephesians 2.10 says he's already prepared good works for us to walk in, then the question is, how do we uh how do we take who we are and find what he has for us to do? You know, and I think the way we do that, and we talk about this more later, is really through John 15, which is abiding in Christ, hearing his voice to say, This is how I've created you, and this is what I've prepared for you. In a in a more practical business sense, if I'm thinking about my business or I'm thinking about whatever it is I'm doing, I want to start with, okay, who am I? Let me get clear on who I am and how God's created me. We have uh one of the big exercises, one of the main things we do in all our programs is we help our clients develop a roadmap, we call it. And it's kind of a yearly action plan. But at the top of it, it's got a series of things you fill in. It begins with your mission statement. You know, that's what God's calling you to do. And the mission statement, it's this is all around your getting clearer on who you are, because your mission statement starts with what are my unique strengths and abilities? How do I want to use them? And what kind of impact do I want to receive? If I get clear on that, regardless of what role I'm in, then I can begin to say, okay, how can I get free in what I'm doing to live this out more? And you may find that the freedom has nothing to do with leaving your job, but it may have to do with repositioning yourself to live out your skills more fully in what you're doing. And you can start to take those things that are just, you know, that make you sloppy busy, that that zap your energy that do things. So you know who you are, then you can start to get free from that, and then you can get going in those, you know, is it I'm gonna do more in a parallel path? I'm gonna try to do things, or is it, wow, you know, this really is God calling me to do something completely new and different?
SPEAKER_00What's your favorite example? Is there a particular person whose story comes to mind that you like to share when you're talking with people that might not be familiar with Halftime Institute and you're trying to help them visualize what the impact is? Um, who comes to mind and specifically a business person that came into Halftime one way and ended up uh uh transformed on on the back end?
SPEAKER_01You know, it's it's a great question. And the the trick is to try to pick one. Um let me and let me put it put it into perspective because uh a lot of times um men and women that come to us and we and we serve both. In fact, we've just come out with a book this month on women at halftime, written by one of our coaches and clients. And it really talks about, you know, not just uh a woman who's an executive and and um uh is is kind of been down the same traditional path as many of the men have been, but the woman who maybe decided to stay home for a while and now she wants to turn her dreamer back on and get going. I think that's gonna be really powerful for a lot of a lot of it's a segment we've we've served. We have a number of women go through the programs, but it's one we really like to like to see grow. But you know, you know, the the um the thing there is people will come to our programs sometimes and it's almost like they're looking for a what's the next gig that God's got for me, or what's something else I can do in addition to what I'm doing. And real quickly they realize that the doing comes from being and comes from who you are. So I talked about the roadmap. The first box on there is a mission statement. The second box is a being statement. Because if you don't know who you want to be, uh you your mission statement starts to look a lot more like success than significance, right? You know, it's like the get clear, get free, get going. If you jump to get going in in ministry or something for God, you're you're gonna take all your busy type A, you got to get it done habits, and you just change treadmills and you're off and running. So we don't want that to happen. But sometimes people come to us, that's what they're thinking. If they're a if they're a pretty successful business person, they like to get things done, they're action-oriented, they want to move that way, and we want to help them do all that, but we also want to uh let them, you know, kind of think through things. So one of the things we say, uh is a long answer to get to where you want, but we see so many stories. We we're a faith-driven, we are a Christian organization, but we have a lot of different people come through. Most of them have a deep faith or a good faith, uh, but they're seeking, and and we also have some non-Christians even. Uh fortunately, when Bob Buford wrote the book, he said in the middle of the book, he kind of decides to put Jesus in his box, right, is his key thing. And if somebody's looking at a halftime program and we ask him, you know, and he's like, Well, I'm not sure about this religious stuff as much. I'm not that religious. We will say, Well, if you read the halftime book, and if they say yes, we say, Well, if it didn't offend you, come on. Because we believe if you're going to start a journey to find your calling, you can't help but get closer to the caller. And that's between you and God, and we want to help you move along that journey while you're trying to figure it out. So I say that because what's the greatest journey? Is it is