"My call to ministry was a massive mid-life surprise, and my student placement was a big church in Coalville with a small membership of mainly seventy pluses. And, with head and heart full of liberation and feminist theology, I saw them as excluded from the mainstream- youth-shaped culture, and heard them as voices from the margins.
Their church was still there but the community around them had changed, they were still faithful, but they felt isolated and frustrated as their numbers and energy dwindled. How could they speak into the rapidly changing world around them? Which bit of the body of Christ were they – an odd footprint back there in the past somewhere? All that frustration was repeatedly expressed as regret for not keeping their children and their children’s children in that big church.
But they were so supportive and welcoming and funny and long suffering and interesting, I just felt they had themselves to offer. Themselves as they were now, and always had been - embodied of Christ, rather than merely what they had once been. I fell in love with them, with their stories, their history, their humour, and their generosity, after all what did I know, how deep were my experiences, how long was my memory - I was their spring chicken (although that was relative….in real terms I’m more a late autumn turkey) and yet they let me minister to them, and encouraged me to the point where I felt a real call to spend all my time ministering to older people.
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And in this relatively well-off, fast-paced, multi-generational context I find myself, working specifically alongside older people, and I’m actually a bit out there on the edge!
I could feel a little bit isolated…there are not many age specialists – yet, in any denomination, so where are my role models, or my nicely produced resources for mission and discipleship I can pick off the shelf? Instead I make relationships where I can, I gather where I can, I study and teach when I can, and make do and mend.
I could get a little bit marginalised….my work on the edge is not edgy, not trendy. My community tends to be a bit weather-bound, (especially this year) a bit immobile, often very vulnerable, it takes its time getting anywhere, it happens more often in the middle of the week, and definitely not at night, and it blossoms more amidst more traditional expressions of worship than ABC is known for of a typical youthful Sunday.
Its possible to feel a little bit displaced…my remit is ministry to people a generation, or two or even three older than myself and that is a challenge to my own sense of ageing – in learning who my community is, I am learning who I am too, and what I have in store. Do I try to stay young, be their spring chicken, do I embrace my own age and ageing process?
And its possible to feel particularly overwhelmed…I’m faffing about with my little garden fork in a mission field the size of ten prairies, and growing…and yet where there’s so much dying too…so very often.
For the first time in the history of the census there are now more people over sixty than there are under sixteen. That’s a lot of edge – and its a big challenge to keep the idea of mission by older people and to older people creative and real, and not simply as a knee jerk reaction to a growing burden of need.
But with all this edge and margin comes a strange sort of freedom. Working with older people is a constant journey into the unknown. People are living longer than ever before, so there is a sense, if you look for it, of the pioneer’s trust in God. We’ve not been here before, in these numbers, in these times, lets put down new road markers and new signposts….lets create new places, dare I say it, new expressions of living together as Christians…with our own humour, stories, imaginations, sense of history and mutual support, which become in themselves opportunities for mission because they speak directly to other older people, but also to other generations.
Actually, let’s have a bit of fun. Why not, no one’s looking. Let’s all go on a summer holiday, one where you don’t have to have a lot of money, or a partner, or loads of energy, or cancel very many doctors appointments to have a really good time. Let’s recreate a cruise ship, or the highlands of Scotland, or the Alps, or the pyramids of Egypt right, here in the church. Let’s dress up and be entertained and share meals and teach the young people to knit and tell them stories. Let’s tell our friends about what daft things they do down there, and how we were touched and respected and listened to and loved. How it was the first time I’ve been to church on a Sunday since I was a little girl, how its the best time I had since my husband died twenty years ago, or how it restored my faith in a loving God. And suddenly people do look, and want to come too, and this year we are preparing for our ninth annual Holiday at Home.
Or let’s get together and just be in the presence of God. Let’s make sandwiches, and go on a retreat day together, let’s invite whoever comes through the door as we are waiting for our lifts, or whoever is stopping with us that day. Let’s do what we do best, take it slow, watch the clouds fly and the light change, the colours turn, listen to the clock tick and the birds sing, draw in long breaths of memory, let’s be still and know the sheer beauty and fragility of the moment, and maybe, like a ripple spreading outward, drop in a little prayer, you never know, it might help somebody.
My work has become a lot about creating safe spaces for isolated people to get together, events and meals – or moving in with them…our monthly Sunday informal gathering and tea increasingly finds itself happening in the lounge of the local sheltered housing complex instead of our own church lounge. Being housebound may be a reality for many, but being church bound shouldn’t be.
I often wonder what God is saying to us through this great wave of new longevity, how is he beckoning us through all these people with so much fragility and fortitude and fun, and deep stories and great stillness. How God will surprise us through them. Perhaps I’ll find out a little more now that we have just elected our first 70+ deacon in a very very long time – now there’s a new journey for this relatively young and growing church to embark upon!