"Honoring Our Elders"
Some thoughts from the 2024 Lausanne Congress
By Dr. Julia Lee, physician and adjunct lecturer at the Termerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Canada.
The Church is often said to be at least thirty to forty years behind in responding appropriately or adequately to their cultural contexts. Though there are multiple ways in which this could be applied to many topics throughout the 2024 Lausanne Congress, this was particularly evident in the collaborative gap I chose to participate in: The global aging population.
The Global Aging Population: A Growing Reality
All over the world, older adults (60 years and older) are the fastest growing demographic, currently numbering 1 billion, but will account for 2.1 billion people by 2050. In 2020, the number of older adults 60 years and older outnumbered children younger than 5. This year, well over 10% of the world’s population is over 60; by 2030, in just six years, 1 in 6 people in the world will be over 60. This shift is already quite apparent in some high-income countries; 30% of Japan’s population comprises older adults. This is not an issue that “younger” nations can pretend does not impact them. By 2050, two-thirds of adults over 60 will live in low- and middle-income countries. This has multiple implications, including for the Church: is the Church ready and willing to respond to this demographic reality? What should the Church's role be in responding to an aging world?
I am a physician and clinical educator at the University of Toronto in Canada. One of the roles I had worked in during my career was as a palliative care physician. I loved the beauty and dignity of the work, quietly walking alongside patients and their families as they journeyed towards their inevitable deaths.
However, in 2016, Canada introduced MAiD (medical assistance in dying), a nationwide guaranteed provision of euthanasia under specific clinical circumstances. Though initially, the legislation was as restrictive as it could be under the circumstances, time and revisions have continued to loosen the criteria as to who is eligible for state-sponsored death. At the last assessment in 2022, euthanasia deaths accounted for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada, with some regions having rates close to 7%, rapidly surpassing death rates in other countries where euthanasia had already been legal for decades. Canada is already in the future concerning older adults; is the global Church prepared?
Though there may be specific cultural factors that have contributed to the astonishingly rapid increase of euthanasia in the Canadian context, this issue does have specific applicability to our global perspectives on our aging planet. In the Western world, which increasingly views older adults as out of touch or societal burdens or wishes to tuck them away into retirement communities or long-term care facilities, the full manifestation of the inherent ageism in our society is to rid ourselves of them entirely, with or without their consent. Our cultural biases towards younger ages in an aging world will prove detrimental to the Church.
We see much of this ageism on a routine basis in the Church. Church planters usually focus on attracting the 18-30-year-old demographic, hoping that, in time, they will start to reproduce and provide children to run a robust children’s ministry. Churches fret and worry when it appears that their congregations veer too heavily towards the aged and wonder how they can move towards more “family-friendly” programming, to decrease the proportion of white- and silver-haired individuals within the pews. Conferences and workshops continually point to leadership development and discipleship for the “next generation,” pushing the idea that if we do not keep skewing younger and retaining and recruiting young people specifically, the Church will die. This was evident, even at the 2024 Lausanne Congress, where, I was told, the most popular collaborative gap by a landslide was “the next generation” gap. All of these examples point to the Church adopting ageist attitudes from our broader society in also attempting to diminish, or eliminate, older adults in our midst.
Besides the obvious ageism present, several problems with these strategies need to be addressed. First is the implication that the young nuclear family, with school-aged, developmentally normal children, is the gold standard for who is desirable to have in a church. When churches have “family ministries” as part of their staffing and programming choices, they usually subconsciously envision who counts as a “real” family, and who does not.
Frankly, this is idolatry. Single parents, older parents with adult children who have returned home, childless couples, roommates who are chosen family together, single adults, individuals estranged from their families for various reasons, families struggling with children with various special needs, divorced and widowed adults – these are all forms of families too. And, if we claim we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, then they are all part of our family, of my family, as well.
Surely, children symbolize a hopeful future that may or may not materialize, but they are not the only way we can be fruitful and multiply, nor are they the only manner in which we are all called to live as a family together.
