Sunday, January 8, 2012

What A Difference A Millenia or Two Makes

There once was a time where it seemed totally improbable that this tiny band of followers of a dead teacher could ever make much of an impact.  Religious and government leaders were bound and determined to put a stop to it.  Yet, within 300 years Christianity became the majority religion of the Roman Empire, something that was accomplished even before it was declared the 'official' religion of the empire.  

Rodney Stark wrote a fascinating book on this period, "The Rise of Christianity."  Stark took a look from a sociological perspective at how and why the church was able to grow like it did.  A lot of Christians don't really care for Stark's work because he tended to believe that the explosive growth of Christianity was not necessarily miraculous.  Personally, I believe both sides.  Stark identified a number of reasons the Christian belief had such appeal even in a time of intense persecution.  I believe he was right on the money, but I believe the qualities that were part of Christianity that he identified were there through the power of God.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a stodgy entry on church history, I'm actually going somewhere with it all.  One of the significant factors in the growth of Christianity was that it took to heart the mandates to care for the poor and the elderly, particularly the widowed.  To make a very simplistic summary of it all, Christians gained respect from non Christians because of the love shown by those Christians even in the most difficult circumstances.  

Fast forward to the early 21st century.  Society is staring down a demographic shift that has tremendous consequences ahead.  For the first time in history, the number of elderly in this nation outnumber the number of youth, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  There are tremendous concerns about the impact that will be made on our society when the baby boomer generation fully enters retirement age, and whether we have the resources to survive the burden this creates.  

This is where I'm getting to, finally:  Society today is starting to try to mobilize to prepare for the aging of the boomer generation.  Universities, government, senior centers, etc., are starting to come together to figure out how to meet this upcoming need.  There is one part of society that is conspicuously being left out of these growing coalitions:  the church.  Sure there's the temptation to go all conspiracy theory here on this, and while it's true that aspects of secular society would rather have nothing to do with the church, when it comes down to it it really isn't a matter of discrimination against Christianity.  It's happening because these coalitions are of groups that are actively involved in serving seniors.  Churches are being left out because quite honestly, churches are not getting in the game.  Churches today view senior ministry as visiting shut ins and having fellowship dinners, pretty much the same approach they've had for the last 50 to 100 years.  We educate our people on all the social and psychological aspects of adolescents and youth ministry, and we have absolutely no education for pastors in place on the social and psychological aspects of aging.

One of the reasons the church had such a tremendous impact in the early ages was because they were taking the lead on taking care of the forgotten.  The church was not only providing welfare but giving people dignity and purpose.  Today, we're sitting on our hands utterly and almost completely unprepared for how to minister to people as these changes approach, while other aspects of society are far ahead of us.

What a difference a couple thousand years makes.

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