Look around you. . .

Typically a small congregation or one seemingly in decline pits its hope on attracting young families.  My own parish has an abundance of young families but this is a peculiarity of our locale as much as it is the fruit of any deliberate outreach.  That said, the landscape of America is changing and the change is looking gray.  By 2032, about a quarter of the US population will be over 65, up from 10% in 1970.  We do not have far to go to reach that statistic.  It is already well represented in the pews in most of our congregations.  The young family is becoming rare while the gray haired retiree is becoming increasingly more common.

As I have said so often, the future of any congregation can be seen by looking around you.  If you live where there are young families, your future will look like those young families.  If you live in the rest of America, especially rural areas and small towns, your future will look different.  So look around you.  Do not beat the bush for the young families that may be underrepresented in the demographic of your locale but go after those who are there.  Gray haired folks need Jesus, too.  Another statistic suggests that those aging boomers may also be leaving the church at a faster rate than other generations.  So this is an urgent cause for them as well as for our parishes.

Chances are that many of the folks you already hang around with or live near are not attending a church or not attending one with any regularity.  The sad truth is that every demographic includes a healthy number of folk who used to be Christian but are not now practicing their faith.  We tend to value certain demographics higher but should we?  There is a hidden mission field all around you and even though it may look like the graying of America it is no less urgent for the cause of the Kingdom and for them.  Why do we ignore some folks in our pursuit of growth while we compete for the smaller numbers of another demographic?

Look around you.  Those are the folks who are or ought to be your primary mission field.  God has given us a future right in our midst.  Many of them were once active and practicing Christians and they are fast approaching that stage of life when attention goes to such questions as life, its meaning, and its nearing end.

Where I grew up the whole area is aging considerably faster than the rest of the nation.  There are fewer and fewer young families and the schools have fewer and fewer children.  In my hometown there are congregations that are a shell of their former size when families did predominate but there are plenty of folks who do not attend or do not attend with any regularity.  I suspect that this is truth in many other areas of the country as well.  The future for such areas will probably not lie in a resurgence of young families or children but the overall population of the town has remained rather stable -- just older.  I suspect that this is already well known in such communities but I wonder if we pay much attention to it.  

The graying of America is even more well represented in our congregations and they are probably not the easiest group to address with the Gospel but God has not called us to nor given us easy results.  We sow the seed.  We are not told to test the soil and see if it might support a harvest but to sow generously and extravagantly and even foolishly with the promise that God will bring the growth.  Even old fruit is fruit.  I know you already know this but we all need to be reminded from time to time.  Look around you and you will see the future of the Church even if there are few children to be found.