Tag Archives: leadership

The Senior Adult Dilemma, Part 2

In my last post I explored a few issues involved with what I termed “The Senior Adult Dilemma.” I encourage you to read it first for context.

This response came from a friend via Facebook:

Consider that the Boomer generation was perhaps the first to see that government leaders often lied to them. The Sixties were radically different than anything this country had faced. Authority figures, music, sexual revolution, etc., etc. EVERYTHING changed rapidly.

I’ve read stats saying 1 out of 4 were sexually abused and we know that kind of abuse is often by someone in a place of authority in that person’s life. They were drafted into the first war (Vietnam) that was so unpopular that when coming home they were often met at airports and pelted with tomatoes. Even today one can walk in a VFW event and immediately tell the Vietnam vets. This generation was among the first to come out of college with massive student loans.

These folk (Boomers) have been told that they have spent the nation into oblivion, are guilted over abortion (the Supreme Court chief justices who wrote majority opinions were appt. by Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. Check out Republican Supreme Court appointees and their decisions. Not good. In fact, Ike said his appointment of Earl Warren was the “damnedest fool thing I ever did”.), and many are reduced to working two or three part time jobs to support themselves. One outlives early retirement. They have only know SBC live to be in turmoil their entire ministry life.

My point is that there is a lot of latent anger in almost every congregation among the seniors.

This friend spent more than a decade as a traveling evangelist, and has been nearly two decades in denominational work.

Two other friends, one via Twitter and another offline, also mentioned existing or potential issues with Baby Boomers in the Senior Adult Dilemma. As the oldest Boomers are just hitting retirement age, I think it remains to be seen. I hope, rather, to see Boomers go into their senior years pressing forward without looking back. In point of fact, I have been eyewitness to the Dilemma since before the oldest of the Boomers were out of their 40s.

While Boomers may fall to the same temptations current and past seniors have faced, this seems to be beyond a mere Boomer issue. Unless these issues are addressed, Boomers, Busters, Millennials and future generations may fall as well.

I should note I’m hardly an expert. I have been blessed with some fantastic relationships with senior adults. We loved, honored and respected each other, often in the midst of disagreements about “worship styles” or church direction. Then there were those who did not fit in that group ;^)

What I offer are thoughts as my old age grows larger in the windshield. Now let us consider a few possible solutions:

1. Seniors often feel left out, but need more than Branson, Missouri trips to help them continue to grow in Christ.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? Do churches lower discipleship expectations on seniors to little more than a travel club, or do seniors fail to respond to discipleship efforts requiring more than a travel club?

Another friend who has been in ministry for many years wrote this:

A friend of mine, a pastor and missionary of many decades reached his 70’s and told me this, “I have more time to give, more knowledge to share and a hearts desire to minister but no one wants and old man. If you are over 50-55 try and to get a position in a church, very difficult. I know there are older people who are like those in your article but there are many more who love God, love their church and desire to be in ministry but many times the church has turned them away or formed a “senior saints” group that basically takes trips for pleasure. The older generation needs to be challenged to press on just as every other generation in the church.

2. Aging entrenches routine as a form of comfort and certainty, but church leaders often miss this.
A former co-laborer on a staff once made this observation about his widowed, senior adult mother-in-law: “If a light bulb goes out at my mother-in-law’s house, she will call us every day until I can get over to replace it. Even if it is in a room or closet she rarely uses. She seems fixated on it until I can get it done.”

As we get older and more physically restricted from “adventures,” routines become places of comfort. If this is true of young people–and to some degree it is true of us all–with some it gets much worse with aging. Predictability becomes the groove through which life is comfortably lived. Like residents of The Shire many eschew the unknown and enjoy the serenity of sameness.

But, like nostalgia, routine is not a spiritual gift. Arguably, the desire for a “whole life routine” can work against spiritual growth: it is hard to invite God to break into your routine if you do not want God to break into your routine. Or fail to believe it is something He would even do.

