Since taking on the role of Pastor of Legacy Adults in April 2025, my first goal has been to continue the ministries started by Mike, get to know the people involved, and get a feel for how things happen at Hillcrest. I have never been part of a church this large before, and the administrative layers have sometimes felt overwhelming. Yet, when I have focused my attention on my own ministry activities (chapel services, Widowed & Singles group, Legacy Bible Study, Young at Heart, GriefShare, visitation), I have been blessed by the personal interactions with volunteer leaders and participants.
As I come to the completion of the first full year of involvement in these ministries, I feel like I’m getting my feet underneath me and can begin to think about an over-arching vision for this ministry within the Hillcrest context. Two things strike me as being critical to this vision. Most importantly, I want to find ways to encourage our seniors to keep growing towards “elder maturity.” This is a concept that I came across most recently in Jim Wilder’s Growing a More Human Community series. Wilder points out how certain community-building roles can be best accomplished (perhaps only accomplished) by “seniors and grandparents” for three reasons. First, they have significant life experience which cannot be learned without putting in the time that they have already put in. Second, since they are not usually occupied with raising their own children in such an intensive way, they are more able to invest in others outside of their own immediate families. Third, their history in the community (i.e., church family) has hopefully built a level of trust that allows them to speak into current situations in a meaningful way. Of course, it isn’t a given that anyone who is a senior or grandparent has the capacity or maturity to fill this “elder” role; so one of the pieces of the vision I am formulating is a focus on providing ways and means for seniors and grandparents to continue moving towards greater maturity.
Second, the value of “elder maturity” is somewhat diminished when it is not experienced by the rest of the community. One of the greatest challenges I see is in finding ways to create opportunities for personal, relational, and intergenerational conversations. From what I have seen, this is a common and significant challenge for large churches where ministries are often and easily segmented into age and gender categories. At present, I really have no good ideas on how to address this. It likely wouldn’t be difficult to plan intergenerational ministry events; but I’m more interested in building relationships than in planning events. So, what I need to do is come up with some sort of strategy for creating opportunities and engagements that will lean into intergenerational relationship development.
I’m absolutely sure that I’m not the first person to have asked these questions or faced these challenges. I look forward to learning from others and working as part of a team as we grow into our discipleship to Jesus together.
In Christ,
Steve Driediger