Our October 2011 Team Building Retreat.
A time for encouragement, teaching & vision casting.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee into the home of Dr. Stanley and Virginia Lutz, Joe was the fourth son, and seventh of eight children. His father was pastor of a church he planted, which was in a poorer section of the city. His father died at the early age of sixty, when he was still seven years old. Four years later, all but the oldest two siblings of the Lutz family were placed into various children’s home, due to the poor health and financial condition of Joe’s mother. Joe and his next two older brothers were placed in Memphis Boy’s Town.

At age sixteen Joe was saved during a New Year’s Eve service in Paducah, KY. At age eighteen, Joe responded to God’s call to ministry. Immediately, he rallied other teens in the community to help him conduct a county-wide teen tent evangelistic meeting and revival. What was intended to be a three day meeting, extended to two weeks, with Joe preaching every night to hundreds of his school mates and their families and others from the area. Sixty-six teenagers, and some of their parents, were saved and publicly confessed Christ as Savior during the meetings. As a token of love and appreciation, all of those teenagers purchased and signed their names in a Bible, which they presented to Joe at the end of the two weeks of meetings. Some of those were later called into the ministry of the Gospel. That was the beginning of many youth led revivals in which Joe preached, both during the coming Bible college years and afterward.

Joe initially attended Bible college in Shreveport, LA, but transferred and graduated from Hyles-Anderson College in Crown Point, IN with a Bachelor of Science degree in Theology.

During his years at Hyles-Anderson, he was a member of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, which had attendance of over 10,000 per Sunday. During those college years, he maintained family life; worked a full load of college hours; captained a Sunday School bus route in the gang-land area of south Chicago that involved his Saturdays and Sundays; and eventually became the pastor of the adults who rode buses from Chicago to services in Hammond.

Also, during his college days, he joined hands with the executive vice president of the college and another senior student to create a “church planting” ministry called Reaching America, which was designed to assist pastors in starting new churches, primarily in the northeastern and northwestern regions of the USA.

After graduation, and after having pastored over a period of seven years, Joe fully engaged in what had become the awakening of the Christian political movement across America in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. Along the way, he received the Honorary Doctorate of Jurisprudence for his legal research which had effectively assisted in resolving a major church school legal battle with the State of Nebraska Department of Education. During that battle the Reagan Administration had joined with the church and school to assist in overcoming the conflict. Those years of Christian political activity eventually evolved into a span of nearly 25 years of activities including Christian political action, major donor fundraising for Christian organizations, much time on the speaking circuit, and the initiation of several businesses, which included publishing, marketing and real estate.

Ernest, Joe and Colleen first met when Ernest presented Bread For Life ministries at the Lutzes’ home church in Montgomery, TX. It was at that home church meeting that Ernest and Joe sat down and talked for an extended period, and discovered they were “kindred spirits” in Christ. Soon, thereafter, Joe’s first trip to Cameroon became the catalyst for the following eighteen months, during which time a stronger relationship developed, and the desire to work together in the BFL ministries matured with the Lord’s leading. Finally, the day came when God opened the doors to officially join together; and “the rest is history”!

Joe and Colleen have lived in Texas for 13 years. All five of their children are grown. They are happy to have four wonderful grandchildren, two grandsons and two granddaughters, to bless and to be blessed by.