When church leaders misunderstand the routine they multiply problems for themselves. You may not be able to change it; but you do well to take it into consideration in decision making.

3. Most people who come to Christ do so in their younger years and seniors should participate in their church’s efforts to reach them.
Every study I have ever known indicates most people who come to Christ do so while young. Youth pastors used to say the majority are saved before the age of 18. Barna says it is a “substantial majority” (2004) who do so.

If this is the case why would churches in their evangelistic attempts not focus a lot of energy in reaching those under 18? Further, why would senior adults not rejoice to be a part of leading young people to Christ?

One of the great blessings of my ministry was Mrs. Jessie Lancaster. Mrs. Jessie died several years ago. She was single for many, many years. Having no children or relatives in the community, she depended, more than most, on her church family. She was active in an intergenerational small group at our church, and prayed for me relentlessly. She once told me when I had a conflict between leaving for a youth camp and seeing her in the hospital, “Preacher, don’t you ever come see me if you have a chance to lead some young person to Jesus. That’s way more important.”

That is the outlook I want to have at 80.

4. Churches should view aging as a unique discipleship opportunity.
It is a little too easy to say, “You didn’t hear the Apostle Paul complaining while he was chained up in that dark Roman jail!!” I kind of doubt he is in your church. I kind of doubt he is in the pastor’s office, either. But, if we want to produce a different kind of senior adult believer, we might need to develop a different discipleship strategy for senior adults.

Esteemed professor, Howard Hendricks, who died February 20, 2013, described aging as a:

quiet, ill-defined blur that steals up on one with little advance warning. My body refuses to cooperate with my mind, as if it were a stranger. Mysterious little aches and odd moments of forgetfulness pop up. Birthdays become irrelevant. The surprise is that I no longer seem to be quite the ‘me’ I have always known.

It also rings true that you do not see in the mirror what everyone else sees when looking at you.

Perhaps one solution is for churches to implement “aging out” of age-graded small groups. For illustrative purposes let us say age fifty-nine. When reaching 60 members should join younger groups. That would be the only option since no senior adult groups would exist. This combats the feelings of isolation, opens the eyes of all involved to the needs of each age, and helps facilitate organic mentoring. It also helps disconnect the problem of complaints feeding on themselves.

I have heard people talk about “cradle to grave” ministry, but I have seen few ministries last that long.

One thing seems certain: if we want to reduce the amount of stress and heartache experienced both by church leaders and seniors a modified approach to discipleship is needed.

Despite all the challenges in the senior adult dilemma I have been blessed to know many seniors like Jessie Lancaster. Among them:

My Mom and Dad
My Mother began a writing ministry to women in prison after she was 65 years old. She continued ministry to them after they exited prison. For months she drove to Atlanta each Sunday to pick-up a lady and bring her to church. My Dad, in addition to never missing a work day at church, picks up a blind man for church every Sunday and takes him home after Sunday School and church are over. My Dad often takes this man to the doctor.

Their pastor, Chris, has told me on more than one occasion, “Your Mom and Dad are truly missional people.”

Frances and Waymon Lamb
The Lambs were longtime members at a church where I served on staff. They were members when the church was small enough that Frances sent get-well cards to every member who went into the hospital. The first time I ever met her she was hospitalized. When I entered her room, I noticed her leg standing in the corner of the room while she was occupying the bed. Over the course of several months I visited her so many times we joked about her trying out every room in the hospital. At the end of each visit, she had a list a names for which I was to pray…but never for her. God was taking care of her.

After she died, Waymon became a de facto chaplain for the hospital. He had spent so much time there it was like a home away from home. He had already begun visiting sick people when Frances was hospitalized, and continued returning to visit sick people after she passed away. This he did until he was too old to continue.

Waymon outlived almost all his friends, and died after I was no longer on staff at his church. His graveside service was so small, the pastor conducting the service and I had to serve as impromptu pallbearers.