it the is it the one or two men I've seen this year that were involved in the program who accepted Christ in the middle of the program? Or is it the businessman that that that sold his company, it was acquired, and he was trying to figure out what he was going to do, and all he could think of doing was they were going to spin off part of the company he acquired, and he was going down the road to he would just take that and recreate what he'd done and been a business leader. And he got exposed to a number of other half timers and what they're doing and realized there are a whole lot of ways to skin this cat. I don't just have to do what I did, right? And so, I mean, you have stories like that. You have stories like um uh a lot of individual transformation like that, but then you have these other opportunities that people didn't realize. So, one of my favorite ones is a very successful home builder out in uh Colorado named Pat Hamill. And uh he started a thing called Build Strong Academy. And it helps people learn how to build houses so they can have a living wage job. And that's that's what he wants to do to give back, to bring people in, to give them jobs. Well, he met another halftimer named Dave Keel. Dave knows nothing about house building, Dave's a franchiser. But he looked at this and said, hey, you know, you could replicate this. And Pat said, I don't know anything about replication, I'm a home builder. You know, they've come together and they've started Build Strong Academy with the vision of creating like five million jobs over the next 10 years or something. I mean, so on one end, you have that kind of synergy that happens. On the other end, you you have, you know, people that engage looking for something to do and really realize they need to figure out who they want to be. And it's just, you know, to see these things happen is just a joy in my life, right? I mean, no wonder I get energized. I mean, you know, I've seen I've seen people who so it's just great. You know, uh people who who have done well in business, who who have resources God has blessed them with, and they're really trying to be good stewards. It's like, what do I do with this? How do I pass wealth to my children without, quote, ruining them? Well, if they start down that conversation, they have to quickly realize that their fear of ruining them is because probably over their life they haven't discipled them as much as they wish they had. And it's a, you know, you hear this a lot, and they hadn't had time to disciple because they were creating all of this. And if they really had been discipled, if they knew their kids were walking and grounded in faith and were going to do good things, they wouldn't worry about handing them their money.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So suddenly you have to come face to face with the entirety of your life and not just your business and then your family and those things. And it's a hard thing to do by yourself. And one of the things that Halftime has, and we're building out with this new uh group we're calling Thousand Fold, which will be a global impact community inspired by Halftime, a place for halftimers and others to link arms together. We want, or any program you go in at Halftime, we do it as a cohort. Because you need to be with others, right? You need to be able to think your confusion out loud. You need to be around peers who say, Yeah, I've been there, done that, and let me, you know, this is what I did, or can you help me with that? And and so, you know, you know, the transformation comes in so many ways, but it but it comes in groups, it comes with a bit of a process and it comes with some coaching to point you in the right direction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it it seems like a lot of the the people coming through the program, the the focus, they want to leave a legacy, right? They want to, they don't just want success, they want significance, um, but uh the right kind of significance. Because, you know, there's two, there's kind of a dark side of that that it it lee Strobel. I I started reading this book called The Case for Heaven. Um Lee Strobel, who's actually a faculty member at uh Houston Christian University, um, he wrote Case for Christ, Case for Faith. I'm sure you're familiar, but just for our listeners, um, but the case for heaven, he starts out talking about the just the ways that we that we try to immortalize ourselves. Um and and and I was just especially thinking this uh because I turned 40 recently and you know, um going over the hill in the whole bit. I mean, it's real. And my dad passed away in 2020 from COVID. And so just mortality has been much more at the forefront of my mind. But a lot of what he was saying in the ways that we that we try to um we try to have this what he called pseudo immortality. Um, and it's things like getting your name up on a building, um, you know, uh even inheritance and all of the things that you could call, say, I'm just going from success to significance, but but really we want to kind of live forever. Like we want to, we want our name or at least our name to live on forever. So how do you how do you coach people to especially at this stage of life, you know, the half timers or or third, um, third third of lifers, yeah, um, to to kind of just stay out of that that mindset and and and have the right kingdom mindset about it?
