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What Can We Do to Care for and Honor the Elderly in Our Churches?
A Whole-Life Pro-Life Community
This is an absolutely vital consideration for every Christian. It will test, I believe, whether we truly are a whole-life pro-life community in a way that we have not been tested before because we’re looking at a phenomenon called the “graying of America.” What’s happening is that in a typical population, you would experience a pyramid when it comes to age distribution. You have a few people who are elderly at the top and a lot of young people as you go down. But what we’re finding is called the rectangularization of that distribution. By the year 2035 in the United States, it’s predicted that there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18.
So that means that not just the church but the United States is going to be facing a full-blown orphan-care crisis at the end of life. We’re just talking about health care considerations—the general care that’s necessary as someone ages into their latter years—but that’s to say nothing of the social and emotional elements that are involved.
And so if you’re thinking toward that time for your own loved one, what will you do to be sure that your own parents are honored the way that the fifth commandment asks that they be shown honor? How will you be sure that they have not just their physical well-being taken care of but their social-emotional needs and their spiritual needs as well? That’s a big task. You’re going to need the help of your faith community. But not only that, there are going to be elderly people in your faith community who don’t have physical proximity to their children or other family members, and they will be functional orphans in the family of God.
Dust to Dust
Jen Wilkin
In this biblical meditation on aging, Jen Wilkin draws poetic parallels between the first half of life and the second, inviting us to live fully at every stage.
So how will we rally as churches and communities around these people? This means we’re going to have to think about some things that we haven’t had to think about before. These are things like where are they going to park or what if they can’t drive anymore? How are we going to make sure not just that they have access to a sermon via a livestream but that they have actual physical contact with other human beings so their quality of life is maintained? Who’s going to take these people to doctor appointments when they need to go? Who’s going to perform the ministry of presence for them? Who’s going to make sure they’re eating well?
These can all be the first beautiful responsibility of the church so that these people don’t have to fall on social services as their first option. It’s a high and holy calling and one that I pray the church will run toward, not stumble toward.
It’s going to even impact things like the sound level in your church. The default setting for sound levels in churches right now who have the band concept for their worship is about 90 decibels. But children and the elderly can only tolerate decibel sounds of around 72. So who will we serve in those decisions? Will we serve the young, or will we serve those who are at the beginning and end of life? These are all questions that many churches haven’t even begun to grapple with, and we’re going to need to do it out of Christian love.
Jen Wilkin is the author of Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World.
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