It was great to spend yesterday with Caroline, Esther and Fiona from the Diocese of Hereford, exploring their new plans for structuring and sharing courses, resources and opportunities for discipleship around life stages and the five marks of mission. Watch their mission and ministry development pages for more details...
1 Comment
One of our 'through-life discipleship' conversation partners this year, the Generations Project in Solihull, has been encouraging local churches to take up their Life@Easter activity as a focus for Easter observance in local residential care homes. What does your church do in similar settings?
Those interested can now read the Ready for Ageing? report for the 'parliamentary select committee on public service and demographic change', which explores the extent to which pensions, health, housing, social care and public services are geared up for the demographic 'bulge' now entering retirement. Interestingly it proposes ending what it calls the 'cliff edge retirement' scenario of stopping work and drawing a pension at a fixed point, recommending that people be allowed to continue to work flexibly into retirement and defer drawing on their pensions. It also claims that allowing older people to continue to work beyond the traditional retirement point will not disadvantage younger generations since a larger pool of older workers will 'create its own demand'. What do you think? Take a look at the report for yourself.
Second, you might be interested to read the Charitable Aid Foundation's (CAF) report Growing up Giving, which explores the trend for the over-60s to be twice as likely to give to charity as the under-30s, asks what can be done about this, but also reveals that beneath the headline figure young people are very positive about charitable giving and the role which charities play. A really helpful article about living with dementia by John Swinton in the Church Times last week (based on his new book: Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (SCM Press): 'Who am I, when I have forgotten who I am?' Amongst other things, he notes that we tend to invest heavily in the idea of our identity being bound up with cognition, but this not need be the measure of our selves. He quotes approvingly Christine Bryden's personal account of pre-senile dementia: 'I believe that I am much more than just my brain structure and function, which is declining daily. My creation in the divine image is as a soul capable of live, sacrifice, and hope, not as a perfect human being, in mind or body. I want you to relate to me in that way, seeing me as God sees me'. We love God not only with our minds, but also with 'heart, soul and strength', and even if our cognitive memory fades 'memory is etched into our bodies, but it is also firmly embedded within our communities'. Social theorists such as Maurice Halbwachs have recognised for some time that memory is collective - perhaps this is something which the challenge of caring for people with dementia is only now beginning to animate? If so, how can local churches stand alongside people with dementia and be that collective memory?
And on that note, we're increasingly aware of a number of projects across the region dedicated to helping the church respond to the challenge of dementia, many of which are not currently in touch with each other. Could each of these benefit from greater networking? Let us know your ideas. |
AuthorsIan Jones is Director of St Peter's Saltley Trust. Archives
October 2017
Categories
All
|