EP26: Honoring the Elderly

Welcome back to another episode of the Grace Church Members

Podcast. I'm Chris Rivers, and I'll be

your host in today's interview. I'm here with Scott Mazingo,

Julia Eldred and Joey Altom. Thanks for being here today

guys. Hey, Chris.

Hello. Yeah.

Hey, Chris. Good to be with you.

Yeah. So our focus for today is to

unpack the significance of honoring the elderly by diving

into the spiritual, ethical and social aspects of senior care.

So through the lens of Grace Church's senior Honor ministry,

this episode aims to highlight the challenges faced by the

elderly. Julia, you've been deeply

involved in leading this ministry and we're recording

this during National Assisted Living Week.

I know we're posting this weeks later, but can you share some of

the core philosophy behind Senior Honor?

Sure. I've been involved with Senior

Honor for about 14 years as a volunteer, and so let me give

you a little background on National Assisted Living Week

for those who aren't familiar with this event.

So it was established in 1995 and it provides a unique

opportunity for residents. Their loved ones, the staff, the

volunteers, and local communities to celebrate the

individuals who live and work in assisted living communities.

It also allows us to learn more about the sector of longterm

care. As a church, we serve 10

communities throughout the upstate.

Each of our campuses has a dedicated assisted living

community that they partner with.

Through these partnerships, we serve approximately 650

residents and around 700 staff each week this.

Happens mainly through providing worship services, Bible studies,

activity support at the community's birthday

celebrations, and regular resident visits.

Julie, can you just give those numbers again?

That's a pretty big scope. Yeah.

So in the 10 communities that we partner with, we serve

approximately 650 residents and around 700 staff each week.

That's great. Also through Grace's senior

Honor ministry, we're seeking to minister to the needs of

residents and staff in these communities because God values

life from the cradle to the grave and has a divine purpose

to work both in and through every person, regardless of

their age. Our goals are to provide worship

and biblical community for those living in the assisted living

communities we partner with. In this environment, we're able

to disciple those we are serving and also have the benefit of

being discipled ourselves. So recently Matt was teaching

and he highlighted senior honor from the stage.

He mentioned this phrase. He said the highest love in the

lowest act, the highest love in the lowest act.

Could you just unpack that a little bit more for our

listeners? Yeah.

So the idea Matt challenged us with is that those of us in our

prime, whatever age that is for us, are to be serving those who

are no longer in what our culture considers prime or prime

of life. It's our responsibility to be a

blessing to those who are marginalized and in some cases

hidden or just not seen. It reminds me of where God talks

about due unto the least of these.

So another scripture that comes to mind is Psalm 71 Nine.

It says do not cast me away when I am old, do not forsake me when

my strength is gone. And I think this is a common

feeling of people that are in assisted living communities.

And so for us living out this idea can be challenging and

humbling. When we serve and deplete

ourselves to serve someone else, something in us is going to

change. We are able to see the image of

our creator in those we serve and have the opportunity to bear

our creators image to those who are vulnerable and marginalized.

Statistics say over the next 7 to 10 years, the number of those

that are living in these communities were will more than

double so. For us, that means our

opportunity to respond to this challenge from Matt and

scripture is growing. It's growing fast.

So as our baby boomers are aging, we're going to see twice

the population in the next 7 to 10 years.

Yeah. And so for is it true that for a

lot of the residents in these communities, wouldn't they

consider Grace Church to be their church?

Yeah, definitely the ones in the communities that attend our

weekly services at any of the communities do, we've had.

Residents and communities switch their membership to Grace

Church. They tied regularly.

We've even had the privilege to do a funeral service for several

residents over the 14 years that we've been involved with senior

honor. Wow, that's really awesome.

So Joey, we talked about these communities.

Let's let's go inside these communities for for just a

second and think about the staff.

I know a big part of National Assisted Living Week is is

focusing on the staff and drawing attention.

To just the the people that make everything work.

But one of the things that we learned is that a lot of these

staff are living paycheck to paycheck.

How does that and a few other facts about the staff, how does

that interplay in your mind with the the value and the dignity

that we as a culture are assigning the elderly?

If you think about the folks that are in care, whether they

ended up in care because families can't provide the care

or families won't provide the care, they're in a position.

Where the staff, the boots on the grounds are providing for

them meeting every need they have almost.

And if you look at the income stats, they are paycheck to

paycheck right around the poverty level.

A lot of these folks, it's where they live and they're trying to

do the best to provide for themselves and so they will jump

ship for minimal raises and creating gaps in one place to go

take a job somewhere else. And so there's a measure of

stability that's missing in the care when staff is turned over

and quite often. And so if you take a, like my

dad was in an assisted living facility a few years ago and he

passed away. And the day we were leaving, one

of the one of the nurses stopped and said, hey, we just want to

thank your family for being so awesome.

