Many churches are finding that the most effective ministries to the elderly are the ones planned and implemented by the elderly themselves.
The Telecare Club is a group of elderly persons from the Hanover Christian Church in Richmond, Virginia. Periodically, they send out a letter explaining Telecare to elderly persons in the community.
The letter features a big picture of a telephone and the caption: “Live Alone? Who Cares?”
It explains that every day of the year representatives from the church man the telephone each morning from nine to twelve noon. The church has three lines for this purpose.
Those who belong to the Telecare Club report in every day by phone, and usually chat a few minutes. If someone has not been checked off the master list by noon, one of the phone volunteers calls to check on the situation.
When people inquire about Telecare, volunteers send a membership information form to each person. Besides requesting name, address, and phone number, the forms also ask for the names of a close neighbor, a relative, a physician, a pastor, and a caseworker. Further questions include: Do you have a car? What persons have a key to your home or apartment? What is your physical condition? Is there anything else you would like us to know that would help us be of service to you?
After the forms are returned, the Telecare volunteers file them by name. As members begin to phone in each day, the telephone answerers talk with them a few minutes, listening and encouraging. Pastor Robert W. Maphis originator and overseer of Telecare, advises the volunteers to be warm and friendly and to be cautious in kidding with the callers. “Since they can’t see your face, they may not understand you’re kidding with them,” he says.
If a member doesn’t phone in, a phone volunteer will try to call that person. If there’s an emergency or no answer, the volunteer will pull the member’s file and contact a neighbor or relative who can look into the situation.
Once, an elderly woman had a heart attack, and it was a phone volunteer who contacted relatives. Another time a furnace duct fell out of the ceiling of an elderly person’s home, and Telecare quickly contacted a repair person for help.
“Most of the time,” says Maphis, “there is no serious emergency. We just provide a caring ministry to the elderly of our community, from the elderly in our church. I don’t know who gets blessed more.”
A Unique Library
The Capital Park Wesleyan Church of Salem, Oregon, has its church library on eight mobile carts, located just inside the main doors of the church.
The library was started when former pastor Al Harlow said to Marie Lind, “I know so many people who purchase good books, read them and then put them on a shelf somewhere to gather dust.”
Lind, who’d had some limited experience as a librarian, listened as Harlow suggested they ask parishioners to donate their good books to the church when they finished reading them.
The following Sunday he announced his idea from the pulpit, asking that people donate only books of current interest.
A flood of books poured in, and Lind was asked to set up the library. So she visited several church libraries, adopted a simple classification system, and added a few of her own innovations.
She classified the books into sixteen categories:
1) Autobiography and Biography,
2) Bible (studies, stories, translations),
3) Christian Living,
4) Church Organization and Administration,
5) Church History,
6) Church and the World Today,
7) Devotional and Prayer,
8) Christian Education,
9) Fiction,
10) Hymnology and Music,
11) Missions,
12) Poetry, Drama, and Art,
13) Psychology,
14) Religions and Cults,
15) Theology and Doctrine,
16) Reference Books.
When the books were categorized, Lind enlisted some men from the church to set up long tables, and then recruited twenty-one volunteers to form a book-processing assembly line. One person stamped the front and back of each book with the church name; the next person inserted date-due slips; another typed the back pockets and cards; one typed title and author cards; one stuck labels on the book spines and covered the books with plastic sheeting; the rest of the people stacked books and relieved those on the assembly line.
While the books were being processed and stacked, Lind talked with a man who excelled in woodworking, and they agreed that they wanted mobile carts to shelve the books. They found several in catalogs which were far too expensive to buy, but the man offered to build similar ones, for a fraction of the cost.
He mounted plywood sheets on an A-frame 36″ wide and 54″ high, 31/2″ at the top and 25″ at the bottom. Then he cut shelves 36″ long and 6″ deep, which he mounted on moveable brackets for proper spacing. He put heavy 3-inch casters on the bottom so the carts roll easily even when stacked with books.
The carts then were stacked and rolled to an area just inside the main door of the church. “I actually borrowed the idea of putting the library out by the door from a few churches who were experimenting with the concept,” Lind says. “The books have taken off like hotcakes. Even church visitors ask if they can check out books.”
