“What does it look like for us to network?” the Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia, the designated strategic director of NEXT Church and vice moderator of the 221st General Assembly (2014), recently asked a room full of leaders representing five independent nonprofits that support Christian educators, youth workers, older adult ministry, college campus ministry, and camps and conference centers.
To illustrate how older adults can build bridges to young people through intergenerational ministry, author and speaker Missy Buchanan selected an illustration that was brand new when many of her listeners were youngsters — the Golden Gate Bridge.
After serving for many years as a commissioned lay pastor of Brentwood Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery of Long Island, New York, a Matthew 25 presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Rev. Ida Rosario retired at the end of 2020 to start a new season in her life and ministry. Today she serves as a minister in a small multicultural church that partners with a Hispanic congregation of more recent immigrants.
To help equip congregations for Older Adult Week in the PC(USA), which begins on Sunday, May 2, the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministries Network is offering a series of free webinars. In partnership with the PC(USA)’s Office of Christian Formation in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the first of three webinars, “The Circle of Life,” is being offered from 7 p.m. through 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, April. 22.
Many people of faith have stopped asking big, unanswerable “why” questions. Questions like, “If God loves us and God is all powerful, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?”
Presenting Thursday during a webinar sponsored by the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministries Network, the Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner discussed what sociologists have labeled “the Bernie Effect,” natural bonds that can form between Millennials and people old enough to be their grandparents, or even great grandparents. What’s going on there resembles the way millions of young people were drawn to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, during his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020.
As president of the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministries Network, Michele Hendrix has long been an advocate for the PC(USA)’s Older Adult Week Sunday, which falls on May 3 this year.
Baby Boomer Pat Baker has been working in the field of aging for 45 years — mainly with the federally funded Older Americans Act programs, which have been providing seniors with services such as meals, caregiver support and transportation since 1965. When she first started, she was seeing people in their 60s and 70s participating in the senior programs. But now, as she herself retires, she has noticed a change. Participants are now in their 80s and 90s.
For the first time ever, representatives from the five “ages and stages” ministry associations that work in Christian formation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) were in the same room, at the same time, with the same goal: to figure out how they might more collaboratively work together with the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).
For the first time ever, representatives from the five “ages and stages” ministry associations that work in Christian formation were in the same room, at the same time, with the same goal: to figure out how they might more collaboratively work together with the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).
