Faith Works 1-22-22

Faith Works 1-22-22
Jeff Gill

Faith communities and who's in the pews
___

Talking about how to talk to persons, family or friends, who are losing their short term memory is clearly a subject many readers are interested in.

Thank you for the many kind messages and emails, and I do try to respond to all of them; the response these last two weeks reaffirms what really got me writing about this, which is that there are many, many, many of us who are in this situation.

I've read (and had sent to me these last few weeks) some very useful, pointed articles about how to read the warning signs about when a person, usually but not always elderly, is no longer able to live safely on their own. It's both grim and familiar reading.

But the bigger picture I'm trying to sketch is just how often you might find yourself dealing with someone who is not incompetent, not easily maneuvered (not to say manipulated), and who in many cases knows just as well as you do that they are no longer safe living on their own, but is just rational enough to be able to keep you at bay (not to say lying to you).

Which is also why I want to turn to the question of the wider community, and faith communities in particular. These last few columns were much more personal, though I noted and do see an aspect of spiritual discipline in what the experience of helping someone is like for the helper. Slowing down, taking time, being patient: all of us can benefit from these practices, and if you haven't been able to engage in them on your own, caring for someone whose cognitive skills are declining will give you a boost in a hurry. Because you have to slow down right now (irony, anyone?) to be of true service to someone who is walking and moving and thinking more slowly than they once did. Right now. Slow it on down.

Churches and pastors have been out in front on these questions for a very long time. I had my first experience with a family asking me to help them "talk to mom" in 1985, about car keys and steps and food. I like to think I've gotten better at those conversations, but they're never easier.

But before World War II, the assumptions about aging and the elderly and infirm were very, very different. We kept putting steps on churches long after we no longer needed to keep the front door up above the dust cloud from passing carriages and buggies. Sound levels and temperature controls weren't the same sort of issue, choir lofts were often in very hard to access locations for the young and mobile, and including people in wheelchairs or walkers wasn't on the drafting table until well into, well, my era.

In part, because we didn't live as long. In large part, because if you did get old, it was assumed you stayed home. No cataract surgeries or hip replacements, and aging tended to equal being home-bound.

In more recent decades, having lots of people in their eighties and nineties in church became not only more common, but an imperative to support. Older people after Medicare were more likely to not just stay living on their own but even to travel (insert long economic discussion here that we can't have right now), and with medical advances and simply general social acceptance — all good things, mind you! — if stores and businesses and restaurants made it possible for physically limited people to be present, so should churches, and we did.

This launched two complementary shifts in church life: on the one hand, the increasing presence and role of very old people in church life changed how we did corporate worship. Again, there's a volume to be written on this, but I know many ideas in my time in ministry have been shot down with "the older people can't do that." So we adapt and adjust, and there's an important aspect of inclusion in those cautions.

But it also helped spur the other shift: to youth ministry and youth worship. If the median age on many Sunday mornings after the 1950s started to increase, that helped support the idea of "a service for the young people." And to jump ahead again, those services led directly to the rise of contemporary style worship.

I'm perfectly aware that there are 99 year olds who seek out and prefer contemporary worship with praise bands, and 20-somethings who crave liturgy and quiet. What I'm inviting us to reflect on is how there are general trends at work, with certain outcomes we'll come back to.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not as young as he used to be, but youthful enough to look over both sides of the fence. Tell him how you find worship fulfilling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.