Getting It

It has been an eye-opening experience for me this past year to research this area of older adult ministry in America. The demographics of an aging population shout at you from every direction, and yet our culture and the church is somewhat slow to respond and adjust to the new realities of the Age Wave. But there are an increasing number of churches and leaders that "get it" with the demographic.

I received an email from Wendell Nelson who serves as the Executive Pastor of Christ Community Church in Omaha, Nebraska. He writes, "I am building a team to help me develop a strategy to help people in latter mid-life and those considering retiremement to discern the dream God has placed in their heart that they might leverage their life experience (failures & successes), acquired skills, spiritual gifts, strengths and talents to make their most strategic investment in the kingdom of God in the future. Are you still forming leadership communities around this focus? We have about 1,000 well educated, gifted adults who will be thinking seriously about retirement in the next 7 years, and we want to not only have a well developed strategy, but implement it to leverage this resource God has blessed us with."

Wendell is one who gets it with these high capacity older adults, and he has done his homework on the demographics of his church and his culture. How many large churches have a similar reality brewing among their older adults? Dave McClamma, the Pastor to Older Adults at Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Florida told me recently that the "new old" in our culture are saying to the church, "Use me or lose me." His point is that the retirement aged people are a very active and mobile group of people that aren't just going to sit in the Lazy Boy and watch television and play golf. They want to make a difference and they will find a way to do it either through the church or outside the church.

Wendell Nelson is seeking a way to channel and harness the contribution of the older adult into the expansion of the Kingdom. If the church doesn't create more vibrant ways of engaging the best efforts of this new older adult, they will find less significant ways to invest their time, talents and energies. Wendell is onto something significant here. It will be fun to see how it plays out these next several years at Christ Community.