With baby boomers racing into retirement, the mushrooming membership of AARP is producing more than growing anxiety about the sustainability of the Social Security system. It also is fueling the expansion of the whole industry of retirement planning. And that’s good for all of us, too.
One emerging change is a commitment to wellness in the older years. In 2002, John Rude, a leading developer of wellness centers and programs for retirees, challenged member organizations in the Presbyterian Association of Homes and Services for the Aging to commit themselves to develop multi-dimensional wellness programs. Organizational leaders took up the challenge, tapped into the growing research on adult health, and purchased ever-innovating technologies to help their residents strengthen six core components: physical, spiritual, emotional, social, intellectual, and vocational.
One example — Presbyterian Homes of Wisconsin facilities offer classes on Yoga, Tai Chi, and Chi-Gong. During the initial eight weeks, participants work through a series of exercises to help improve posture, core muscle strength, leg strength, and balance while seated in a chair and/or standing. Pre- and post-testing, with the help of a physical therapist, is showing improvement of 20% or more in most participants.
The newest trend in wellness entails “brain fitness.” Using computers specially designed by It’s Never 2 Late (IN2L), seniors play brain games, learn a foreign language, work with puzzles, and learn new skills like using computers.
The wellness and activity does not end in the retirement facilities. For many retirees, this new season is marked not by idleness but service-in-a-different-way. Not only are pastors taking on interim pastorates — a longstanding practice — many of them are organizing Habitat house construction projects, or are leading Holy Land tours, or assisting in worship. Members of the Association of Retired Ministers, Their Spouses or Survivors have been partnering with a seminary in Cuba to provide the first new books (both hardcopy and electronic) to arrive there since the U.S. embargo began a generation ago. And accountants, schoolteachers, veterans, nurses, etc., are pouring energy into ministry opportunities that they could only dabble in while employed fulltime. Indeed, some of those coming on board as commissioned lay pastors are enrolling in the program after retiring from industry or government service.
Of course, the big question faced by retirees involves location. Do I stay where I worked? Do I/we move near the kids? What about a retirement community?
Most retirement communities offer a choice of lifestyle options and services ranging from independent apartments to nursing homes. The Green House model offers one of the newest possibilities: a ranch style home with 10 private rooms-with-baths, centered around a large living room and kitchen where food is prepared and eaten family style, with residents offering some assistance.
So what difference does this make for the 51 percent of Presbyterians who are not retired or heading into retirement? For one thing, these developments cast a vision for a quality of life for ourselves and our parents in the golden years that we can embrace with enthusiasm. For another it prompts us to stop wasting the extraordinary gifts, skills, and wisdom that reside in the older adult community. Not many 70-somethings have the energy to lead the middle school youth fellowship, but many ministry tasks and mission endeavors exist only on paper because some of the most gifted leaders are being overlooked.
The old-timers, they are a-changin’. It’s time for the church to change with them.
—JHH
