Podcast: Faith in Later Life – Unlocking the Potential of Older Christians – with Alex Huggins

This article is part of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast series.

Alex, CEO of Faith in Later Life, discusses the charity’s mission to inspire and equip Christians to reach, serve, and empower older people through evangelism, discipleship, and active ministry involvement.

In this engaging episode of Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast, host Graham welcomes Alex Huggins, the CEO of Faith in Later Life, a Christian charity dedicated to transforming how churches engage with older people. They dive into the urgent need to share the gospel with older generations, foster lifelong discipleship, and empower seniors to remain active disciple-makers. Alex highlights the charity’s work, including its network of 900 church champions, free resources on issues like dementia and loneliness, and training events to equip churches for senior ministry.

The conversation tackles ageism in society and churches, emphasising the biblical call to value people at every stage of life. With practical insights, such as the power of coffee mornings and care home outreach, this episode is a must-listen for church leaders, volunteers, and anyone passionate about intergenerational ministry. Discover how Faith in Later Life is reshaping attitudes toward ageing and empowering older Christians to thrive in their faith and service.

Find out more about Faith in Later Life on their website www.faithinlaterlife.org

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Topics addressed in this Podcast:

• Mission of Faith in Later Life
  Alex explains the charity’s goal to inspire and equip Christians to reach, serve, and empower older people through evangelism, discipleship, and active ministry involvement, supported by a network of 900 church champions and resources addressing issues like dementia and loneliness.
• Ageism in Society and Churches
  The discussion highlights how ageism, often socially accepted, leads to older people being undervalued or overlooked in churches and broader society, impacting their sense of worth and participation.
• Lifelong Discipleship and Evangelism
  The episode emphasises the importance of fostering lifelong discipleship among older people to sustain their faith through life’s challenges and encouraging them to continue sharing the gospel, regardless of age.
• Intergenerational Ministry
  Alex advocates for peer-to-peer and intergenerational approaches to ministry, noting that older people can connect deeply with peers while also contributing wisdom to younger generations, enhancing church community dynamics.
• Practical Outreach Strategies
  The episode explores effective ways to reach older non-Christians, such as coffee mornings, warm spaces, and care home visits, stressing intentional gospel-sharing to build relationships and faith.

Transcript

[AI generated]

[0:11] Welcome to another edition of Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast.

[0:15] We are privileged to have Alex who can talk to us about the work of faith in later life. So introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

[0:29] Thanks, Graham. It’s great to be here today. Yes, I’m Alex. I live in the West Country and I lead the Christian charity Faith in Later Life. I come with a passion for evangelism and for older people and just this real need for everybody to come to know Jesus. And of course, with older people, that gets more urgent. And so it’s been great to take on this role these past few months. Had you heard of Faith in Later Life before you got the job? Yes, because I was leading a seniors ministry a few years ago when Faith in Later Life first began. And so I was actually one of our first church champions at that time. And I was also connected with the CEO of that time and I supported him at a local event in Bristol. So yeah, I was really blessed by the resources even then. And it’s great to now be a part of that work.

[1:23] Brilliant. Well, tell us a bit more about the work of Faith in Later Life and the kind of heart and the vision and the practically what do you actually do? Yeah, so our sort of strap line talks about inspiring and equipping Christians to reach, serve and empower older people. It’s hard to work out what that actually means, so I break it down. For me, it’s very much about three things for the season ahead. So first of all, we believe that older people should come to know the good news of Jesus and that we need to be proactive in doing that. We believe that we are called to lifelong discipleship. Discipleship should never be something that we used to do.

[2:06] And so we encourage churches and older people themselves to keep on digging deep, getting to know Jesus more closely. We believe that that level of discipleship is what will sustain us all through the hardest times of our life, whether that’s in old age or even some of the challenges that we face in younger years.

