Hey Lionel, great post! Thanks for bringing up such an important issue.
John Chapman said in a recent interview that he believes there are great opportunities for ministry to ‘seniors’ (yes, that’s the latest pc term) in our community. He says, ‘Yes, they have special needs ... I don’t think they are any more, or less, important than any other group ... older people often need to be persuaded to change their minds. They tend to like things as they are, and the way they are used to. When you work with children and teenagers, they keep changing their minds, and that is part and parcel of working with them. Part and parcel of working with the elderly is that they need to be persuaded.’

When we age we all move into a season of loss. My parents go to many more funerals these days, my father’s losing his eyesight and so it goes. One book I read recently asserted that for this very reason older Christians need much MORE care - not less. They might have been Christian for a long time and know their Bibles well, but they still need help to negotiate the challenges of ageing. I’m not convinced that our church families always respond positively to this need, perhaps from fear or lack of understanding.

In this same book there’s a moving anecdote about Sir Cliff Richard when his beloved mum was in the final debilitating stages of dementia. Above her bed (in the home where she was being cared for) he positioned a photo of her, from years before, when she was bright-eyed and vibrant. He wanted visitors and staff to understand that THIS was the woman they were spending time with - still a person of value, who had a history and had made a contribution to so many others.

Don’t you think that loving and respecting our senior church family members is one way we can demonstrate the reality of the counter-cultural gospel in our age-phobic Western society?

PS 71:9 Do not cast me away when I am old;
do not forsake me when my strength is gone.

One further comment. As I have mentioned previously, I think the way Paul places praying for people in their gospel ministry right alongside his own preaching in the frontline of mission can be a tremendous encouragement to those among the elderly whose lack of mobility and energy means they can do little else but pray!

To quote my previous article…

My conclusion from this is that prayer—especially prayer for gospel preaching and believing—places a person right on the frontline of ministry.

I believe this has an especially powerful application to the frail, aged and others who are physically incapable of doing very much. Some of them often feel useless, and wonder why God still leaves them on the earth. But they are right at the frontline of the spiritual battle, even though they are physically inactive and hundreds of miles away from the people and places they are praying for.

I know their prayers are helping me in my preaching and many people in their believing, and I am thankful for it.

Remind them of this regularly!

Hi Ellen,

I assume you’re thinking of Titus 2:3-5:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

You’re right, this verse isn’t just about running conferences, but about day-to-day personal training in God’s word.

Perhaps we could phrase it negatively: what do you think inhibits older ladies in our churches from being more explicit about their walk with Christ and so teaching younger women?

Lionel,
thankyou so much for beginning to engage us on this issue. It’s a topic I have longed to be addressed by us as a church community and I greatly enjoyed your piece, would love to hear more.

There’s so much I would like to say on this topic, but will confine myself to some very brief responses to the question you raised -<cite>“what do you think inhibits older ladies in our churches from being more explicit about their walk with Christ and so teaching younger women?”

Some thoughts…

1. The lack of ready & regular accessibility between the generations within our church families. Older Saints in the early congregations, families mid morning, younger women in the evening. Only trusting relationships foster the sort of ‘life godliness training’ that the Titus 2 passage envisages. That takes time, accessibility & grace demonstrated through relationships.

2. For many, there’s a sense of feeling of they’ve become ‘irrelevant’ to the active life and mission of the church. And I must admit, sometimes we fail to continue to ‘caste’ a vision’ of what they can still be, & need to be for Christ for as long he has them here. We need to keep casting a ‘life long vision’ to the whole church & not just the young and seemingly more able.

3. Women in particular lack confidence. They need more active encouragement to see how they can use their time, gifts & abilities for the gospel. We need to help them see what they have to offer, & to actively urge them not be intimidated to use those abilities and opportunities and to keep taking initiative.

4. We need to recognize there may be differences of language & expression regarding the Christian walk. Our Senior Saints ‘are’ often being explicit about their walk with Christ, they often just express it differently, or they take longer to say it than the time we are prepared to give them…

these are just a few thoughts…I’m interested in others…

ps. a lovely quote from a faithful Senior Saint recently to other Senior Saints, she said…<cite> ” remember ladies, we are not fading out, but moving onwards and upwards to our Lord”...(thanks Dorothy!)