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Letter to the editor

Churches must adapt for senior ministry's sake

As boomers age, churches may need to rework or ditch traditional methods.

By JACKY HICKS, Neighborhood News Bureau
Published August 15, 2007

For Vivian Harmon, the Tender Loving Care Ministry of Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church is a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

"You get into the habit of sleeping late," said Harmon, 79, who is retired and a widow. "You can form a habit of just sitting home watching TV."

Tender Loving Care, which meets Mondays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon, is Bethel Metropolitan's ministry for older adults.

Members eat together, study the Bible, go on trips and learn about issues related to seniors. On Thursdays, the group does 45 minutes of tai chi with volunteer instructor Steven Nixon, who teaches tai chi at the Sunshine Center in St. Petersburg.

"It's one of the fibers of the church," said the Rev. Alvin Miller, an associate minister at Bethel who sometimes leads the group's Monday morning study. "The senior citizens are not lost, not neglected - they're active."

Ministries such as Tender Loving Care provide social interaction for retired adults, which is important for their self-image and health, said Jay Sokolovsky, professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and editor of The Cultural Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives.

"It connects them to the outside world and gives them a chance, on one level, to contribute to that world," Sokolovsky said. "People who are isolated and living by themselves tend to get depressed."

But church-based programs also can offer a spiritual connection to seniors that can't be found through secular outlets, said the Rev. Brian Brown, senior pastor at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church.

"The church tends to provide them some degree of hope and reminds them of the hope of Christ," Brown said. "We do that better than any other (organization), because that's the chief reason we're in existence."

Brown leads St. Mark's "Senior Hour of Power," a prayer and Bible study group that meets Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and once or twice a month for an outing. The group's shared faith is a key element, Brown said, because it helps members encourage each other through the trials that often come with growing older.

"They can pool their resources and pull together, reminding each other that with Christ we can get through this," Brown said.

Church-based ministries for seniors will face new challenges as baby boomers age, said Leona Bergstrom, director of Lifetime ministries in Edmonds, Wash., which assists churches in establishing effective programs for older adults.

Reaching the younger generation of retirees will mean reworking, or even tossing, the traditional idea of the seniors group, Bergstrom said.

"There's a real reluctance to want to be called a senior and move into that group," Bergstrom said. "Churches think that if they lower the age to 55 or 60, they'll come flocking in. Not on your life."

Bergstrom suggests that church leaders think about older adults in three groups, those in the 50 to 65 age range who are considering retirement, those from 65 to 80 who might already be retired, and those over 80 who are dealing with complex health and social issues. Churches should modify their efforts based on the specific needs of each age group.

"In the younger group, if you're talking health and wellness, then they'll listen," Bergstrom said. "Start something that doesn't even have the age in it. Call it boomers."

But whatever the age group, ministering to older adults should be on every church's agenda, Bergstrom said.

"(Churches) need to know that they have good news to share and people of any age need to hear it," Bergstrom said.

Jacky Hicks is a reporter for the Neighborhood News Bureau, a program of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She can be reached at (727) 327-2129.

[Last modified August 14, 2007, 20:19:53]