What Can We Do to Care for and Honor the Elderly in Our Churches?

A Whole-Life Pro-Life Community This is an absolutely vital consideration for every Christian. It will test, I believe, whether we truly are a whole-life pro-life community in a way that we have not been tested before because we’re looking at a phenomenon called the “graying of America.” What’s happening is that in a typical population, you would experience a pyramid when it comes to age distribution. You have a few people who are elderly at the top and a lot of young people as you go down. But what we’re finding is called the rectangularization of that distribution. By the year 2035 in the United States, it’s predicted that there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18. So that means that not just the church but the United States is going to be facing a full-blown orphan-care crisis at the end of life. We’re just talking about health care considerations—the general care that’s necessary as someone ages into their latter years—but that’s to say nothing of the social and emotional elements that are involved. And so if you’re thinking toward that time for your own loved one, what will you do to be sure that your own parents are honored the way that the fifth c...