Seniors

Think how difficult it is for smaller churches to effectively reach young people.  It may be a great goal, but the reality is that when the congregation is made up of primarily older people it is very hard to reach young people.  It would probably be a much more effective strategy to reach out to people who are most like the ones already in our congregation.  Few smaller churches specifically target senior adults.  We want to go after young families with children because we think that will help our churches grow faster, but these are the folks who are already overwhelmed with time and family demands.  Maybe we think all the older people in our communities are already Christians and don't need the Gospel.  Most churches would soon find out that is not the case if they contacted even a few senior adults.  In fact, what many churches are learning is that these are the people who are thinking about eternal matters and might be most open to what the Gospel says.  They know they are nearing the end of their lives, and many of them have a lot of questions about that.  The church is really the only institution equipped to answer many of those questions.  Our Gospel message is the only one that offers a word of hope to persons who are dealing with end of life issues.