Ministering to Methuselah

I attended another conference all of last week, the details of which will be grist for a future blog entry or two. But in small groups I was paired up with three other gentlemen, ministers in their senior years. One is retiring this fall from several decades of pastoral service to the same church. One is working as an associate pastor at a church, and will likely work until he is seventy because of his financial situation (he is in his early sixties now). The third member of our group is also in his early sixties and ahs had years of foreign and pastoral experience overseas. He is now attending Sunday School in a large Southern Baptist Church, but cannot find a place of service.

Since I was younger than several of these gentlemen’s children, I was sort of the odd man out (although I do now know that yearly colonoscopies are recommended for everyone over the age of fifty). But I was surprised by how much uncertainty expressed by each of these men. They each related honest concern that the demands of contemporary ministry were passing them by. I was struck again by how poorly we as a church handle the aged.

Too often I think that we merely adopt contemporary society’s views on the elderly and consign them to irrelevancy when they hit sixty. (Although there are exceptions) It has to change. Sometimes when I am working with a church I will hear older parishioners say “It’s good to have a young man in here with energy” or “We need someone here with new ideas.” Neither of those concepts specifically excludes the elderly, but they are understood that way.

The church cannot afford to adopt the same attitude as the world toward the elderly. We should instead:

1. Not look down on anyone because of their age (paraphrasing 1 Timothy 4:12). God consistently used the elderly (Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Elizabeth and Zachariah) to accomplish His plan. We need to be aware that God continues to work in our lives, despite our ages. Indeed I would argue that in several cases a younger person could NOT have carried out God's work.

2. Recognize the unique gift that God has given to the old, but not to the young: the gift of experience. Titus 2:2-5 outlines the critical roles that the older men and women are to serve in the church. The church is to draw upon their experience, and not to discard these saints of old. And their numbers are growing.

3. Understand along with Psalm 90 the inevitability of aging. These days are coming to us all. Shortly before she slipped the bonds of sanity, my grandmother told me “Growing old is hell.” We have a duty and a calling to minister to these in the last season of their lives.