Why no Mention of God or Religion?

In my last post, I told of the issues that residents of an assisted living facility identified as giving meaning to their life.  Mentioned by the residents were (1) active engagements in life – doing things with and for others, (2) positive relationships with family and friends, (3) a sense of independence or control, and (4) reminiscing.   Missing, if anybody noticed, was any mention of God or church. 

I did not have any comments from you readers about such absent reflections.  Presumably either the results didn’t surprise you or you thought that those assisted living residents were probably not church-goers.   As it turns out, most of those residents were indeed church-goers, some still attending church with an ambulatory spouse or friend, or they attend a weekly service onsite, and virtually all of the residents have been fairly religious over the years.

So why didn’t they mention God or church when interviewed?  After all, a couple of years ago the older adult members of a Lutheran church in California were asked an identical question and their top four answers to what gave meaning to their life were: (1) God, (2) family, (3) church, and (4) spouse.

I don’t know for certain why either group answered as they did, but I want to suggest an important difference in these two surveys that, if reasonably true, can help us understand something very important issues about interpreting data we collect within our churches. 

I suggest that the difference in the answers between the church congregation members and the assisted living residents has more to do with the context in which the questions were asked than they have to do with the attitudes and beliefs of the respondents.  When the group of older adults was asked about meaningful issues by representatives of their church, they couldn’t help but have issues of faith and church come to mind because it was “their church” that was asking the question.  Whereas for the residents of the assisted living center, there were no particular cues about church or religion that would logically crop up, non-consciously or consciously, in their mind.   The assisted living residents would have been more aware of their surroundings, people like themselves that they saw daily.

The point I make here is that as we listen to the meaningful interests and needs of people, older adults included, it is essential that we consider who is asking the questions and what is the context of the place where the questions are asked.  It is a well-known research finding, for instance, that citizens whose polling place is in a school, are more likely to vote in favor of a school bond issue, than if their polling place is in a church or city hall for instance. 

For me, the lesson to take away is to recognize that in a church-religious questionnaire, answers to a question about what is most meaningful, are likely to underreport issues of doing things with friends, contributions made, control and reminiscing because of their attention could center on things religious.    For some churches, this would have scant impact, for their stated purpose could be to be to focus only on issues of faith.  But for other churches that seek to impact the well-being of their older adult parishioners more broadly, any underreporting of needs for say socializing, empowerment, and participation may lead to incomplete understanding of daily realities for those parishioners and thus deficient strategies.

This is one of the reasons, that in reviewing the results of my own recent informal question about what it is that churches do that enable older adults to feel that they matter, I am especially drawn to the comprehensive approaches of some churches that incorporate frequent (weekly) gatherings of older adults for a multitude of activities;  play, food, physical therapy, health check, talk, reminiscing, helping (volunteering), learning, and fun.  (See the WOW program at Immanuel Lutheran in Webster, New York.  http://www.immanuelwebster.org/2010/06/16/wow/).

Bruce