And I'm like, you don't know my family.

We're we're, we're okay, we're okay, we're not awesome.

And I said, well, what makes us awesome?

And they're like, well, you showed up consistently and we're

just here with your dad. We don't have a lot of folks

doing that for their families. And then she said, and you, you

gave us some Chickfila gift cards and a tray from Publix

after he passed. Nobody really thinks of us and

treats us that way. And so we were awesome for doing

what we thought was the bare minimum, and it just speaks to

the value that we assigned to the elderly and the care they

received. That's really interesting.

Yeah, and just to interject a personal story that's pretty

recent, we had a family member, my wife Ashley, Her mom passed

away. She's been in the care community

for seven years and it's been a sensitive topic for Ashley

because she's an only child. So she's bearing a lot of the

the caregiving. And in those last three or four

days, her mom was able to pass peacefully there in her care

community and we saw so many people come in and love her.

And this was not an unusual occurrence.

This this was the folks that had been loving her for seven years.

And we it just surprised us and and it and it it humbled us.

And so here is Ashley thinking that we're her only family.

We're her mom's only family and we're bearing the weight.

And then in that moment we realized that it was we were not

alone. That that this wonderful staff

had been sharing in that. Privilege of caring for her mom

for for all those years and specifically the last six months

as their health had declined. And so it it really, it really

brought home this point that the staff is an extension of the

family members and I'm just glad that we have a chance to draw

attention to that And we hope that this stirs some thoughts

just as we have volunteers going in and out of these care

communities, we have a lot of people who.

I have family members, if not now in the near future are

facing those decisions and we just hope that we'll look at the

staff differently. Is that fair to say, Julia?

Yeah. Absolutely.

It's easy to look at the staff and what they're doing and their

attitude and actions through your lens.

But you've not been in a community all day.

You've not had to walk the hard, you've not had to see loss.

You've not had to see challenge. You've not been.

Rejected for how you're caring for someone unintentionally,

right? But there's a lot of heavy that

staff and communities carry as well.

That's. So good.

Yeah, it's been my experience that it's easy for those not in

there every day, all day to make the staff a sum of the worst

things they experience inside a care facility, and that's simply

not the case. That's a good word.

Yeah. Joey, the last time we talked we

it was interesting how we talked about the ethical and spiritual

concerns and you raised a few questions, you had some

interesting stories, but can you just elaborate on just the

pro-life culture concerning the elderly?

Yeah. The question that came to me,

and it's been in my mind for a number of years, is.

It is our when I say our the church at large, not just Grace

Church but the church at large, is our pro-life ethic around the

elderly in line with the scriptures.

Because we would say all life has value because all life is

God-given and all life is good. And all life bears out his image

in this broken and central war. But it still is good.

And so if that's the case, then we are to care for folks

wherever they are in life. And it's particularly as they

age and they move into a season again where families either

won't or can't provide care. And we have resource that we can

bring to bear where we bring some relief in their life, where

we make their life better because we see them as image

bears And our brothers and sisters, I would say we're

responsible for that because I mean, I am 51 and I've been

through this with my dad and all my friends are going through it

in some ways. I mean, the complicated, nuanced

issues of end of life care is overwhelming not only for the

families trying to figure out what to do, but for those in

care because they went from being independent to fully

dependent. I mean, whether it be

economically, socially, relationally.

I mean everything they once could do, they no longer can do.

And it's incredibly disorienting and incredibly, I mean, sad.

I can't imagine what it's like. And so for us as a church, as

Christians, if we're going to provide honor and dignity to

these image bearers, then we have to be present with them in

their lives, and that is providing services, that's

taking our kids around, that's doing all sorts of things.

Because I mean the loss and disempowerment those people must

feel that we will feel one day. Like, if we can't empathize and

sympathize with that now and move into it, we are missing an

incredible opportunity to disciple them in this season of

life and growing our own discipleship.

I'm just letting that hit me like I want to say something,

but I don't. I don't.

I don't know what to say. I mean it's it's convicting.

Well. Uncomfortable and tricky.

Yeah, I mean, cuz there's there's we don't want to neglect

our opportunity. We don't want to neglect our

witness. But I like what you said there

at the end. It it's more than that.

It's more than a negative. Like we need those folks.

We need them in our lives. And the idea of being image

bearers, I mean, it's just so in and so important to to think

about what does that mean to to bear that image.

And so Julia, you know, we can get image bearing language from

Genesis. You mentioned Matthew 25, the

statement of Jesus about caring for the least of these.

