Unlikely church

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 11th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: an unlikely church.

In many western countries, the population is aging. Take, for example, just two English-speaking countries, the U.S. and Australia. About 16 percent of those countries is older than 65. Taken together, the population of those in nursing homes and assisted living facilities is roughly one million. That’s like a big city. San Francisco, Denver, Nashville, Boston. They’re not even that big.

REICHARD: It can be hard for the people living there to get out and about. So facilities often run special events like art classes or movie nights. But not all activities are equal.

WORLD Correspondent Amy Lewis takes us to a care facility in Australia where the church service is more than an entry on a calendar.

SOUND: [Chatter in a coffee shop]

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: The Charles Brownlow Retirement Village café is lively today. People chat over coffee with their elderly wheelchair-bound parents. A granddaughter takes a selfie with her grandmother before they walk back to her room.

ELEVATOR VOICE: Floor 2. Doors opening.

Upstairs, a schedule on a white board shows a weekly Wednesday church service. It’s sandwiched between the Triple A exercise class and lunch. That placement is no accident. Residents need to exercise—and they want lunch. So faithful church attenders—and the ambivalent—stick around for the church service in the middle.

Starting a church service in a nursing home probably won’t grow a diverse and expanding congregation. But Steve Voorwinde says it will grow God’s people and his kingdom.

VOORWINDE: And she said, Well, where they really need you is upstairs. Now upstairs is the care center.

Voorwinde is a former pastor and seminary lecturer. He also lives downstairs in independent living. His wife Nancy has multiple sclerosis and moved in while workers were still finishing the facility.

VOORWINDE: So we thought well, if there's going to be any Christian influence in this place, it's very good if it comes in at the grassroots level. And the earlier the better.

He approached the facility managers to see if he could be part of that influence. The managers were keen to get something started. That’s when he found out they had to.

VOORWINDE: One of the federal requirements in Australia is that anyone who provides care in the sense of nursing home care, also has to provide spiritual care. Now, that can mean anything, I suppose. But in the majority of cases, it is Christian.

When Voorwinde’s attempts to find a chaplain fell through, he realized he’d have to step in. He had already spent 20 years off and on preaching in nursing homes.

Soon, others joined the team.

It sounds like the start of a joke to say an Anglican vicar, two Baptist preachers, and a Christian Reformed pastor walk into a nursing home. They take rapid COVID tests, print their name tags, and ride the elevator to the second floor.

SOUND: [CB CAFE]

ELEVATOR VOICE: Elevator going up.

But in this case, it’s a reality every Wednesday. Four diverse but local congregations share the responsibility and privilege of preaching the gospel to people at the end of their lives.

Voorwinde says the denomination is not the important part.

VOORWINDE: If they're proclaiming the gospel and relating it to the people there. I think that's really the most important thing. So, yeah, and they're the kind of people who have put their hand up for this sort of work.

Alan and Lorraine Wheeler served as missionaries in Chad and then bred alpacas before they moved into the independent living apartments. Like Voorwinde, they saw the spiritual need and invited their pastor to preach upstairs.

LORRAINE: Well, I'm very conscious of the fact that almost all of the people in care here are unable to get to a church.

Lorraine remembers the feeling of spiritual isolation after their own church closed and they had to search for another.

LORRAINE: I think the scriptures make it abundantly clear that we should not neglect meeting together. The church is a body, it's a necessary body. We are not isolated beings in the kingdom of God. And this is the closest they'll get to church.

Jen Grover has also signed up to help. She’s the lifestyle and activities coordinator for Level 2.

JEN GROVER: I was looking to do something different or something to complement singing teaching, and found my way into aged care. And I love it. I'm able to use music within my work as well.

She chooses the hymns and leads the singing for the Wednesday services.

MUSIC: [AMAZING GRACE BY JEN GROVER]

But for the past three weeks and multiple times in the past seven months she hasn’t been able to distribute the black plastic folders full of faithful old hymns. A few weeks ago, a spate of residents with a stomach bug closed down Level 2 and canceled all activities. Then there was a case of COVID…and the next week, a dozen more.

JEN: The difficult part has been having to cancel you know, due to COVID restriction. It's a directive from the health department and we have to do as we're told so, and yeah, the residents do miss it.

Lorraine Wheeler says the canceled service is more than just a disappointment.

LORRAINE: Also, like today, we're unable to go there because there's sickness that they've closed the place down. I feel quite sad about that, because those people are missing out. And how long will they have left on this earth? We don't know.

So the little band of pastors and leaders will keep working, holding services when they can.

VOORWINDE: People in old age definitely need spiritual care. You know, some are really cut off from, from their church communities. And, yeah, they need a living relationship with the Lord as much as anyone else.

When the services do happen, the residents gladly participate.

VOORWINDE: A lot of them are visually impaired. So they can't, can't read the hymns, but some know them off by heart and they're happy to sing them. I find that such an encouragement that people who by human standards, so limited in what they can do, and yet they're happy to sing the praises of God, even in that situation.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Highton, Victoria, Australia.

MUSIC: [TRUST AND OBEY BY JEN GROVER]

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