Old hands
As a Christian minister, or a friend or a family member, imagine having some options available to put shape on a fresh desire to serve that God has been kindling in the heart of a senior believer.
Here are some areas you could discuss.
Do you want to serve in continuity with your professional life or to seek a change?
Christians who have spent their working lives serving as professionals, usually value help to discern whether or not their retirement from paid employment signals an opportunity to give what they have learned in a volunteer role, serving as a trustee, or on a church action team, where the professional skill is valuable and their expertise is timely within the life of the church, or school, or charity. For example, some life-long accountants are glad to give cheerfully, their time, energy and experience, to serve as treasurer or in some other financial capacity, others are eager to put behind them their life long focus on numbers in order to play the piano, or paint the church hall.
For most Christians in professional roles, there is an underlying gift that makes sense of what they have been doing over the years, whatever the professional setting. For many people the verbs that describe what they have been doing identify the God given skill and God given passion that gets them out of bed in the morning.
Look together for verbs that describe what they are doing, and what they enjoy doing, and what other people appreciate them doing, and ask them to go on doing. For example, “I fix problems for people”, “I am like a detective, I love a puzzle, and then the process of trying to get to the truth”, “I like tidying things”, “I like starting things”, “I love being part of a team, working with a team to come up with ideas and map out a way forward”.
Do you want to serve beyond the church, or when God’s people gather?
“I would love to serve as a school governor, now that I have more time.” “I would like to play in the band on Sundays, now that I can make it to the rehearsals.” “I am happy to serve in any role for which I am suited on a Sunday.” “I am free during the day, during the week, I can give an afternoon or a morning or an evening each week, how can I serve?”
How can you enrich your own family spiritually, while you have opportunity?
You could allocate a specific time each week to pray for each member of the family, a longer time than you were able to give in earlier years.
What could you offer beyond ‘childcare every Tuesday’? It may be that your family does not welcome any spiritual contribution from you, in which case you can continue to pray, and you could consider what you can offer spiritually to others?
What could you offer the people of God around the world?
A few decades ago, every evangelical Christian was encouraged to know ‘something about everywhere and everything about somewhere’ in order to pray. It was a wise suggestion.
You now have time to do something about it, and to pray in the light of whatever you learn.
What could you do for Christians serving where you served at work?
Probably not much is the answer is many settings, but perhaps you could something in your context. You could pray about the possibility for a few months and see what happens.
Do you have practical skills you could offer to others?
In many churches there are people living on their own, whose families are not living near, who need a little help in the garden, or help to fix a problem on a computer … and in some churches there are people with considerable practical skills …
How could you serve children and families in our church family?
What about linking a senior Christian within the church family and a Sunday children’s group?
If you can find your way through the data issues a senior saint could pray for the teachers, and for the individual children, and for their families. A Sunday children’s group could pray for older Christians, and receive a granny or a grandpa as a guest from time to time.
A ministry like this would be encouraging for Christians whose grandchildren are far away, or for Christians whose children are not teaching their own children what they themselves were taught.
I have seen an eighty year old man serving as a wonderful Sunday group leader, sharing his joy in the Lord Jesus in ways that were infectious and unforgettable. You could ask God to give your church family an eighty year with that kind of heart and capacity for ministry.
What about a phone ministry or a Zoom ministry?
There was an older man in a church where I was serving who was eager to serve, but unable to get out much. I asked him if he knew five men in the church, who he could call from time to time. He did. I suggested ringing one man on a Monday, another on Tuesday, and a third on Wednesday, and on through the week, and to repeat the pattern every week. He did. He was thrilled, so were they, and so was I. We agreed that he would keep me in touch with the men if there was anything happening that I needed to know.
What about helping the senior women to heard and valued?
Packer’s mind is focused on men, and his book is written for men. It would be helpful for ministers to look out for women within the congregation who could write a similar piece for younger women, or who would be willing to be interviewed and to share testimony about their feelings as their retirement began, and the decisions that have guided them towards zeal on the last phase of the race that God has set before them.
How about helping old hands share their story within the church family?
How about encouraging a senior Christian - or someone younger - to collect a series of brief testimonies from senior Christians? For example, every cohort of new fathers, or first time grandfathers, within a church family would benefit from hearing the joy, the hope, the faith and the love, as well as the testimony of senior saints, women and men, who have been on the Way for decades longer than those who are following behind.
A senior Christian could gather some of the the questions that those who are starting out are asking, or gather snippets of wisdom from those who are older for those who are younger to hear (‘one thing I wish I had known then that I know now’ or ‘one thing that I now wish I had done more often then, and one that I wish I had done less often’).
A photo and a sound track would go a long way in most contexts, much easier than trying to make a video.
A waterfall of ideas
I am conscious that this is a waterfall of ideas.
You can ignore all of them and be happy.
Dig out a different metaphor and consider that there might an acorn lurking among the various possibilities, and by God’s gracious power acorns eventually grow into oak trees.
Let’s pray that God will do more than we can ask or imagine in this area of ministry in our churches and through our churches.
August 2024