[2:27] And thirdly, to me, it’s about responding and helping older people to continue to respond to God’s lifelong call to be disciple makers. So that’s not something, it doesn’t say in the Bible that we ever retire from that. He never puts a stop to the Great Commission, you know, depending on age. And so we encourage and equip older people to keep on sharing the good news of Jesus. We know that that looks different when you’re 30 and when you’re 80, but there’s always ways and God always has ways of helping us step into that ministry. So that’s what it’s about. The way that we do that equipping and encouraging and preparing is through our ministry. Our church champion network. So we have 900 church champions at the moment. We’d love some more if anyone’s interested. But these are the people who have a heart for older people in their churches. They’re often the people leading the luncheon club. Sometimes they’re the people leading the entire church. And we invite them to come and be equipped by us. And so what we do is we have a website full of resources that they can access on some of the later life issues that they might be grappling with as a church. For example, like things like dementia, loneliness, how to share Jesus in a rural context with older people, all sorts of things like that.

[3:50] And so we have the website, we have a training event every other month to help equip people in some of the core issues around how to share the gospel with older people,

[4:01] how to disciple older people, and practical ideas of how people can continue to serve. And we also have networking events so we know that people working in seniors ministry are under celebrated and perhaps undervalued they’re often the people quietly getting on with it so we gather them together and we cheer them on we pray with them and we listen and encourage them in this life-giving work that they’re doing so those are some of the core things that we offer above and beyond that we know that we can’t operate in a vacuum we’re living in a culture and a society that isn’t actually geared up for our aging population um that it has some ageist tendencies and so i speak into the media about subjects like loneliness and ageism so that actually over time we hope that we can begin to shift culture so that people will embrace our older friends and ourselves as we age you know we have a vested interest to make the landscape for older people more pleasant because if we’re breathing we’re aging and we’re all going to get there ourselves too.

[5:13] Yeah, it’s a really good explanation, thank you. And it’s fantastic work. In a way, what you described in terms of reaching and serving and empowering is what the church should be doing more generally, but obviously your particular focus is on those kind of retired and beyond. Um uh just just a sort of slight aside but connected uh i was uh took some time out last week and uh was listening to the thursday murder club stories because they’re connected with someone locally who went to school here locally and his mom was a teacher of my son and it was richard um richard osmond um and uh the the the the kind of basic premise of all of those um.

[5:56] Novels would you call them anyway books is you’ve got a group of people in an old people’s home who are mostly in their 80s who are solving murders and it’s a it’s a really um there are lots of challenges in the book because there are some philosophies and particularly about dementia and assisted dying which are not good um but actually affirming that people in their 80s can solve murders is quite it’s quite a healthy thing to get you thinking about so although they act as old people and make lemon meringue pie and you know get obsessed with all sorts of things like older people might do they’re also very valuable and they’re making a contribution so it kind of made me think about older people’s ministry as well and and how um you know the the regular guys in the police force are writing these guys off who are over 80s and and you know the the great sort of comic value is that they end up solving the mysteries and the the police are sort of, semi-incompetent um uh so yeah so that that really sort of connects in with that i had a question which was the why really because what you’ve described sounds brilliant um but why is it necessary if there’s if there’s churches up and down the country who who have older people in them and have younger people in them and should be working as families and why would it be necessary to have a kind of parachurch organization to to focus specifically on that do you think.

[7:21] Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, it really comes back to those three issues. And I think you’ll find that there are many churches up and down the country who may well have lots of older people very willing and very happy to be there. They don’t necessarily know Jesus. They could be there out of tradition. They could be there for other, you know, for friendships and those things. Also that people aren’t necessarily being discipled in later life it is is all about the younger people and we’re not necessarily helping to engage older people to continue pressing into to change you know older people over time the longer we go on the more disappointments we suffer in life and that can lead to bitterness and you know are we helping our older friends in church actually navigate some of that stuff through strong discipleship and there is the you you about our lifelong call to be disciple makers it’s it’s real older people get stood down too early and we’re not seeing older people at the front enough we’re not seeing them celebrated we’re not hearing about the valuable work that they’re doing um and yet um you know as you said from from the novels um that you know they have great value i i was talking with one of our church champions recently, and she’s got a vast background in Christian ministry for her whole life, evangelistic ministry that she did with her husband.

