Ron Walter

Old Age Issues Have More to Do With Our Youth than Our Oldth. How Should That Impact Our Ministries?

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Older adults doing step exercises in the gym

Close your eyes and think of yourself twenty years older. Forty years older. What do you see? Does the thought of growing old scare you? Do you see wheelchairs, canes, nursing homes? How about hearing aides, or severe memory loss? These are things we often assume are inevitable. We assume incorrectly. Old age is not … Read more

Why Does the Church Seem Less Interested in Ministering With Older Adults today? Can We Reverse the Momentum?

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Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just me, but this just doesn’t make sense. We now have more older people in our nation (60 and older) than youth (under 18), a difference even more pronounced within the church. So why does the church seem less interested than ever in ministering to and with older adults? Not … Read more

Review of How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations

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How can we take the insights from this book and apply them to Inter Generational Ministries in our churches? Marc Freedman had already been influential to me, through his book Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life. I read that book while beginning my own sort of Encore transition, stepping away … Read more

There is More to Growing Old Than Aging: Understanding Aging From a Ministry Context

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Is it possible that ministry to and with older adults has a low priority because we are afraid of our own aging? The physical aspects of aging can be depressing. Aging means we are that much closer to death, and thus we dread growing older. It might come as a surprise that older adults are … Read more