SPEAKER_01You know, it it's a great question. Uh, I heard a pastor one time said, you know, how many of you can name your great-grandparents? And it's like, that's gonna be you in like 25 years, you know. So I mean, all your effort to do that, it's you know exactly. So so you know, I think uh, you know, part of it uh as you said, so so about 13 years ago, our oldest son was killed in a motorcycle accident. And at that time, my as a as a result of that, and there there was a lot of blessing in the midst of that tragedy, and and there has been ongoing in our family. And it's something, you know, when you come face to face with something like that, you you can't half-step your faith anymore. You you're either all in or I'm not gonna accept this God that let this happen to me. And that could come with any you know devastating news, right? Diagnosis, job loss, whatever. It's like either I'm gonna submit to this God and trust in him, or I'm done with it. You know, the the uh you know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life suddenly falls apart pretty quickly. For me, one of the things it did though is running my business, the the idea of just helping companies make more money, that the wind went out of those sales pretty quick. And so I turned my Attention to focusing almost solely on uh churches and ministries and how I could have it have a greater impact. And I think so, so that's one part. So I've had that kind of oh, wait a minute, I need to think about why I am doing what I'm doing. The other part is somebody, I don't know if I don't remember Bob Buford or who it was, maybe even somebody recently said that the difference between success and significance, if success is focused on yourself and significance is focused on others. And if I and so so that's not just an end-of-year-life thing, that's an ongoing thing. And if I think about my time in leadership of military businesses, all those things, I was much more focused on me and thus on success. And I think I was a pretty good leader, but I wasn't a great one. You know, and the reason I wasn't a great one is I was too focused on me. You know, I had some ego, I had some just desires. I mean, I don't think I was necessarily overbearing. I don't think I mistreated anybody, but but I but I didn't care about them either, really. You know, not at the level that that you hear so many stories of these great people that, you know, I just I think people that interacted with over there say, yeah, he was pretty good. He was a good boss, you know. And I think that kind of good to great in personal relationships is when you really start thinking about others. And if when you get to a later stage in life, I think it's so the other thing is, and I found this out when our when our son passed, um, you can't prepare for a crisis in the middle of a crisis. So it is really you play like you practice, right? And so if you've been walking closely with God, if you've been thinking about others, if you're trying to do more than just yourself through your life, you get to your end of your life and you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna keep walking out what I've been doing. If you're more like me and you spend most of your life focused on yourself, fortunately at this stage, I think I'm becoming more open to God's spirit and more caring about others than myself. We we do a lot at halftime with strength finders. And I was, I retook it when I went through one of the halftime programs before I started working with them again. And uh I was really pleased to see that empathy actually made it into the top five. You know, it was like, look at me, I'm changing. I got some empathy, you know, because it wasn't on my radar before. I was now harmony is still kind of down at the bottom. I'm still kind of pushing to get stuff done. But I think there's a realization that if you're about others, then suddenly it's not as important to you really how they remember you. It's important of what they take away for themselves. You know, so it's not about is my name on the building or do they remember me as a great dad or granddad? It's really are they able to live out anything I've left them that's of value? And and that's it, that's a change not in their mind, that's a change in my mind. That I'm that I'm, you know, um I'm giving to them because I really do want them to have a better life, not because I want to be remembered as the person who gave them this great wisdom or something.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. There's a great verse in Isaiah, I believe it's Isaiah 32, 8, um, where he says, uh, a noble man makes noble plans, and on noble plans he stands. And that word noble is exactly what you're talking about. It's being other centered, and it's it's not making it about yourself. Yeah. Um and that's the kind of significance you guys are really teaching people to go after and and uh helping them to usher into their lives. Um so Tom, what um what's next for Halftime Institute? I know there's some some big changes going on and new opportunities. What's what's happening now?