[8:48] And she’s now a leader in the church as a church champion, which is excellent that the church is embracing somebody in her 80s to do that. But she approached the youth leader recently and said, look, we’re completely behind you. You know we i i we know some of what you’re trying to work through we’ve got some experience um anything we can do we’re here for you let us know what we can do for you and um he went off and thought about it and he came back and he asked if she would wash the tea towels right um you know it’s an outrage and obviously she does not despise doing the small things she wasn’t complaining about that but what a waste you know what a waste of of all of that experience and wisdom um that that you know she’s gleaned over the years to to be invited to wash the tea towels and you know those are the kind of attitudes that we have in our churches up and down the country and so we want to change that yes, Yeah, I think, you know, more broadly, youth work is a whole topic in itself as to why mostly younger people do youth work. So let aside retired people, you know, the value they could bring. But, you know, mostly it’s people in their 20s and early 30s who are doing youth work, who have the least experience with the most challenging group.

[10:13] And so, yeah, it’s difficult to solve. There’s all kinds of reasons why it’s hard to solve in terms of availability. And if you’re in a paid role, how much you can pay. But yeah, it is hard. Positively, why do you think churches sometimes do it? Are there any good reasons to do with the way old people are? Or is it out of love that you think, well, they’ve served and now they can rest?

[10:40] Because I don’t think it’s malicious in most cases, is it? Or do you think it is?

[10:46] Is it just ignorance at times or just lack of attention you know if that is happening i mean obviously the tea towels one’s a bit a bit stark um but but sometimes you may think well you know this person is.

[11:00] Happy they’re coming along to church still and you know i’m being very friendly to them and you know they sit down and have their cup of tea with a couple of friends and that’s fine perhaps perhaps people just don’t think about it do you think maybe and we’ve heard of older people saying that they just feel invisible now and they’re not being asked for their views they’re not being invited to really actively participate they’re not seen as the solution to any of the church’s problems unless it’s perhaps about giving and then they’re very much invited to be a solution I was talking with a local church minister recently and he said that Betty who’s in her late 80s had approached him and said please use me I want to be involved in the life of the church I want to be involved in ministry and uh and he said well what do you want to do and she said just please don’t sit me in the corner with a cup of tea and tell me I can pray yeah um and so you know again it’s this this thing that people I don’t think um people really realize um all the potential that’s out there we have a bit of tunnel vision about youth you know we know that around the country we have some very interesting um sort of mission strategies that actually are blatantly focused on youth.

[12:17] That’s in stark contradiction to what the Bible says. The Bible says we have value for the whole of our lives. A 17-year-old is no more in need of the good news of Jesus than the 99-year-old. In fact, I would argue that the 99-year-old pretty much needs it pretty urgently today, please, and that we have more time with the 17-year-old. Um, and so I don’t think it’s malicious. I think it’s just the way we are. We are an ageist society. Um, it’s, you know, it’s, It’s often more interesting to look at all the exciting things the young people are doing. And, you know, the numbers can be very interesting, obviously, when great things happen. And it’s different. It’s hard to work with older people often. We’re having to deal with a whole heap of misconceptions. You know, they’ve been watching the life of the church all their lives. And, you know, it’s actually harder. Evangelism among older people is harder than it is for younger people. And so, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s not malicious, but it’s something we need

[13:19] to shift our focus on because this is urgent. You know, the Bible says the harvest is plentiful.

[13:26] We need to be bringing in some of that harvest before, you know, the sun goes down on some of these people’s lives. And it’s urgent. Do you think older people are the best people to evangelize older people in general? Obviously, it can happen anyway. Yeah, I wouldn’t like to say they’re the best people to do that. I wouldn’t like to segregate ministry in that way. I think intergenerational is the best way forward. God designed the church to be a family. And yet we know that within our peer groups, we can actually have good traction on some of these fantastic conversations. I’ve worked in women’s ministry a lot over the years. It’s you know talking woman to woman in a similar age group that has a much big has had a much bigger impact than with any other kind of equation and so um and i’m sure it’s similar among men graham um and and among teenagers and so yes of course um to to be to be speaking with and and journeying with somebody who’s been through some of the things that you’ve been through who understands some of your um thinking and some of some of the things that have happened to you And who’s able to speak into that in your language is very special and very important. So I do believe that, yes, ultimately, peer-to-peer, any age group does magnify the impact of sharing the good news and discipleship. Yeah.

[14:55] Do you kind of plot seasons in the sense that there’s the early very active retired, and they are an engine for lots of church service, aren’t they? People who’ve just recently retired and probably have a decade or more have been able to have the energy to do quite a lot. That’s not to say beyond that they’re useless, but they have a sort of season, don’t they, for.

