CONGREGATIONS seek to appeal to retirees

By Joe Earle

As their congregations age, churches are changing.

“In the boom years, the churches focused their personnel, resources and finances on young families with children, so we did not get good at focusing on older members,” said Rev. Dr. David Jones, senior pastor at Decatur First United Methodist Church. “Now we have predominantly older members.”

Signs of the aging of local congregations show up from the pews on Sunday mornings to the kinds of programs churches are offering on weekdays.

The changes are needed, church leaders say, because many older, mainstream congregations are growing smaller and are facing new demands as their particpants grow older.

A 2015 survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center found that while roughly seven of 10 U.S. adults identified with some branch of the Christian faith, that percentage had dropped by nearly eight percentage points from a similar survey in 2007. At the same time, Pew found the median age of mainline Protestants had risen to 52, up from 50 in the 2007 survey, and the median age of Catholic adults was 49, up from 45 in the earlier survey.

Although Pew found that while the American public was growing less religious overall, there were no signs of a drop in commitment among those Americans who maintained their beliefs. “Indeed,” Pew said in a press release, “by some conventional measures, religiously affiliated Americans are, on average, even more devout than they were a few years ago.”

Pew found that 89 percent of Americans surveyed believed in God (down from 92 percent in 2007), and 63 percent were “absolutely certain” God exists (down from 71 percent in 2007). In Georgia, the 2015 study reported, more than 92 percent said they believed in God and 74 percent were “absolutely certain.”

Some religions are growing. Pew reported that non-Christian faiths as a group increased by 1.2 percent points, to 5.9 percent of the total. In Atlanta, Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston, abbot of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, which turns 40 years old this year, has noticed new people of all sorts coming to his center. “We’re getting a steady influx

with age comes ‘wisdom of the elders’

By Joe Earle

Growing older can change people’s perspectives on faith.

Both Rev. Dr. David Jones, senior pastor at Decatur First United Methodist Church, and Dr, Dock Hollingsworth, senior pastor at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist, say they have seen that in their own lives as well as the lives of members of their congregations.

“There are fewer things that are important than we thought when we were younger,” Jones said. “When we talk about the ‘wisdom of the elders,’ that’s what we talk about....If I had to pick one subject, I’d say: relationships – relationships with God, relationships with family and with those around you, whether close or far away.”

Hollingsworth says he’s learned to worry less about what he believes about every small matter that comes up and more about really important things.

“I think I believe fewer things a lot more tenaciously,” Hollingsworth said.