growing and revitalizing older congregations is a great concern for me. the church i attend is mostly elderly. at 66 i am actually one of the young crowd. i am confident most of the children of these folks are members of a church somewhere,, but have grown up and moved on. to other cities and states and lives. what we are left with is maybe six families with children under 18, and a bunch of us geezers.
aging out of a church, or any orginization,,such as VFW, Lions, or other civic organizations has become an issue we are all dealing with. as i see it youth today consider these all as for old people. they are not seeing the value in attending church. and we are failing to demonstrate that value.
for the last several months god has been seemingly whispering about this to me. keeping it constantly on my mind. with some urgency i am searching for an answer that's probably far more complex then it needs to be. i'm going to start out simple instead, and make a determined effort to show in my life what going to church, god, and jesus mean to me. how it impacts my life in a positive way. i will try to restart our men's group , which has not met in 3 years. (a lot of our older guys no longer drive) and personally invite young men and women to come visit our church,, or join one of our bible study groups. many or the old guard denominations are losing members, while new evangelistic, and what i call "entertainment churches" are growing. clearly the older traditional bible following churches need to refocus.