[15:21] For hard work um particularly if they retire a little bit early um and then you’ve got probably more a season where you’re not and not not so able to help but you’ve still got wisdom that you can share um and then you may have a season where you’re more more a recipient of care because you may have sort of needs developed i mean you can’t live independently anymore for whatever you sort of observe those seasons yes absolutely and you know how when we enter which season varies between people you know we all know the 58 year old that responds to life like an 88 year old and we all know the 88 year old that that responds to life like a 58 year old but yes it’s a huge category i mean we’re putting people you know we’re putting like 35 years an age range of 35 years in one category um when we say later life and of course we wouldn’t do that with any other we wouldn’t put a one-year-old in a group of the 35 year old say and say that’s the same so yeah There are different challenges. And as you say, the early retires, but I think what sort of 65 plus has in common is that from there on, most of us will begin to experience an increase of bereavement around us, decreasing social circles because of those bereavements. We will begin to see some health issues and it may you know in your 60s that could just be you know.

[16:49] I don’t know eyesight related or hearing related in those will multiply that we begin to navigate and we begin to practice for later life and so it’s actually really you know if we can navigate those early um later life years well that sets us up well if we begin if we actually fall at the first hurdle where we get our first hearing diagnosis then we fall to pieces over that we you know we don’t engage and and push forward and and get the treatment we can get then you know that takes us down a trajectory really health-wise for everything else so yeah so yeah yeah no it’s interesting it’s not helpful to do it by age bands uh but it probably is helpful to to i suppose observe it by um by what people are up to at the time i mean i have a guy who lives opposite me here called joe who um used to run a cafe and he’s 82 he goes to work every day with his son who runs a restaurant um nearby and so you know he has days off i think monday’s his day off other than that he’s he’s in his car eight o’clock driving off and then it comes back about three or four in the afternoon so it’s not a very long day but you know he’s working and he’s active and then when he’s on his day off he’s cutting the hedge and all that sort of thing so i would say he’s he’s basically as active as i am um you know he’s 82 um whereas as you know you know there There are the 82-year-olds who are quite infirm and confined to home and so on.

[18:13] Just thinking about those two categories of service and evangelism, so using for service.

[18:19] You mentioned some examples of bad sort of practice. Where have you seen older people really thriving in serving in churches? What kinds of things do you think they do really well because of the value of age and wisdom and experience and so on? Well, I think that.

[18:42] Kind of is associated with getting to know your people and so like you’ve just said it really varies what a person can do and wants to do and actually what you know what has God called them to, and and so that comes out of relationship we need to understand you know like um Betty who didn’t want to sit in the corner and pray you know her minister could not have known her enthusiasm and passion and energy had she you know not had that conversation with him so we need to get to know our older people and we get to need to get to know what they’d like to do what they can do we know people who are now um staying at home they’ve lost their mobility um to come to church and go out and yet they are recruited in the life of the churches telephone befrienders um and prayer warriors and they have a fantastic ministry um doing that so um can you remind me what the question was graham it was more to do with yeah areas where i mean you’ve given examples of that areas where they can serve well so um just if you took that youth example and you thought.

[19:43] He’s the the the youth worker shouldn’t have said tea towels i wonder what he should have said because he probably isn’t going to say you know can you run a game of dodgeball no no what he probably should have said is thank you for your offer should we have a coffee i’d love to hear about what how god has called you through your life and what you think you can offer now yeah That should have been the response, whereas he saw what he saw in front of him, which is, in his view, an old lady, and he responded in that way rather than getting to know her. And so I would go back to that. We’ve got to get to know people. But we’ve seen older people’s ministry reignited when they have been noticed, when they have been invited. So we have various church champions. They’re engaging their older people to deliver the older people’s ministry. And suddenly, after years of being stood down as preachers, as evangelists, as singers, as worship leaders, as prayer warriors, they’re now being invited up to the front during the seniors’ events. And they’re back they’re preaching they’re singing a solo they’re praying they’re bringing their life story and they’re sharing the wisdom that they’ve you know gleaned over the years and so we see that done very well when older people are invited to come and share the stories are fantastic um you know it’s so good to hear and of course beyond the the.

