Building an older adult ministry to beat all older adult ministries? What a dumb idea, unless you’re just looking to get rich by building a huge for-profit nursing home in Palm Springs or Sun City or Sarasota. But in the church where the future viability of the congregation hangs in the balance? Are you kidding me?
When accepting the call to my last, fairly large church, I followed the megachurch model: I bragged on the thriving youth and children’s ministries, kept them visible to the congregation and pressed to make sure that their budgets would be strong and growing. I also threw my efforts into the new members’ classes, the development of small groups, the recruitment of younger, newer members into leadership positions, the addition of a casual, rock-style worship service to the traditional and mildly contemporary services we already offered each weekend and the multiplication of social events that 20-, 30- and 40-somethings would especially enjoy.
But I also pressed the congregation to give priority to older adult ministries. Now ours was not an older adult church, nor an older adult community. In the year prior to my arrival, they recorded 51 baptisms and just three funerals; the 17:1 ratio being opposite to almost everywhere else.
Yet it wasn’t long after my arrival that I realized that our track record of care among the older adults was less than stellar. Visits to the hospitalized were inconsistent. Communion was delivered to members in nearby nursing homes just four times a year.
Should we just keep carrying on at carrying on? Should we follow the guidance of most church consultants by focusing on our areas of strength — the children, youth and young adults, the small groups, the community outreach programs — and not try to be all things to all people?
Jesus’ words about “the least of these” pierced through such reasoning. Unlike the “least” in Jesus’ parable, our elderly members were not hungry, thirsty, naked (that would have been really embarrassing!) or in prison. But some were sick or disabled. Many were lonely. Some felt the burden of being a care-receiver after spending their lives being caregivers.
So we had to face the tough question: will we stick to our present plans, or will we stretch, tax and even over-tax our time and financial resources in order to love them? We chose the latter. We determined to become a “100 percent care rate” church. We resolved to so swarm over our elderly, our sick and our grieving that the only complaint we’d get was that we were overdoing it. We planned to send visitors to hospital rooms every day that any person is in a bed — a tall task given that the major medical center was 40 minutes away. We determined to visit shut-ins at least three days a week and to provide meals to the sick and shut-ins daily for as many days and weeks as needed for their full recovery.
Toward that end, we hired a parish associate to do nothing but visitation. We restructured our deacon board. We mobilized and strengthened our Stephen Ministers. We expanded our prayer chain via email before many even knew what that was. And we converted our “membership secretary” into our “care coordinator” to manage all of the above as a single point contact for all — and with the authority to rework our pastors’ schedules whenever an emergency called for either of us to be “triaged” into action.
It took two years to reach the 100% rate goal. But it took less time for people in the community to ask their neighbors about all the visits and all the food being delivered and all the care being shown. The members were quick to tell them about their church.
Beyond that, setting such a priority brought no payoff. We never received a bequest from a fabulous estate. These older members didn’t pull into the church their quiverfulls of children and grandchildren. The only benefit we gained was the sure confidence that we were caring for the folks we knew were today’s most easily neglected, forgotten, disregarded. Loving Jesus by loving “the least” was reward enough.
—JHH