Valuing Our Elders
There is also the assumption that older adults have little value to contribute anymore. To be sure, the risk of disability and chronic disease increases as one ages, but individuals’ cognitive and physical abilities also vary widely as people age. Many older adults still maintain much capacity to serve, love, and give to the Church. The cumulative life experience and wisdom of lifelong, devoted followers of Christ are not to be overlooked. To not glean such a harvest of wisdom and help is a waste. This is not to say that older adults are only useful insofar as they can do something productive for the Church. Even if the vagaries of old age lead many to frailty and vulnerability, our steadfast belief that each bears the image of God until He calls them back to Himself means that our value extends beyond our utility or contributions. We are all still capable of being in relationship and of giving and receiving love, even when our physical and mental abilities appear to put us beyond that reach. That contribution teaches much about humility, service, suffering, and beyond, to the Church.
Other demographic data in Canada notes that over 60% of households are either people living alone or are couples without children; numbers are similar in the USA. Many of these, though not exclusively, are older adults. The majority of people no longer live in a nuclear family-type configuration. Some churches focus on trying to reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of their locales; others try to reflect their socioeconomic diversity. If our churches are supposed to be reflective of the contexts that they are in, then why are most of our church growth strategies still focused on being “family-friendly,” and not on single-person households, or a significant proportion of older adults, or on the increasing numbers of couples without children? This is not to say we stop offering any sort of child- or youth-oriented ministry if the neighborhood demographic warrants it, but it does beg the question of how we allocate ministry resources and who we are ultimately saying we want in our pews. If our churches are trying to reflect their contexts, then why are we not trying also to reflect the household structure diversity within our society?
Further, we are all aware of the increasing sense of social isolation and loneliness plaguing North American society, at all ages and stages. We sense that the Church can be, and should be, a viable alternative to loneliness by inviting people into community and a sense of belonging by coming together under the name and cause of Christ. But ask any never-married person in their 30s or 40s as to how well that works regularly. In the distortion of the narrow understanding of what a family is composed of, and by focusing almost exclusively on nuclear-family structures, we often leave many other people in the Church distinctively sensing that they do not truly belong. If the Church wants people to experience the love and community that the Godhead is, by embodying that in how they care for one another, then a significant shift in how we understand what our definitions of “community” and “family” are must occur.
All of this is significant for our aging society, and lessons here may also be fruitful for other nations that have not yet experienced this demographic shift. Many single-person households are composed of older adults. Loneliness and social isolation, particularly as disability and chronic illnesses start impacting function, are a real concern among older adults. The increasing sense that they are worthless and useless to society contributes to the despair and loneliness of many as they age. The unreasonable expectation that biological adult children will be completely responsible for the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of their parents, will leave many adult children burnt out and resentful if they are even willing to take on those roles in the first place. In looking at the shifting demographic realities of our society, the alleviation of our isolation from one another and meeting the needs of all of our family members in mutual, reciprocal relationship together is a way forward.
A Call to Action
As Asians, we are most well-positioned to value and honor our elders; it is deeply part of many of our cultures. However, we must consider whether we can look more broadly beyond our biological elders and take seriously that all of our aunties and uncles are also ours within the Body of Christ. If we can easily call other older adults such familiar and intimate names, then I’d consider us to reflect on what that means for us. Do we allow older adults to participate and shape our lives? Are we living in deep, reciprocal relationships with those we call family members? Who is forgotten, and who is re-member-ed into the Body?
This is a way in which the Church can choose to declare and display Christ in North American society. We can display Christ if our counter-cultural inclusion and celebration of older adults in our midst, rather than seeing them as obstructions and annoyances, means that all people truly are invited into His family to participate in His work. We can declare Christ in being able to say that all people are valued and loved and created in the image of God, even as they become older, frailer, and more dependent. We demonstrate the power of God by showing that we are not on a relentless pursuit of youth but instead incorporate those that society would rather us forget, ignore, and put away.
How the Church responds to our rapidly aging society will disclose how we feel about our growth strategies, our church budgets, and our trust in God to establish His Church, even when it may look demographically dying. God will build His Church, in all its demographic realities, for His glory. Our work involves loving, being loved, and incorporating all members of the Body into the family of Christ. After all, if we are brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles to one another in name, how do we all live as if we truly are in practice?
Dr. Julia Lee is a physician, and adjunct lecturer at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Canada. She has earned her MD and MPH degrees at the University of Toronto and is currently pursuing her MDiv at Wycliffe College. She has served in various medical capacities in remote areas of Canada, in West Africa, the MENA region, and in the Caribbean. She joyfully lives and serves alongside her beloved husband, Ben.