The author of a book on how churches and other organizations can help mitigate the effects of what he calls “the looming retirement crisis” was a recent guest on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.”
Jonathan Grimm, a licensed investment advisor and author of “The Future Poor: How Families and Communities Can Join Together to Survive the Looming Retirement Crisis,” was the guest of hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe. Listen to their 57-minute conversation here.
Up to 9 out of 10 people won’t have sufficient assets to live well during their retirement, according to Grimm. “What happens if we have lots of poor seniors running around? What about all the people who don’t retire by choice?” Grimm wondered. Most people don’t retire when and how they want to, he said. They’re forced into it either through aging or employment issues, or for medical, disability or family reasons.
“My book is all about the trajectory of where we’re headed. Most of us are going to be poor in the future,” Grimm said. What do we do about that?
Those demographic pressures could also make things difficult for churches and other nonprofits, Grimm said in response to a question from Doong. “If you have lower church attendance and people’s ability to give decreases over time, that’s not a good model, especially as things become more expensive,” Grimm said. “It’s a problem that’s not isolated in people’s individual financial situations. There are these really deep community situations as well that we’ve got to think about and begin to plan for — and probably do some things very differently moving forward than the way we’ve done them in the past.”
Despite the lessons learned from the Great Recession of 2007–09, which was brought on in large part by a housing crisis, “we keep returning to 1980s financial advice, saying what worked in the previous quarter-century is the thing that’s going to work for the next quarter-century,” Grimm said. But to make that paradigm work, American workers would each have to save $30,000 annually, which “eliminates most people from the equation,” he noted.
Churches can play “a big part” shaping what the financial future will look like for seniors, Grimm said. The first step is to help scrap the “retire at 65” mentality “and talk about what people need for their entire lifetime, taking a serious look at the statistical data on the likelihood of certain life events happening” and the products in the financial world that can help cover those expenses.
Grimm defines health broadly to include economic stability and access to quality education, medical care and the built environment. “There’s also a social connection piece, making sure people have a social environment they can operate in,” Grimm said.
Churches have historically been instrumental, filling portions of many of those needs. “We used to be deeply involved in those things that make us healthy, but we have backed away,” he said. “I think there’s a real opportunity to return to those, including creating economic stability for everyone attending our church, especially as people age and encounter the serious things of retirement, which is a precarious situation.”
While retirement may not be a “flashy” topic, “it’s relevant to churches now,” Catoe said. “It’s a new emerging mission field many of us don’t know much about.”
Grimm said the PC(USA) “has been on the front end of a lot of social issues, which is great. I think this might be one of the most equal opportunity crises that we’ve had. It cuts across gender, orientation and ethnic lines.
“I’ve asked some of my pastor friends: if 9 out of 10 people in your church are headed toward poverty, would you do anything different in your ministry? Everyone will come to something that’s socially or economically valuable to them. You don’t need to go very far in the Bible to see poverty is something we should be working on.”
“What if the poor is all of us?” Grimm wondered. “If the church becomes the place that creates economic stability for people, what kind of draw could that be? People would see that as revolutionary.”
New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Tom Taylor. President and CEO, Executive Office, The Presbyterian Foundation
Nicki Thomas, Gift Processing Associate, Funds Development Operations, Administrative Services Group
Let us pray:
God, remind us to love and serve one another always. Open our hearts in a positive way so we too will know that we have enough loaves to share. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment