Growing Up

Pastoral Nurture for the Later Years

Thomas B Robb, William M Clements

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136580550
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Growing Up: Pastoral Nurture for the Later Years is a sensitive volume devoted to helping older adults retain their status as meaningful members of their congregations and communities. In an honest approach, based on the foundations that old age is supposed to happen, the future belongs to the old, and vocation for people of faith is lifelong, Thomas Robb provides personal and Biblical perspectives, as well as research from over 20 years as a pastor, on the life process and the feelings, worries, and expectations accompanying growing up and growing old. He then molds these concerns into a challenge for congregations and their spiritual leaders to actively assist the aged in coping with and overcoming fears and barriers limiting the fullest expression of faith in God. This insightful book describes the tasks and suggests programs for pastors and congregations everywhere in meeting the challenge, making life for the aged more than shuffleboard and bingo, pot-luck dinners and day trips. Dimensions of pastoral ministries that nurture women and men who, at midlife and beyond, seek to find their way through the unexpected and unplanned, through the third of life following parenthood and careers, are described in detail. Pastors, church leaders, congregations, professors of courses in ministry and aging, aging church members, and seminary students will benefit immensely from the wealth of information presented in Growing Up: Pastoral Nurture for the Later Years.

Chapter 1

Growing Up

When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child; now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways.

—I Corinthians 13:11

One day, when I was very small, Uncle Paul asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Over the next few years, that question was to be repeated many times in conversations with grandparents, aunts and uncles. Each time I tried to answer it, I gained some understanding of what being grown up might mean. In time, I developed an agenda for growing up. It was based on a series of assumptions that would remain with me for more than fifty years: (a) that I was not yet grown up, but someday would be; (b) that when I grew up I would get to do what I wanted; and (c) that what grownups do is raise children and go to work.

Someday I will be grown up. After three or four such discussions, I began to realize that I was moving inexorably toward a time known as grown up. At first, I wasn't sure just when or how grown up began. I learned that dressing myself and tying my own shoes were marks of being grown up. One day Mother told me that when I was six I would be grown up enough to cross the street by myself and go to school. Sometime later, I learned from one of the older children that when I turned twelve, I would have to pay grown up prices on the elevated, and to see the latest episode of “Flash Gordon” at our neighborhood theater on Saturdays.

When I learned to dress myself and tie my shoes, when I went to school, and even later when I became twelve, I discovered that I wasn't grown up yet. I looked forward then to becoming sixteen, when I could get a drivers' license and my own jalopy. I was sure I would then be grown up enough to decide where I wanted to go, when and with whom.

When I finally did reach sixteen, I couldn't afford a car of my own, and Father said I wasn't grown up enough to be entrusted with his. I then looked forward to being seventeen, when I could marry or join the Navy without my parents' permission, and then to eighteen, when I could legally buy and smoke cigarettes. I didn't marry or join the Navy that year, but I did take up smoking a pipe. Even so, I still wasn't grown up. At that point I decided that at twenty-one, when I could vote and buy liquor, I would surely be grown up.

When I am grown up I can do what I want to do. Being able to decide for myself whether to get up, put on clean socks, study my geography, or go to school, was a future I had longed for since I was small. In the interim, I had to put up with parents, teachers, and a truant officer whom I never saw. They had definite ideas about what I should do with my time. Moreover, they had both power and authority sufficient to make me comply with their wishes. So I made peace with my circumstances and bided my time.

As I reached each of the ages at which I expected to be grown up, I was confronted with a dilemma. I could be grown up enough to dress myself and tie my own shoes yet not enough to do all that I wanted. I would pay the same prices as adults, yet not share their freedom of deciding where to go or which movie to see.

Even when I became twenty-one, I did not attain the freedom to do what I wanted. I graduated from college and moved out of my parents' house. I also married and began my studies for the ministry. In the place of parents, I now had a wife, a mother-in-law and a new set of teachers to deal with. There was also a presbytery committee weighing my candidacy for the ministry. I also had a draft board to think about because of U.S. involvement in Korea. They all had ideas about how I should make use of my time, and held considerable influence and authority over my life.

Soon I had children. As they grew, I found they too had expectations of how I would spend my time, and a certain amount of influence (especially when they joined forces with their mother or their grandparents). As adults with their own households and families, they still voice their expectations about how I should make use of vacations and holidays, and whether I see my grandchildren often enough.

