Friday, December 08, 2006

From the Sacred Sandwich
YOUTH PASTOR OVERSEES NEW MINISTRY FOR "XTREME" ELDERLY

January 2006 --- Hot on the heels of leading a wildly successful, culturally relevant youth group at Keystone Community Church, Youth Pastor Tad Grunholtz has recently created a similar ministry for the elderly in hopes of luring disaffected old people back into church. He calls the group Xtreme Seniors. “A lot of churches today just focus on the younger generation and ignore the elder members of the church,” explained Grunholtz. “But at Keystone, we came to the sudden realization during our last building campaign that old people have all the money. Sure, the youth are the future of the church, but we need a new gymnasium now.”

Using his thriving youth program as a template, Grunholtz has done away with the boring “Golden-Agers” Bible study group that was such a turn-off to many seniors...

4 comments:

Linda said...

old people have all the money

I think I actually remember reading that on some building fund literature within the last couple years. Did anyone else see that, or was I dreaming?

I hope it was all a dream!

Linda said...

Congratulations, Mr. D.

You picked up 42 profile hits in one day!

Holly said...

I thought this article was serious at first until I got to the part about old people and money. Until that part, I thought that was kind of a neat idea and at least better than ignoring the elderly!

Linda said...

We went to the Covenant church when our last two kids were born. The "grandmas" there ran the nursery. A few times a year the older (60's and 70's) ladies, would get together with the new moms. We'd do a little Bible study, did a Christmas cookie exchange one year, stuff like that. It was a wonderful thing...very natural...not a "program".

The new moms weren't "projects" of the "grandmas", they were friends.

Terry ran into one of the "grandmas" a couple weeks ago at a restaurant and mentioned to her about how Katie had prayed to receive Christ with her when she was in 1st grade. The grandma teared up.

I don't want to go to a church that doesn't have older people. And, I really think isolating people by age is a bad idea, as well. The older can be energized by the younger, and the younger can gain from the life experience of the older.