Psalm 71 I think was referenced earlier.

Don't cast me away when I'm old. Do not forsake me when my

strength is gone. Can you just take these?

These passages and a few others and just kind of tie them

together and give us a charge on how we should take these

passages and begin to really soak them in and apply them in

our actions towards our elderly communities.

Yeah, the Bible has a lot to say around the topic of caring for

and honoring the elderly and what our responsibility towards

them is. One of the statements that.

Is in my head. Often about honoring the elderly

is that God values life from the cradle to the grave, so there's

not an expiration date on when we stop valuing life.

And in the scripture we find that we're charged to live this

out in many ways. If we look at Leviticus 1932, it

says stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the

elderly, and Revere your God. I am the Lord.

This is one of the scriptures that makes our attitude towards

the elderly very clear. We are to honor them.

There are many other scriptural examples of what honor and

dishonor are, and these give us a clear idea of what honor is

considered. So for a definition based on

what I see in Scripture, honor is to esteem, Revere, regard,

respect, give recognition to, or recognize the value, importance,

or significance of someone. And in contrast to that, the

opposite of honoring would be to despise, reject, mock, show

contempt for, be ashamed of or speak evil or poorly of someone.

These are principles that apply to all elderly.

A lot of times when you go into a assisted living community,

you're not going to agree with the politics or religious

beliefs or things that you run into there.

And so this principle, these principles.

Apply to those we agree with and those we don't, and so that can

be challenging sometimes. So this is a that's a

transcendent principle of respect and honor, regardless of

our own likes or dislikes. Absolutely.

And this goes back to the whole being formed and made in the

image of God and the cradle to grave idea that you mentioned

earlier. Yeah.

That's great 100%. There's also a set of 10

principles that are used in many assisted living or longterm care

communities. They are from what is called the

Eden Alternative, and they're actually foundational and

deconstructing negative attitudes about aging and

changing abilities. Although these aren't directly

taken from scripture, many of them aligned with Biblical

thinking around aging, so I wanted to just share two of

them. So principle 8 states the wisdom

of the elders. Grows in direct proportion to

the honor and respect accorded to them.

So in Job 1212 we find the statement Is wisdom not found

among the age? Does not a long life bring

understanding? We clearly see here the value

and significance found in the elderly.

Yeah, I remember the last time we were talking, you shared a

story about Stella. Can you share that?

Yes, absolutely. I met Mostella about 14 years

ago while serving as a volunteer through Senior Honor.

Stella's father was a circuit rider preacher, which we don't

find anymore or not very often. One of his jobs was to ride on

horseback from town to town and preach the gospel at different

churches. It was one Father's Day and we

were sharing stories and memories about our fathers.

And so Stella shared. That whenever her father met

someone before he would leave, he would say two things to them.

He would tell them God loves you and eternity is a long time.

The story was wisdom given to Stella from her elder or her

father, and Stella passed that wisdom on to me in the role of

being my elder. What this did for me is I

learned the beauty and simplicity of what sharing the

gospel could look like from this one moment of sitting with an

elder. If I did not honor and respect

the value in my elders at that moment, I would have lost out on

the opportunity of finding some wisdom and understanding.

And So what you're reminding us is that there are hundreds in

the communities that we're serving.

There are 650 Stellas with countless Nuggets of wisdom that

have been passed down to them that are just just fruit for us

to enjoy. By simply engaging in the

conversation, just like we're doing now.

Yeah, absolutely. Or simply just sitting and

listening. And listening.

You can't put a price on sitting and learning from someone who

has walked the path of living for Christ twice the amount that

you have. For some people that serve in

our senior honor communities, it's three times their age.

Yeah, tell us about another principle from the Eden

alternative. Yeah, so Principal 4 reminds me

a little bit of Matt's statement we talked about earlier.

When we serve and deplete ourselves to serve someone else,

something changes in us and the principal states.

To give care to another makes us stronger.

To receive care gracefully is a pleasure and an art.

A healthy human community promotes both of these virtues

in its daily life. If I am thinking about Scripture

again, it makes me think of Psalm 7118 and 19, which says

now that I am old and my hair is Gray.

Don't leave me God. I must tell the next generation

about your power and greatness. God, your goodness, reaches far

above the skies. You have done wonderful things,

God, there is no one like you. So in this, David was most

likely the writer here and this. Can be applied to the church at

large or any believer in distress.

So the scripture gives an example of giving and receiving

through the simple act of serving and being present.

We let our elders, or the elders we serve, feel valued and

remembered, and we're open to the opportunity of being changed

ourselves from what we can learn from their life, from their

wisdom. Yeah, I love that verse because

there's just such an imperative. I must tell the next generation.