While the children were still young, I finished seminary, passed my examinations, was ordained and installed as a pastor. Employed full time at the profession of my choosing, I found I still had to deal with the expectations, power and authority of others. In my case, it was the members and officers of the congregations I served, and the presbytery under whose authority I labored. Had I chosen a different line of work, I would have been accountable to customers or clients, a supervisor or manager, a board of directors or stockholders. Eventually, I too would deal with many of these.

When I am grown up, I will be a parent and a worker. From those early conversations of my childhood, I always assumed that I would one day be a parent. If I had to guess what my first answer was — about what I would be when I grew up — it was probably: “I'm going to be a daddy.”

The little I knew about what grownups do was learned by observing my parents and my grandparents. I watched my mother and my grandmother cook and clean house, and went along when they shopped for food or clothes. Most days my father and my grandfather dressed in suits and left the house after breakfast, returning just before dinner. Sometimes Father stayed home and fixed things or sat at the dining table with a lot of papers spread before him. Sometimes I wore my good clothes and he took Mother and me to church. When I was still very young, I understood that someday I would do what my father did. How I knew that I would not cook and clean house and go shopping, as my Mother did, I am not sure but I knew.

In time, my answers reflected a growing awareness that I would eventually take up some sort of career. While I was still quite small I learned that when my father wore a suit and was away all day, he went to work. I didn't know what kind of work he did-even as an adult I understood little about what he did as a banker. I also remember visiting my grandfather's office. I watched him write with a long yellow pencil, talk on the telephone, and speak to a young woman who made strange marks on her notebook while he talked. By watching them, I understood that when I grew up I too would go to work.

My earliest notions of choice occupations probably reflected the romance children associate with certain kinds of work. Most likely, I spoke at first of becoming a policeman, fireman, mailman, an ice or milk wagon driver, or a conductor on the elevated trains which I loved to ride. A girl of my generation would probably have spoken of becoming a nurse or a teacher, or perhaps a secretary.

As a teenager, when others were talking of becoming doctors, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers, I narrowed my choices to electronic engineer (which my best friend planned to become) or parish pastor, which I had encountered when my parents became involved in starting a new church. Throughout high school, I waffled between these two careers — about which I knew little and understood less — and finally chose the latter.

Having thus become twenty-one, married, had children and begun my life's work, I assumed I was, at last, grown up. I was not prepared for what was to follow!

MY AGENDA HAS CHANGED

When I was forty-nine, the last of my five children assumed responsibility for her own support and established her own household. I had, at that point, completed one of the two major tasks on my agenda for growing up. By this time, the older children had married and there were several grandchildren. Nonetheless, I was, for all practical purposes, finished with the day-to-day, hands-on business of raising children. I was done with tying shoelaces, combing hair, packing lunches, dispensing allowance, and all the other tasks which occupied my time over more than a quarter century.

My concern for my children had not changed, only my day-to-day relationship with them. Anyone of them might, out of personal need, return to my household for a time. It would be as an adult, however, not as a child. I might offer guidance from my longer experience, but not the kind of nurture I had once provided. I might resume some degree of oversight during a time of need, but not the complete responsibility that had once been mine. I had done with raising children. The passing years had turned them all into adults.

Now, at fifty-eight, I am within a few years of completing the other principal task in my agenda for growing up. Thanks to Social Security and my church pension plan, I anticipate retiring with full benefits in a few more years. These days, Americans retire at an average age of sixty-two. I will be eligible for reduced retirement benefits at age sixty-two, just four years hence. If I worked for a large corporation, I might be offered an early retirement option any day now.

I look forward to retiring. I may rock a little, but not for long. I expect to be busy, like many of the retired people I know. Nonetheless, I will no longer be obliged to work to support myself and my family. Even if I want to continue to work, I may find it difficult to do so. Employers are likely to devalue the skills I have acquired over forty years, in preference for the less costly experience of a younger worker who can stay with them longer than I might.

When I have finished with raising children, and have retired, I should, at last, be grown up. According to the agenda I worked out in my childhood, I will finally get to do what I want. That agenda does not, however, spell out what it is that I want to do with my life next.

Conventional wisdom divides life into three discrete stages: education, work, and leisure. Education is considered preparation for work, and leisure its reward. Work is considered the proper occupation for adult males, and unmarried females. Small amounts of learning and leisure can be accommodated within this period, on the premise that they contribute to effective work. Longer periods of either learning or leisure tend to be viewed as abdication or shirking of adult responsibility.

As I approach retirement, I find that I lack enthusiasm for a period of twenty years devoted solely to leisure. I value the rich variety of leisure activities that await me. I yearn for the time to do what I want without answering to any authority with its own agenda for my days. I am not, however, prepared to spend all my time at play.