[21:10] The church ministry, of course, we also have this whole issue of how we’re equipping our older friends for ministry beyond the church. A lot of older people, and that’s not the case for everyone, and decreasingly so, but a lot of older people are grandparents. Some are great grandparents.

[21:30] What a fantastic ministry they have to a generation that the rest of the church is actually trying to reach um and so they’re they’re so well placed you know how are we equipping them encouraging praying for them in that ministry um a lot of our older people have got friends in care homes they’re walking through those care home doors week by week to visit how are we helping them to share the good news with care home staff and other residents um so yeah the opportunities are vast and um the the church is is great at welcoming older people but it needs to go beyond the welcome it needs to go beyond pastoral care and we need to be including older people in our missional strategy um because as i keep saying to everybody time’s running out yeah yeah we um in our own church have the most non-christians actually in our old people’s ministry um at some of those those key events if you just add up the numbers and particularly in terms of regular um it’s the most i mean we have non-christians in youth work we have non-christians in the main gatherings of the church as well um but in sort of in one place is the most which is quite quite um it’s quite challenging particularly because probably we as a church it kind of just happened organically um you know we strategically enabled it and encouraged it but i’m not sure as leadership.

[22:56] We absolutely put all our weight behind it, but in God’s providence and goodness, it’s a really big work now.

[23:04] So, you know, I would encourage people listening to that, that it’s actually not just, you know, a couple of people having a coffee who, you know, then sort of, go off and you never see them again but uh you know the opportunities are definitely there.

[23:17] There’s a hardness because people have lived a whole life and and made lots of mini decisions about christianity on the way um but there is more opportunity and lots of time um in our observation and some of those people have come through to faith which has been amazing um in terms of outreach to uh people who are older we mentioned that you know the who that Anyone could do it, but older people can often have things in common with other older people,

[23:44] older people who are Christians. What kinds of things, in your experience across churches, are working well in terms of reaching older people who are not Christians?

[23:55] It varies very much. So people are doing a whole range of things. So there are midweek events that go on, especially for seniors, you know, sort of magazine style events, just, you know, short little segments across an hour. Helping people to engage with interesting things and with the good news of Jesus. We’ve got warm spaces all over the place that are welcoming lots of older people week by week. And there’s also, you know, there’s ukulele events, there’s chair exercise classes, there’s all sorts of things that are going on in churches all over the place. One of the things that works very well is the classic coffee morning. You know, invite people in and begin conversations. Have a few new people there ready to talk with people. We’ve found that people who come to… Even just a coffee morning, begin to talk about that church as their church.

[24:57] And so, you know, it may take time for them to transition, but we know that when those people who come to coffee mornings, when they suffer bereavement or family crisis.

[25:07] They deepen their conversations with those people at the church and they are ministered to and things can develop. So those are great things to do. We just need to be really good at welcoming, but we do need that intentionality. It can’t just be a club where you have a cheap coffee. We need to be sharing the good news. We need to be using those coffee mornings as springboards. Invite them to a seniors alpha course. Invite them to a Bible study. Invite them to come and explore or come and witness a baptism, all of these things. And beyond that, churches are really very good. Some churches struggle because they don’t have the resources, and that’s fair enough. But many churches are taking little teams into their local care homes, reaching people who, quite frankly, are now the hardest to reach because they won’t be coming to church. They haven’t got long left on this earth, and they are suffering all kinds of health issues. And churches are going in. They’re sharing the good news of Jesus. They’re helping people to know more about God. and they are loving those people

[26:14] through those interactions. Let’s just speak for a moment about isolation and ageism. What would you define as ageism and how does that sort of connect with people becoming isolated?

[26:28] Yes. So ageism is, well, they say it’s the last kind of form of discrimination that’s socially acceptable. It starts with little jokes and jibes and fun birthday cards.

[26:42] It starts with language of how we describe older people.