Mr. and Mrs. Benson
Raynor and Lois Benson, with their adult son, Drew, volunteered in the office at my last pastorate. They were amazingly sweet, showing up every Sunday morning to do paperwork, answer the phones and the like while our secretary was completing the extra records from Sunday. They never asked for a thing, never expected a thing, and always were gracious and cheerful.

One week I got a phone call they had been in a car accident and Mrs. Benson had broken a bone; her arm, I think. They insisted that I not visit. I did anyway, for just a few minutes. As I was leaving, Mrs. Benson said, “I’m not going to tell anyone you came by. You didn’t have to come, and if I do tell people all the old people will expect you to come see them every time they get sick.” I could not believe what I was hearing, but was I ever thankful for her wisdom.

Oh, and those “old people” were her peers.

Myrl Kitchens
The “Adult Ladies” teacher in my very first church. She was a great encouragement, and faithful to teach those ladies for many, many ears. She was the first person to teach me what Genesis means by the sun and moon being given for signs.

Far from “callous disregard” for seniors’ concerns, those entrusted with spiritual leadership should help seniors see their true needs, learn to trust God instead of routines, and continue to press on toward the goal of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

A leadership lesson from guitarist Phil Keaggy

In my work environment I am surrounded by some incredibly talented young people. (Increasingly I’m surrounded only by younger people, but that is another post for another day…)

These men and women are quicker in comprehension, more knowledgeable than me in numerous areas of social media, have better marketing comprehension then me and–sigh–the list goes on.

As I grew older in pastoral ministry I regularly ran across people more talented than I. In my last pastorate one pastor was far better than me at relationship building, another was far better at project planning and execution, another far more talented in music and management, and another was every bit my equal in preaching. Everywhere I turned I was faced with a team member who excelled me in some area.

Most all of us have some amount of ego that flinches when one better than us comes on the scene. Humility–preferring others over ourselves–is far more admired than practiced.

Phil Keaggy Dream Again Cover

Phil Keaggy [Image credit]


This is often seen in ministry when identity in Christ is too closely linked to calling from Christ. In such a scenario, an older person can feel their identity threatened when the calling of another grows more prominent, or the gifts of another are surpassing. Jealousy is usually the result.

A Kingdom mindset finds older believers rejoicing over the calling and gifts of younger believers. Nowhere is this more needed than in areas of Christian leadership. Christian leaders need to rejoice when others do well. They must repent from and reject jealousy, which are roots of evil works.

Below is a video of guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy. It was shot before a concert. Keaggy is seated with another guitarist, James T. La Brie, who is clearly a fan. Keaggy is regarded, by those who know the subject, as one of today’s top guitarists and, perhaps, one of the greatest who ever lived. You do not even have to buy the Jimi Hendrix urban legend to hold that view. La Brie admits his nervousness, which is pretty easy to see with all the squirming he does.

What’s fun to watch, and instructive to older believers and leaders, is Keaggy’s supportive participation. La Brie starts with an instrumental he wrote. Quickly Keaggy provides guitar-body percussion, eventually playing along for most of the piece. La Brie then suggests a second effort, a Joni Mitchell song, and they play together again.

Through both of these, Keaggy makes no effort to overshadow his fan. At no point does he show anything but genuine interest and joy. I know less than zero about playing the guitar. This, however, is as much about leadership as about music.

If you are a younger person, what are some specific things an older person has done to encourage your leadership track?

If you are an older person, how can we avoid the pitfalls of jealousy toward younger, more gifted people who might ultimately take our positions?

Touch not God’s anointed?

December brought another frustrating, heartbreaking story of a multiple pastors guilty of sexual sins ranging from adultery to child molestation to rape. The influence of two successive pastors at one church were the focal point of a lengthy essay in Chicago Magazine. Entitled, “Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church,” writer Bryan Smith chronicles both accusations and admissions of Jack Hyles and Jack Schaap, both former pastors at the storied and fabled First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana.