Of your power and greatness. Yeah.

And like you mentioned earlier, when you have decades of

following God and you see the stories, just the excitement

that the Stellas of the world have to be able to just just

share their story. And we talk about that a lot.

When we talk about evangelism, the gospel, we're just like,

just tell your story. And so that's a that's a really

beautiful tie into Psalms 71. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think also that if we are not there and present to hear

the story or. Stealing a blessing from the

elderly. We're stealing a piece of what

they can still contribute. Even though they can't, you

know, work in a normal workforce or do the things they used to

do, they can still contribute. And that is a hugely impactful

and fundamental way that they can by sharing.

Wisdom, and who God is, and who God spend to them.

Yeah. Now, Joey, you walked us through

some just personal experience with your dad earlier.

You've also served as campus pastor, Powdersville, most

recently in Travelers Rest. Share a little bit about your

experience as a campus pastor, just leading the charge for

senior honor in those congregations.

Yeah. So it was just people lose

independence and they grow independence.

That's a easy path to losing their identity.

And so for us as a church, our responsibility to be present

with our brothers and sisters, being able to apply the truth of

the scriptures to remind them their identity is in Christ, is

something that we have to take very seriously.

And we we can do that in a number of ways by reading the

scriptures of them, by sharing our stories with them, by

listening to their story. The value of singing in these

facilities is fascinating. I've sat in rooms and watched

people not 8 be able to have. Not be able to maintain

conversations. But when somebody sits behind

the piano in that facility and plays a hymn that they have

grown up here in all their lives, something comes alive in

them and they're able to worship and able to connect.

And so for us as a church like that, that is who we want to be.

We want to be people who see our brothers and sisters been

marginalized to some extent, to being cared for by people who

aren't highly valued financially.

That we have to be moving toward them in a way that we make the

gospel real and tangible for them, trusting that that's what

God had us do. Last weekend we at Powdersville

campus, we did a outreach fair and so we had an opportunity

after each service to go out and learn about different areas of

ministry that we could get plugged into.

And so it was really. Impactful to go check out the

senior honor table. So maybe tell us a little bit

about The Who, the what, the how and where of this Ministry

senior honor. OK.

Yeah, sure. There's a lot.

So hold on. Yeah.

So The Who are our focus of senior honor ministry are the

residents and the staff that are in the assisted living

communities that we partner with throughout the Upstate.

The reason we do this is because God values again life from the

cradle to the grave and has a divine purpose to work both in

and through every person. Our what?

Our goal for Senior Honor is to minister to this group of people

through sound biblical teaching, transparent spiritual

relationships, authentic friendships, and solid

counseling. The way we achieve this goal is

by intentionally engaging with residents, their families, the

community staff and caregivers. And this can happen in a lot of

ways. Some of them are the weekly

church service when we go and visit with residents, one-on-one

supporting ongoing activities in a community, and just so many

more ways. So if you're wondering where you

can serve or volunteer, every campus has a dedicated senior

honor partner community. You're not restricted to

volunteering at the site your campus partners with, but this

would be the best place to start.

If you live right next door to one of our other communities,

start there. And the charge is universal.

So even if it's not one of our partner communities, if you have

a connection at a senior living community, start there.

Go in and see what the needs are.

Ask what you can do. Ask if there's a resident who

could use visits. On our website you can find a

list of all of our partner communities.

Just by typing Senior Honor in the search bar and then a window

will pop up and it's 2/3 of the way down the page.

That's awesome. When you were a campus pastor

leading the charge on some of this at your campus, like what

were some of the stories that came out of community groups or

different groups that actually participate in what you're

talking about? Yeah, without fail, people would

be a little hesitant to go about what they would see about what

they've experienced, what it was going to be like.

But also without fail, once people went and they were around

the folks and they were with other people being on mission,

being able to take their kids. I mean, it was a legit reward to

carve out time on Sunday afternoon to go over and be with

them. It was rewarding in a number of

ways. I had a story coming out where

one of our folks said, you know, I used to hate sitting around

listening to my grandmother tell all these stories, but what

would I do now to be able to go back and hear all these stories?

And now I can go here for folks with my grandmother's age.

I can go hear stories from them. And that's just a blessing for

me, being present with them and then being present with me.

Yeah. If you were sitting with.

Some people and you're What are some questions that you would

want us to ask if you were sitting in a room like that?

Worships not started yet, but it's about to.

And just like take us there right now, what would be some

questions, some things that you would want to challenge us as

far as asking the residents? Yeah, I mean, people that work

there, people that are actually residents there.