[26:47] And yet it goes much deeper because it shapes attitudes of worth around older people. And it’s had a massive impact altogether on you know the way people are treated in the healthcare system the way that over 50s even are treated in the workplace and these things have a massive impact to our late on our later life flourishing a person who feels that they have to retire early or retire at retirement time because they’re not really being embraced and encouraged in the workplace and they’re likely to be poorer in later life they’re likely to be less purposeful and some will suffer an identity crisis if they don’t want to finish work and all of these things have a massive impact so this ageism which seems really subtle actually can run very deep and it has a big impact people who feel then all together that they aren’t worth anything because of their age because of their diminishing abilities let’s say and they actually have a different response to their own needs so you’ll find older people not necessarily going to the doctors not going for those appointments not having treatment that could save their lives not looking after themselves not eating well um you know smoking and things that actually um harm them because they’ve decided.

[28:16] Well, no point now, I’m on my way out, and it doesn’t matter.

[28:20] And so we have this self-ageism that creeps in. And so, yeah, it’s really bad for society, it’s really bad for our health, and again, it is in stark contradiction to the Bible, who says that we will flourish all of our lives, and we are of great value. The Bible stories show it. We’ve got Simeon and Anna in the temple, very old, and all he was was very old and very faithful. How can we help people to do that? We shouldn’t discriminate on age. God can use us and bless us at all ages. But the way it leads to isolation is, again, a lower participation in community and life because when your worth is down, you don’t engage with everything.

[29:10] Yeah, what’s really interesting, what you just said, which is kind of new to me thinking about it. And I do experience, I turned 60 just recently and to experience it, I’m not complaining at all, but it is hard to work out what joking is, is normal if you know what I mean um yeah my own family joke about it you know sometimes if I you know send a wrong message on whatsapp or something you know they’ll just send me an old man um icon back you know uh emoji and yeah and that’s fine at one level but I suppose it’s this bit like lots of joking is you know it’s like you know joking about people who have medical conditions or are overweight or underweight or all those things it it’s a lot about context and relationship, and about frequency I suppose as well, to say whether the joking is just normal.

[30:01] Interaction with another human being that you love and you’re in relationship with, or whether it’s actually betraying a genuine discrimination.

[30:13] That’s my observation. My kids will sometimes take the mick out of me but they i don’t worry that they actually um have put me in a box and have categorized me yes no and you’re right we can go over the top with some of this and i think um i think clinton cards did some research about some of the kind of fun getting older cards and you know i think the research showed that the older people themselves actually think they’re funny and they’re the ones buying them um but that’s um the issue is younger people seeing them thinking oh okay over 60 means you passed it over 60 means you is all downhill from here because those are the messages they’re getting and you know that’s just a small seed that gets sown and we’ve seen some research last year from pilgrims friend society that showed over half of people are afraid of later life um you know later life is not being portrayed as something good um in in society and so it leads to fear which interestingly you know fear and stress leads to you know a faster paced aging which is more likely to lead to some of the outcomes that you’re afraid of um and so we want to fill people with hope you know people sometimes say to me oh you work you work with older people and I say no I won’t work with anyone who’s breathing.

[31:37] Because if we’re breathing we’re aging and we all need to shift our focus I want a child to know he or she will be loved by God for the whole of their lives and you know how you and I invest in our health today will impact our later life outcomes so it’s huge and yeah ageism um.

[31:57] Is yeah it’s it depends very much but it’s it’s serious as well especially in the workplace um we know there’s a lot of pensioner poverty around and that is being exacerbated by ageism in the workplace for example now it’s really helpful um what would be great uh some really good challenges in what you’ve said just tell us where we can find out more about faith in later life as we draw things to a close for anybody who’d like to find out more about faith in later life you can head over to our website at faithinlaterlife.org we’ve also got facebook page instagram and x so follow us on there where we show some ideas and prayers and and different things like that, i’m very happy to talk with church leaders on a one-to-one or across denominations i do some training and I speak at some denominational conferences if anybody would like to and of course we invite people to come and be church champions and we’ve got more information about that on our website that is brilliant thank you so much for that um we’ve really uh I’ve really enjoyed there wasn’t two of us today there’s normally two of us but there’s only one that I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today um and people willing to be listening there’s some big challenges about how we use people in our church how we serve people in our church how we reach people beyond our church who are elderly.

[33:25] And how we make sure that we’re not practicing ageism in a way that isolates people. So loads of challenges in there and lots of information on the Faith in Later Life website.

[33:39] Thank you very much, Alex, for your time. Thanks for having me. Thank you.