Lind makes a special effort to talk with people as they brouse around the book carts. “Many times people are just looking for something interesting to read,” she says. ” Other times they appreciate talking to someone who can suggest books in their area of interest.”
Electronic Church Impact
Occasionally pastors and parishioners wonder whether the electronic church steals members and prospective members from their fellowships.
Gallup International and the Princeton Religious Research Center interviewed more than 1500 adults from 300 American communities and asked: “Would you say that religious television programs have increased your involvement in your local church and its activities over the last three years, or lessened your involvement?”
Of the 776 who watched religious programs on television, only 7 percent said their church involvement had decreased. Twenty-seven percent said it had increased. A further breakdown revealed the following:
¥ Thirty percent of Protestants reported an increase in church involvement; 7 percent reported a decrease; 63 percent said that watching religious programs made no difference in their church involvement.
¥ Thirty-four percent of church attenders reported an increase of involvement; only 2 percent reported a decrease; 63 percent said religious television made no difference.
¥ Twenty percent of nonattenders reported an increase; 12 percent reported a decrease; 66 percent said there was no difference.
The highest percentage of respondents who said religious television had lessened their church involvement included people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, singles, nonattenders, and non-members. But even those percentages were below 15 percent.
The bottom line of the study is that religious television programs (church broadcasts, preaching, crusades, talk shows, documentaries, dramatizations of the Bible) seem to make little difference in the degree to which people are involved in the local church. But when it does make a difference, it is more likely to increase involvement than to lessen it.
Raising Emergency Funds
“I no longer have to apologize for taking too many love offerings,” says Roy Harriger, pastor of First Church of the Nazarene, St. Joseph, Michigan. Harriger has developed a successful way of handling emergency financial situations.
Two years ago he announced a breakfast to some of the committed members of his church. He told them they wouldn’t have to pay anything; he was furnishing the bacon and eggs.
A match-shaped pen was put at each place setting “to illustrate that God’s love is matchless,” Harriger says.
During the breakfast he shared the reason for getting everyone together. “Time and again,” he said, “we have situations in this church that demand emergency money, muscles, and miracles. I’d like to start a 3-M club.”
Harringer explained that periodically 3-M members would get together for breakfast, discuss emergency needs in the congregation, and resolve to meet those needs if possible.
Since the first meeting, the original twelve has grown to twenty-five joyfully committed givers. Once, they roofed an entire house for a man-a $300 project that took several hours to complete. Another time they put out $700 to purchase dry wall, paint, and weather stripping to turn a cottage into a home for some senior citizens in their church. The project took two Saturdays to complete. Though contributions by 3-M members are above and beyond each member’s regular giving, the group has raised as much as $500 many times.
One noticeable benefit has been the elimination of excessive love offerings. According to Harriger, “People sometimes react adversely to love offerings when they are requested too often. They come to church wanting to hear the Word of God, and if they are bombarded by too many sales pitches they turn off.”
Harriger listed some other benefits of this two-year program:
¥ “It has given the core members of the church an opportunity to work together as a team to provide help for others.
¥ “It has helped us develop and maintain a vision for needy people outside our own fellowship.
¥ “It has been a catalyst in getting members involved in the larger ministry of the church. Once they contribute their own time and money, and see that their efforts have really helped someone, involvement in the church comes more easily.”
Mediation Tips
In more than twelve years of pastoring, Daniel G. Bagby, pastor of Seventh and James Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, has dealt head-on with anger in the church.
Bagby told us the steps he has found successful in mediating two angry parties: 1. Give each person a strong sense of worth. Let them know they are respected in the church; that their gifts and involvement have been positive to the church’s ministry; that their opinions count. 2. Next, try to get them to focus on issues, not personalities. Many cases of anger are entirely the result of a personality clash. Meet separately with the angry persons; get them to concretely identify the issues that have produced the anger; have them see the situation objectively. 3. Draw the two parties together for a mediating session. During this time it’s essential not to appear judgmental to either party. Make a conscious effort to be confessional, letting them know you experience anger and personality clashes with others in the church too.
Bagby has expounded on these and other points in his book, Understanding Anger in the Church (Broadman Press, 1979).
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