Old people in Church

I love the elderly.  I’ll leave what age group specifically I’m referring to your imagination, but everyone has a concept of the elderly, so just know that I love them.  Because I pastor a young congregation in Massachusetts, where we play rock music and dress how we want, it might be easy to assume I’m pretty one generational.  But I think we, the body of Christ, need the experience and life wisdom of an older generation to guide us through the decisions and life strategies that we may or may not be ready for.
The month I moved into the lead pastor position @ Fellowship, I overheard an older lady who had left our church the year before for a more “conservative, older congregation” tell someone, “I think Fellowship Church is a great church for young people.”   There are two issues here:

1.  It’s incredibly hard to know when to step out of certain roles in a church to give younger people opportunities to serve and lead.

2.  Churches need to find ways to utilize an older generation in a mentoring  capacity, to make benefit the glorious Kingdom of God.

Whether you’re young or old, God has a place for you in His kingdom and has given you gifts to use for His glory.  Those gifts may evolve over time, but they will never run dry.   So how do we maintain success for a long time and utilize everyone’s gifts?

What’s the balance here?

Related posts:

1. The Trick to Success (or how to choose a church)
2. A letter to Fellowship Church
3. The Awakening