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/).
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