From Religious Intelligence:
Of the 3.2 million people going to church on an average Sunday in England, over 900,000 are 65 or over. That is one person in nine over 65 in the entire country.
The opportunity therefore to reach out to other folk in the country is huge, which is exactly what Manchester diocese found when they started their “Back to Church” campaign in 2005, and what the recently published Tearfund survey showed of some 3 million waiting to be invited back to church. A good many of such people are older people.
Through the wonders of modern health science we are living longer on average, and over the past 50 years the expectation of life, for both men and women, is some eight or nine years more, although women usually continue to live longer than men. Since until very recently the normal retirement age was 60 or 65 (that is, the extra years were not translated into an extended working life), these “extra years” being mostly when people are between 65 and 74. Those who are 75 today are often of similar health and energy as those who were 65 in 1957.
We have a real demographic time bomb as the baby boomers draw their pensions and need more and more medical treatment and care. For the church that means that many parishes are kept going by the elderly but this has been so as long as I have been aware. Perhaps they are self generating and those in the 50 plus range are the new recruits.
The challenge is attracting the young and that means a cultural change working where it has been tried.
Pageantmaster,
The real challenge is creating Christ Followers amid any generation. Attracting … well, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. Now, for me the more interesting question is, “Why would the Holy Spirit bother sending lost people to churches that don’t know what to do with them?”
MD Brian
MD Brian
The Spirit blows where it will but you have a good point. The CofE does have the programs and the resources to help parishes move forward with looking after them. But many church populations are ageing with ageing vicars and may not feel capable of moving forward with outreach to communities they are in who they may feel pass them by. There is some evidence that many people are awaiting an invitation to come to church but the church also needs to be prepared to respond when people come.
The trouble with these sort of programmes such as the ‘Back to Church’ one is that there is no point in one off evangelism [which I use in the broadest sense] but we also need to follow through and that is what we are SUPPOSED to be doing. Its a cultural thing for parishes and requires some courage rather than leaving it for someone else to do.
Regards.
So somewhat more than a quarter of CoE churchgoers are over 65. Does this seem like a surprise, or something unusual? Is it any different than what we find in TEC? In the churches I have attended in the past, we would have been hard-pressed were it not for the labors (and probably, the funds) of the silver-heads in the congregations.