Fear Of Aging Out

You’re probably familiar with FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out, but let’s talk today about the Fear Of Aging Out, FOAO. (Yes, FOMO is easier to pronounce! And FOAO isn’t a familiar acronym…yet.)

FOAO is not irrational. We’ve seen it play out in many churches, with older adults digging in their heels, wanting their way…winning battles but ultimately losing the war. (And right now this fear has become front and center in presidential politics.)

Many shuttered churches failed to change with the times and didn’t leave the light on for the next generations. Some pastors held onto leadership reins too long, often contributing to this aging-out conundrum. We’ve also seen churches shun older adults in their attempts to reach younger generations, sometimes leading to insolvency.

Without an infusion of younger people, older congregations’ fate is commonly decline and death. Not necessarily a sudden, sharp drop, but a slow, methodical decline as the congregation’s average age inches upward. (Observations you maybe didn’t expect to hear from strong advocates of older-adult relevance, vitality and serving potential?)

Doesn’t this aging-out fear lead to ageism (devaluing people because of their advancing age)? It could but doesn’t need to. When older adults are only seen as a problem, this can easily become ageism. When older adults resist a church’s efforts to engage younger generations, they can reinforce leaders’ frustrations with the church’s older segment.

Looking on the brighter side, when pastors enlist older adults’ help in overcoming the aging-out problem, they help reactivate God’s generation-to-generation design for His Church.

Beyond just selling youthful ideas and asking older adults to foot the bill, there are many other ways older adults can help encourage younger generations in a local church.

In a healthy extended family, patriarchs and matriarchs are not irrelevant and tangential—relationships are forged throughout the family that have incredible two-way value. God’s family, the Church, has the same designer, and He wants relationships to flow from generation to generation.

Let’s move beyond fear and become part of the solution. As Paul the older encouraged the younger Timothy, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)