The Chicago Magazine expose reveals a cult-like organization in which members are never to question the pastor, allowing for the most offensive and egregious actions to be swept under the rug. Or, equally as bad, allows them to be propagated for years. Writes Smith:

[Former pastor, Jack] Schaap is not simply one of those rogue evangelists who thunders against the evils of forbidden sex while indulging in it himself. According to dozens of current and former church members, religion experts, and historians interviewed by Chicago—plus a review of thousands of pages of court documents—he is part of what some call a deeply embedded culture of misogyny and sexual and physical abuse at one of the nation’s largest churches. Multiple websites tracking the First Baptist Church of Hammond have identified more than a dozen men with ties to the church—many of whom graduated from its college, Hyles-Anderson, or its annual Pastors’ Schools—who fanned out around the country, preaching at their own churches and racking up a string of arrests and civil lawsuits, including physical abuse of minors, sexual molestation, and rape.

The article also recounts some of the extreme teachings of the leadership, in particular the immensely influential former pastor Jack Hyles.

Virtually no one would marry without Hyles’s blessing, several former church members say. He soon took it upon himself to arrange marriages. According to Kaifetz, “When a guy like Hyles says, ‘This is God’s will for your life,’ you just say, ‘Well, I guess it is.’ ”

One area in which Hyles—a father of four—exerted particular control was child rearing. In this, his views were severe unto merciless. Using biblical passages as justification, Hyles preached that spanking was more than tolerable; it was a sacred duty. In his 1979 book How to Rear Infants, he wrote: “The parent who spanks his child keeps him from going to hell.”

Spanking “should be deliberate and last at least ten or fifteen minutes,” he continued. The blows “should be painful and should last . . . until the child is crying, not tears of anger but tears of a broken will.” They should “leave stripes” if need be. The age at which such punishment should begin? Infancy.

Several people who grew up at First Baptist recall that parents took the instruction to heart. “Beatings would last endlessly, it seemed,” says Mary Jo McGuire, 45, a corporate trainer in Colorado whose father was a deacon in the church. As a seven-year-old, she “used to count the lashes as a way to cope through the searing pain.” McGuire’s younger sister, Sherri Munger, told me she once received more than 300 lashes from a thick leather belt. When authorities were called, McGuire says, Hyles told the girls’ parents how to avoid arrest.

“What was going on [at First Baptist] was kind of like a process of hollowing out the followers and repopulating them with yourself,” says Schaap’s former editor. “[Hyles] took your voice, he took your beliefs, he took your likes and dislikes and opinions, and he gave you his own. But in the process of hollowing you out, he made you very weak.”

In her first one-on-one interview about the church, Hyles’s middle daughter, Linda Murphrey, a motivational speaker and coach in Southern California, remembers his followers as “zombies” who were “willing to believe and obey whatever he said.”

Some of my earliest memories of church harken to the influence of Jack Hyles and others in the “Independent Baptist” church movement. Sometime in my late elementary school years our church, under the leadership of a new, dynamic pastor, left our denomination and became independent. Hyles was among the most influential leaders of that movement. FBC Hammond was synonymous with the movement and Hyles with its theology. We heard a steady diet of short-hair and long skirts. Sometime after our family left they actually installed a sign forbidding any woman from entering the buildings if she was wearing pants.

On of the unmistakeable tenets of the Independent Baptist theology was that of extreme pastoral authority. This was taught as “touch not God’s anointed,” based on a verse from the Old Testament (Psalm 105:15). Pastors, we learned, if not explicitly then implicitly, were awaiting a vacancy in the Trinity.

It is with great sorrow I note how the abuse of this scripture has led to the kind of sinfulness recorded above. Unless your pastor is currently the king of Israel, that verse–indeed, that concept–does not apply. And if he is the king of Israel, he’d better be Jesus Christ.

The idea of “touch not God’s anointed” has been wielded like a light saber by many a pastor both in sinful power grabbing and in honest efforts to live according to God’s plan for His church. The Bible does teach us to learn from–even submit to–those in spiritual authority (Hebrews 13:7 & 17), but warns those leaders as well (1 Peter 5). The New Testament qualifications placed on church leadership are designed to prevent the very abuses we see all to often.

There are a few things that should send up all kinds of red flags should you see them in the pastor of your church:

1. Any claim to divine power or authority. Contrary to the “Lord’s anointed” teaching and those scary dying deacon stories the traveling evangelist told you, pastors are people, too. This is not to say we should disrespect them; we should not. Even when they do and stay dumb things. It does mean, however, that they are not God-like. The New Testament does not speak of church leaders in the same way David talked about king Saul. Pastors fill a divinely established office, but they are not divine, inerrant or infallible.

2. An insistence on unquestioning support. While some pastors act as if high school boys need more accountability than anyone else, the truth is pastors need as much accountability as anyone. Pastors need more than one person who will ask them hard questions, force them to rest, ensure they are spending enough time with their spouse, and that their own time in prayer and the Word is not suffering. Any pastor who demands or expects unflinching support has replaced God with his own ego, and is leading himself and the church down a destructive path. Such a demand often arises from his own irrational fears or sinful desires but, rather than doing the painful work of humble self-examination efforts are made to squelch any questions.

3. Excusing sin at the leadership level. In these church there is almost an obvious and ongoing double standard between the top pastor, the other leaders and the rest of the people. Those comprising the “inner circle” are often beyond criticism, having any transgression short of murder swept over the rug. This behavior has been seen in other places besides FBC Hammond.

4. Preaching the same things over and over. Preaching the whole counsel of God takes a lot of work. Avoiding the comfortable ruts of routine comes from immersing one’s heart and mind in the Word of God. Pastors who refuse accountability will soon find themselves preaching what they know. It’s all they can do. When pastors do not study, they do not learn, they are not changed. They have nothing to give. The same jokes, stories, verses and “hobby-horses” are signs of an inner breakdown.

5. A seeming obsession with a single subject matter. The Bible instructs us, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” A video of Jack Schaap simulating masturbation during a youth sermons can be found online. It is so graphic even the Chicago Magazine writer was nonplussed about it. When a “man of God” refuses correction from those around him, he has already refused correction from God’s word. At that point the mind overflows with garbage. It might be sex, materialism or power, but that which is inhabiting the pastor’s heart will make its way out.

Perhaps, rather than looking for verses like “touch not God’s anointed,” pastors should look at verses addressed to their Old Testament counterparts. Today’s pastors are not equivalent to the kings of Israel. They would more likely be related to the priests as those tasked with spiritual oversight. Why are verses like Jeremiah 2:8 not referenced by more pastors:

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me; The rulers also transgressed against Me; The prophets prophesied by Baal, And walked afterthings that do not profit.

Or maybe Jeremiah 5:31:

The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their ownpower; And My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?

(It’s worth noting the attitude of the people. They “love” their wayward prophets and priests.)

Jeremiah was not alone. Hear Ezekiel:

Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

Then this from Hosea (6:9):

As bands of robbers lie in wait for a man, So the company of priests murder on the way to Shechem; Surely they commit lewdness.

Now, I’m not saying there is a direct parallel from the New Testament pastor to the Old Testament priest or prophet. But, the roles do seem to be more closely related than that of pastor and king.

Those whose eyes are opened to the truth and attempt to leave spiritually abusive situation are often shamed and shunned. There is a biblical role for both, but it has nothing to do with power-hungry, sex-crazed pastors retaining manipulative control. If you are in one of these situations, then run with all of your might. All pastors do not exhibit cult-leaders like qualities, and all churches are not peopled by the blind and confused. For your own spiritual safety and maturity, find a church that reflects the life and teachings of Jesus, especially amongst its leadership.