10 Key Connecting Points with Aging Baby Boomers

Written by Tim Cleary

This article originally appeared in the Mature Living Leadership Edition, September 2005. Used by permission.

“It’s about needs and relationships,” responded Jim to the question, How can our church help a new generation of senior adults? “By the way,” he added, “we’re not senior adults!”

Breaking the Missional Code

As our church explored the interests, needs, circumstances, and dreams of Jim and other baby boomers, we discovered that change will be required to capture the energy and resources of a generation that will grow to comprise 21 percent of the U.S. population between 2010 and 2030. We also discovered at least 10 key connecting points that can help us reach this aging population.

Count Down to 2030

10. Connect with a cross section of boomers in your church and community.
Participate in their activities. Don’t feel like you have to plan programs for them. Invite them to share with you and discover who they are.

9. Use what you discover about boomers to strategize ministry options with them.

8. Discover boomer characteristics.
You’ll find this rock-and-roll generation is independent, educated, media-oriented, fitness conscious, action-oriented, desirous of quality, and prone to question authority.

7. Give attention to expressed needs, interests, and concerns, including their search  for spiritual meaning, a desire for traditional values, development of second careers, financial concerns, life transitions, re-evaluation of goals, and dealing with adult children and aging parents.

6. Reach nonchurched boomers by building friendship bridges.
Boomers in your church have relationships they can work for God through their life networks. Challenge them to interact on a personal level, perhaps leading to church participation later.

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5. Realize boomers are both married and single.
Many are in second marriages and involved in blending families. Involve the married and single communities of your church as part of ministry strategy.

4. Enlist a team of boomers to shape the future of ministry with their peers.

3. Without using the word senior, begin to educate all generations about aging issues and the life transitions that everyone faces.
Transition tasks not accomplished at transition points often complicate aging later in life.

2. Provide Internet resource listings and other media resources.
Seminars, aging issue-oriented Bible study supplements, sermon applications, and counseling resource lists are helpful.

1. Become an activist in your community’s work with the aging.
Learn from aging experts dealing with similar dynamics. The church should be represented in these dialogues to prepare society as a whole for the future of aging.

Blast Off
Boomers, who begin turning 60 on January 1, 2006, hold the power and wealth of our nation. It’s time to celebrate their uniqueness, expand their participation, and challenge them to embrace aging, making a difference for God in the life of the church and community. Oh, yeah, call them something other than senior adults. They’ll help you figure that one out!

Tim Cleary is mission and outreach pastor at North Phoenix Baptist Church/Networks, First Church at Verrado, Ariz. He is also events chairperson of the Mature Workers Task Force on the Arizona Governor’s Advisory Council on Aging.