Mission Yearbook: Developing dementia-friendly worship services

Elaine Burrell

A recent webinar offered by the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network demonstrated that congregations can serve all God’s children by creating and posting dementia-friendly worship services. Watch the 46-minute webinar here.

For the past year or so, Point Loma Community Presbyterian Church in San Diego has been producing short — 10–15 minutes at the most — videos of worship services for families and friends to view with their loved ones. The recent workshop was led by Elaine Burrell, the church’s congregational care coordinator and director of senior adult ministry, and the Rev. Ben Lindstrom, an 83-year-old pastor who delivers brief, thoughtful homilies for the church’s recorded worship services. Find the church’s memory care worship services here.

“We’re so excited you are all here. Bless you for caring for these special people in our midst,” Lindstrom said. “Thank you for caring and for being God’s instruments.”

Burrell said the idea for the ministry took shape about two years ago when she and others began noticing several seniors were having difficulty making it to worship. “Maybe it was difficult to attend, or when they did, to follow along with the sermon,” Burrell said. “The service was too long for them to settle in, and fellowship time can be difficult for people experiencing cognitive change.”

The church “is blessed to have” a ministry media team, Burrell said, but both she and Lindstrom encourage congregations to provide brief services that fit their own context. Services can be offered in person, livestreamed, or recorded and then viewed later.

“It’s not so much the words that are said or the lyrics to the hymns, but the warmth we wanted to convey and the connection we wanted them to feel through Ben’s affect during the service,” Burrell said. “Spiritual well-being is important throughout our lives, from birth to our last breath. We didn’t want people to feel forgotten or that their spiritual wellness was unimportant.”

Simple language and “a clear, uplifting message should come through” during the service, Burrell said. A local Alzheimer's support agency “gave us a lot of positive feedback” once Burrell sent her contact there a draft version of the first service. The agency expressed appreciation for an online tool to help nurture the spiritual health of their clients. “They were the first to say they wanted a link to the playlist to share with their families,” Burrell said.

Lindstrom said that at age 83 his body may be declining, “but my heart brain is getting stronger, and my soul is enlarging. I am hungering for simple things,” including hugs and smiles, “genuine conversation, laughter and music,” he said. “I may not know your name, but I recall all the lyrics to every song written in the 1940s.”

“Genuineness and the spiritual depth of the preacher and the singer are more important to me now, not scholarship or profundity,” Lindstrom said. “These days I respond to things that have to deal with God’s nearness and God’s care for me. Anything that makes me feel like I did when I was a small child is what I really like.”

The Rev. Ben Lindstrom

In his sermons, Lindstrom uses Bible stories “that are more child-friendly,” such as Zacchaeus. “I love the sense that God wants to come to me where I am,” he said.

Don’t compare your service with others, Lindstrom and Burrell said. “Try to create things that come from your heart,” Lindstrom advised. “Whenever you do one of these, expect God to act. Anything you create believing God can do anything will produce a miracle.”

“These are people who are often forgotten,” Lindstrom said. “Take it to the bank: Miracles will happen, and you can see them for yourself.”

According to Burrell, once the church began offering the recorded services, local media outlets and POAMN helped get the word out.

“I got a call from a nurse in Nebraska who was in a memory care hospital,” Lindstrom said. “She got hold of the video and thought it was a great way to resource ministry beyond us. It’s a wonderful way to share the gospel with a wider audience.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Heather Mansell, International Young Adult Volunteer, Interim Unified Agency
• Troy Marables, Senior Vice President, Director of Human Resources, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray:

Gracious God, you have faithfully walked with us through all these years. As we look toward the challenges ahead, lead us in the ways that you would have us walk. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network points to a fascinating online word study on aging

Pastor and wordsmith the Rev. Dr. Keith Albans of the United Kingdom leads a workshop attended by people from across the globe

February 26, 2024

The Rev. Dr. Keith Albans

The Rev. Dr. Keith Albans, who served 16 years as the director of Chaplaincy and Spirituality at Methodist Homes in the United Kingdom, is something of a wordsmith. His prodigious abilities were on display during the University of Waterloo’s Conrad Grebel University College webinar, “It’s How You Say It: Exploring the Language and Imagery of Aging.” The hourlong event was recommended by the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network and was attended by more than 100 people from around the world.

“Why do you want to work with older people?” Albans was asked more than once when he applied for the position at age 43. “It was the highlight of my ministerial career. I have been to a 110th birthday party and thoroughly enjoyed it.”

The use of terms like “justers” and “wasers” describes how many older people speak of themselves, Albans said: “I’m just a housewife” or “I was a chemist” indicates “our entire life is in the past,” he said.

“How we speak of who we are and who we were reflects how we are feeling,” he said.

Then Albans launched into a study of words containing the letters “age.” He’s uncovered more than 600 words formed from 370-word roots. Some have “age” at the beginning of the word, others in the middle and the rest at the end of the word.

Some — like “ageism”— have a negative value, Albans pointed out, while others, including “agelong” and “ageless,” are more affirming.

“Agent” was on the list because “enabling people to be the doer is at the heart of a lot of what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. “Agency” is also a “significant concept.” So is “agenda,” Latin for “the things that must be done,” which Albans called “a positive way of embracing the process of aging” because we “think about what’s important for me and us to do.”

“How important,” Albans asked, “is the notion of agency for your own hopes about aging or for someone you know? Many of today’s older people never expected to live to the age they have. Embracing aging means we can think in a wider and more proactive way.”

“Age” at the end of words is a much more common location. Albans divided them into six categories:

• Aggregate, such as “courage”
• Quantity or measure, such as “charge,” “vintage” and “sage”
• Process, such as “pilgrimage”
• Outcome, such as “foliage”
• A place of living or business, such as “cottage”
• Social standing or relationship, such as “heritage.”

There are negative examples for each category as well: “sewage,” “shortage,” “rampage” “wreckage,” “orphanage” and “bondage.”

Albans had about 45 examples of “age” found in the middle of words ranging, as he put it, “from the sublime to the ridiculous”: “cagey,” “magenta,” “pageant,” “dowager,” “wager” and “suffragette.”

Others included “eager,” “menagerie,” “outrageous,” “voyageur,” “tragedy” and “unmanageable.” Many have connections with aging. Eager is keen interest, which “a lot of older people lose without encouragement,” according to Albans. One definition of “menagerie” is “an unusual and varied group of people. I visited a lot of care homes” in his time with Methodist Homes, “and it’s a wonderful word.”

“What do we affirm and what do we reject thinking about how we speak about and depict ageism?” he asked. “Embracing aging means we can be agents of our own aging by having a plan or agenda. The choice is ours, and how we use it is up to us.”

After his talk, Albans was asked what people can do to combat language that’s ageist.

“If we look at ways society has addressed issues around racism, sexism and homophobia, change has only come by calling it out for what it is,” he said. “The difference, of course, is we are talking about ourselves.”

“Some ageism,” he said, “is actually a way of saying, ‘I’m not there yet.’ We have to be honest if we’re calling it out. We may be as guilty ourselves as other people are. That’s why talking about it is helpful. We can plot our own course into later life.”

Citing something she once heard, one person on the call said it this way: “Age is simply the number of years the world has been enjoying you.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Tim Cargal, Associate Director for Ministry Leadership Development, Office of the General Assembly 
César Carhuachîn, Mission co-worker serving in Colombia, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Gracious God, may you bless the cooperative efforts of congregations so that all will celebrate your faithfulness. May all come to know that you alone are head of every congregation, regardless of its language or tribe. Amen.