If I were to ask you how old you were, you would probably answer me with a number. However, a number may not tell me much about yourself except your chronological age. My mum was 94 when she passed away, but for the last ten yours of her life was struggling with dementia and Parkinson's. Dr. Houston, one of my teachers at Regent, is 99 and still producing devotions. If you didn't know them personally, 94 and 99 would tell you little about them. In their book The New Long Life, Andrew J. Scott and Lynda Gratton point out that:
The concept of age can . . . be biological (the age of your body), sociological (how others treat you) and subjective (how old you feel) (London, UK: Bloomsbury Press, 2021, 46).
Clearly the only age that is fixed is biological. The two others will differ for any number of reasons. Therefore, they tell us:
In the face of longevity, if we want to reimagine age then we must first decouple the idea of a simple link between time and age. That requires imagining your age is malleable — as you live longer and with a greater chance of good health, then what it means to be forty, sixty or eighty years old will change in profound ways. (The New Long Life, 46.)
We need to take this seriously because if indeed one in five Singaporeans is 65 and above, we are talking about a large number of people in society and in our churches, and these people will age differently and have needs and potentialities that are not linked to a chronological age.
In the past, numbers of those who were older were smaller and it was assumed that older folks were less productive and needed a lot of care. Many senior ministries functioned like day care centres for the elderly. Indeed, often they were infantilised and the challenge was to keep them occupied and healthy. The main offerings were line dancing and playing the ukulele. Now I think that line dancing and playing the ukulele are great activities and I am delighted that they energise so many. But there will be some who want to write devotions. And there will be those who will need a lot of care.
Is the church praying and thinking seriously about how we minister to those in their third third of life? How do we share the gospel with them? How will we disciple them? How will we care for them? How do we deal with the fact that people age differently?
The narrative of the ‘ageing society' is based purely on chronological measures of age, so concludes that there are simply more old people. By not allowing for 'age inflation' it fails to capture the huge changes in how people are ageing and ignores the opportunities and solutions that longer lives offer both individually and to society. (The New Long Life, 49.)
We can no longer assume that those who are older will need more help and be less productive. Such an assumption blinds us to both the fact that some will indeed need a lot of care while others have so much more to give, and that more and more will be in that second category.
For the longest time I have hated the names that churches gave to ministries for seniors. Names like ‘Golden Years’, ‘Silver Hair,’ ‘Empty Nesters’, etc. just sound uninviting and depressing. Recently I encountered a seniors ministry named Encore. As you know, encore means:
1: a demand for repetition or reappearance made by an audience.
2a: a reappearance or additional performance demanded by an audience.
b: a second achievement especially that surpasses the first.
(Merriam-Webster)
Sure sounds cooler than most of the names of seniors ministries I know. Like Caleb (Joshua 14:6–15), I for one want to come out for as many encores as I can before I transit to another stage, or, like mum, experience some God-dictated slowing down before that final transition.
PS. Bernice and I caught Crosby, Stills and Nash, live, in Singapore. When pressed for an encore they sang Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. Blew us all away. Sometimes the encores are best.