It is the rhythm of education, work and leisure that has made my adult years both productive and exciting. I have learned to value education for its own disciplines and as an end in itself. I am not prepared to give it up because my years as a worker are drawing to a close. I have learned to value work also for its own methods, and as a worthwhile activity in itself, apart from its utility in keeping a roof over my head and bread on my table. I am not prepared to give it up even though the income from social security and my pension may be adequate for my needs.

The agenda for my adult years which I adopted in my youth is now demonstrably inadequate. How can I continue to be creative and productive if I stop learning and working? Of what worth is my life if I am neither creative nor productive? Clearly, I misunderstood the nature of adult life. Being grown up is not a state or status we will one day achieve. Growing up is a lifelong process we never finish. It must continue to the very threshold of the grave — and beyond.

Biologists now think humans could live 120 years if there were no wars, disease, accidents or pollution. That seems to be what God had in mind, too. “I will not allow people to live forever; they are mortal. From now on they will live no longer than 120 years” (Genesis 6:3). Very few actually live 120 years, but at fifty-eight, I can reasonably expect to live another twenty-five or thirty years. This last third of my life isn't part of that agenda I developed when I was young.

Parenting and work are essential adult tasks, but they don't require 120 years. Unless most of us bear and raise children, the human species will soon die out. Even if our children go to college, and on to graduate study, before they assume responsibility for themselves, we can finish raising the next generation by the time we are forty-five to fifty-five years old. Unless many of us work, there will be no food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, nor houses to live in. Our society has decided, nonetheless, that it is enough for us to work until we are fifty-five to sixty-five years old.

Parent and worker are adult roles deeply rooted in western culture. The expectation of living fifteen or twenty years after I have completed both primary adult roles forces me to ask myself whether or not they are all that being an adult is about. If I have the capacity to live 120 years, and a reasonable expectation of living eighty or ninety, am I to be content with finishing the essential business of life by the time I am sixty or sixty-five?

Parenting, after all, affords little opportunity for uniqueness aDd creativity. Each child is genetically and environmentally unique, yet family life is remarkably the same from one household to the next. There are not more than a dozen or so standard plots for American family life. That's why television situation comedies and comic strips about family life are funny. Their experiences are like our own or our neighbor's. Sometimes it seems as though the writers have been looking in our windows or listening at our keyholes.

Jobs, too, are more alike than different, and so are the organizations we work for. Work involves mostly reading, writing, listening, talking, counting, figuring, labeling, classifying, giving and following instructions, and similar basic tasks. All the thousands of job titles only reflect slightly different combinations of such tasks. In our work, we must all deal with or be accountable to owners, managers, subordinates, customers, and the like, whatever else we may call them.

If biologists and Genesis 6:3 are both correct, then God has made us to live much longer than necessary to replace ourselves and do whatever work is needed for survival. Medical skill and modern technology have not lengthened life in recent years, only brought under control or eliminated some of the things that shorten it. As a result, I will probably live twenty to twenty-five years longer than was expected for my birth group. In enabling me to live these added years, God has made possible something beyond raising the next generation and doing my share of the work. Growing up, then, means becoming free to do what God wants.

I must yet discover what God wants me to do as I continue growing up. That is where the church comes in. When I was baptized as an infant, the minister admonished the congregation to be my sponsor, my godparents, and to help my parents bring me up in such a way that, as I was growing up, I would choose to follow Christ's way and try to carry out God's will wherever I might be.

I still need that nurture from the church. As God's people, seeking to understand and carry out God's purpose on earth, I need their help in discerning how, in my later years, I am to be a part of God's scheme of things. As those who preserve and study the accumulated experience of God's activity among us, I need their encouragement as I try to learn whether I am called to new tasks that build on and continue my pilgrimage until now, or to ventures I cannot now even imagine.

In the chapters that follow I try to describe, for myself as much as for pastors and other church leaders, the dimensions of a pastoral ministry that nurtures women and men like me; people, who at midlife and beyond, are seeking to find their way through the unexpected and unplanned-for third of life that follows the completion of parenthood and career.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Growing Up
• Chapter 2. A Time for Every Purpose
• Chapter 3. Heroes, Heroines and Role Models
• Chapter 4. The Play's the Thing
• Chapter 5. Still Room to Grow
• Chapter 6. More Growing to Do
• Chapter 7. Growing Beyond Life
• Chapter 8. A Place to Grow In
• Chapter 9. Enabling Older People to Grow
• Index