I mean, what would you love to capture our imagination?

Yeah. So if you take, let's take the

residents first, learning their story, hey, where are you from?

What was your life like, especially if they're Christian?

How did you come to faith? And you have to be ready because

some stories are very sad because their family can't

provide care for them. So this is the best they can do.

And then the some families have chosen not to.

Years ago when I was in a facility, we were having a

service and everybody was gathered around and playing the

piano and singing and worshipping and laughing and

swapping stories about being young.

And I noticed off to the left of the room there was a lady

sitting by herself, and I couldn't have that.

So I walked over and started talking to her.

And she was fully in her right mind.

Her body is good. Her husband died somewhat

suddenly. They had a farm with some

acreage that he tended to, and she had her roles and

responsibilities there as well. And when he passed, her kids

didn't think she could keep up with the family farm, and they

had a chance to make some money on it.

And so they made some money and they put her in there, and she

sees them by once a month. And I asked her how that made

her feel, and she said it made her feel terrible.

And the reason she can't go sit in the service that we were

providing there is it reminds her how much she misses her

service with her husband and her local church.

And so last I heard, she's still there, still sits on the

sidelines. But it's a blessing to her just

about any proximity with her. But even going to talk with her

and just learning that man, she's there against her will in

some ways open my eyes to like our real responsibility for

people and then for the staff. Like I asked one of the so my

dad was in a memory wing and I asked one of the staff, I said,

hey, tell me the hardest part of your job.

I said just tell me. It's something that we don't

see. That's the hardest part of your

job. And she said, well, at night

when there's no family here and the staff is minimal because

we're short staffed and you hear all the sounds coming from the

wing and you know that we have minimal resource that we can

bring to provide relief for all these people in this memory

wing. And she said, I just stand in

the hall and pray because I know I can't do anything else.

So all I can do is stand on this hall and pray that God would

work and be in the hearts and minds of these people.

And I pray for the day when they're not suffering anymore.

And that was just a real compelling thing to me to hear

from her, because I all I see is the the daytime when there's

more staff and there's more people present, right?

And so it isn't. It was really eye opening to me.

Wow. Well, if I could just speak to

the role of the family. You know, one of the byproducts

of so many of these communities is they they do shield us from

hundreds of people who are aging and hundreds of people that are

dying. And, you know, we were a family.

When young kids, all the grandparents, young and healthy,

and our kids were never around any elderly people, which means

they were never around death and dying.

And that's not a healthy thing. And so I'm thinking about

elementary age kids. And so just down the street

there was a community. Ashley would take the kids,

they'd go see Miss Gloria. She loved to see the kids.

They would come in. It always be candy.

They would tell stories. We would go there for trick or

treating at Halloween. It was just great.

But then one month Miss Gloria got sick and then Miss Gloria

passed away. And that was just a sweet time

to remember her life for our our kids.

And also just come to grips with the reality that life doesn't

last forever. And we could not have engineered

that for them. And it was real and it was human

and it was tangible and it was sweet.

And there was just this sense of God, creator, image bears,

temporary life on earth, future in heaven.

That was a living illustration for our family.

And I'm just really, really grateful.

Grateful for that. And so just to.

Any young families and you're thinking about this, you're

listening to this and you're thinking about this, just just

picture what that could look like as you incorporate those

kinds of relationships into your family.

Yeah. Well, I want to thank every

volunteer that has been involved in senior honor, very grateful

for y'all's energy and just appreciate you Julia, if you

could just tell us a little bit about how can we?

Get involved. What does that look like from a

campus level? Share with us how we can get

more involved in this. Yeah, so every campus has a

champion for their relationship with their assisted living

community. And so you can fill out a

connect card, you can go on the website and filled out, fill out

a digital connect card for serving opportunities and mark

Senior Honor. If you can't find the little box

to check, you know write it in the comments and that will go to

your campus. Staff and they will put it in

the hands of the correct person and somebody on a senior honor

team will reach out to you and let you know what next steps are

for that particular community. Yeah, that's great.

Well, I want to thank you guys for being here.

It's been a rewarding episode. And I think for for me

personally, what I'm excited about is about our community

group and just what is the next year look like for us?

We have people in our community group that have kids.

This is something doable I think for our group to go once a

month. So we're trying to figure out

how to do that. So if you want to learn about

that more, do what Julia just mentioned.

But I think this has been great and grateful for y'all today.

Thanks, Chris. Yeah.

Thanks. Well, as we wrap up today's

episode, we want to thank you for joining us.

If you have questions or want access to additional resources,

be sure to check out the podcast page located in the show Notes.

Thanks for joining us today and we look forward to joining you

on the next episode.