SPEAKER_01So so one of the things we're moving toward, and there we really have some big changes, really starting probably in November. Uh, we have been great at helping people find their calling. We have not been so good at helping them live it out. And uh we are, I mentioned, I think uh we're launching this uh global community we're calling Thousandfold. And the idea there is let us help not just halftimers, but others come in and align to live out their journey, to get into affinity groups where they can be with others of like-minded passion and capability, you know, to have a little intentionality behind something like the Pat Hamill-Dave Keel story that says, you know, look, you guys don't care about this. Let's put you together and see what God might do with that. Let's provide for you some ongoing coaching. Let's let you find other halftimers and members all around the world to connect with. You know, so we're building all that out in that community with the idea of helping people on the journey. And that's a big ad for us. It also our focus remains sort of the the high capacity influencer. You know, we we we are focused, and and when I when I say that, what I mean by high capacity to me isn't necessarily how well you've done in business, but but it's how much you want to give to what you're doing. So, like Bob, Bob's t-shirt, Bob used to uh Buford used to talk about having his mission statement on a t-shirt, and his was 100x, and it was taken from the parable of the soils that someone returned 30 six and a hundredfold, and he said, you know, I want to be about living a hundredfold life. And and thousandfold came up with the idea of, well, if we can get a bunch of hundredfold guys together, we ought to at least be able to do a thousandfold return, right? On our efforts. And so what we're looking for when we think about halftime clients is we're looking for people that want a hundredfold return on their life. You know, I mean, if somebody says, uh, you know, I hate to say it this way, but if somebody says, you know, I think my calling is I work the uh I'm on parking lot duty at the church, you know, I think you could aim a little higher.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I mean, I just that's not a hundredfold life. That's a service to a church that you need to serve. But if you really step back and if you're a person of influence, so a high capacity uh, you know, a person of influence, I mean, they they have they've gotten to a point in their life, and and and I know people in their 20s that are like this, where they are starting to be able to affect others. If you're affecting others, and if significance is in how you do that, we want to come alongside you and help you do in a way that honors God and has a greater return. You know, so so so we're positioning ourselves or trying to to really move into that space as much as we've been known for the guy who sold this company and doesn't know what to do. Right.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, well said. And halftime.org is the website. Anything else you want to say about how people can get connected?
SPEAKER_01No, I think that's a great place to start. Uh you know, we're gonna be launching a new website probably in November. I I would I'd love to people to check that out. I I think it's gonna represent much better who we want to be, helping people in both this what we call the head and the heart journey, you know, helping them activate what they want to do and how to do it and have a plan and a roadmap, but then also on their heart with others and accountability and spiritual growth and discipline and those kind of things. So we're very excited about it. And hopefully it'll it'll really add a lot of value to people who are really trying to, you know, live out a rural kingdom mentality in the marketplace and beyond.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So aside from going to the website, what's one action you'd want people to take as a result of what they've heard today?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's a it's a great question. Um you know, I think to me, it all starts with this idea of core.
SPEAKER_01And and take some time. Maybe it's maybe it's a day of silent reflection, maybe it's half a day, maybe it's you know, carve out some time by yourself and say, okay, who am I? What gives me energy? What brings me alive? What what are some things in the past that I've looked and said, you know, we all have blind spots. And and we typically think of a blind spot as something negative, it's often something positive too. And and the way you realize what you're gifted and strengths in is it's probably the things you absolutely take for granted, right? Like, you know, I threw together this spreadsheet or I built out this PowerPoint or I drew this drawing, and you're like, well, anybody could do that. It's like, no, anybody can't. That's a gift God's given you. And if if you enjoy doing that and you realize you're doing this and others aren't, and then you begin to think, okay, what might I do with this if I was going to play it out? I would suggest people take a time of reflection, not Bible study, not reading a devotional, not even talking to others, quietly sitting with God and journaling about who am I? How have you created me? What is it that gives me life, gives me energy? Uh, and then start there. Because once you get a handle on a little bit of matter of fact, if you draw up a little one pager on who you are and you put that up, it it will haunt you until you do something else about it. Right? It's gonna say, man, if that's who I am, why am I not living like that? And then the journey begins. And I think that'd be a great place to start.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well said. Tom, thank you for sharing your wisdom and what Halftime is doing. Um, we appreciate uh your ministry and taking some time out for our listeners today.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, appreciate the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HSCU's Center for Christianity and Business, and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your books.