Notice how the likelihood of disability increases with age, as shown in this graphic. How Many Disabled People Attend Your Church? How does your church compare to society at large? Does your church welcome and accommodate people with disabilities, or are there psychological and architectural barriers? How can we more effectively minister to these people in our church and society at large?
The 75 million "Baby Boomers" born in the twenty years from 1946 through 1965 are now retiring, and nearly half of them need serious health care. They've worked and saved for 50 years during the "boom" years of the U.S. economy, and now they're spending those 18.8 trillion dollars they've saved up: 75,000,000 people x $250,000 of average savings. But that average includes the wealthy who may have millions in retirement funds: the median (mid-point) of retirees have less than $50,000 - little or nothing - saved up. Will you have enough in savings to move to an Assisted Living center or Nursing Home at $3,000 to $8,000 per month? Don't count on Social Security and Medicare - they're going broke: there will be too many retired and disabled people, and not enough younger people paying into the system.
As this photo shows, 45% of these retired "Baby Boomers" are disabled. And statistics tell us about 70% of us will spend two or three years on average (some longer!) needing care by others before we pass on. 70% of 75,000,000 Baby-Boomers = over Fifty Million disabled elderly people! For a married couple, it's over 90% probability that one or the other will be disabled. (70% for one, plus 70% of the remaining 30% for the other = 91%.) You may hope that you go quickly via a sudden heart attack or stroke, but more often than not, those events or a bad back, bad hips, bad knees, foot amputations due to diabetes, etc. all bring on long-term disability rather than sudden death.
Be honest with yourself: are you going to hand over your retirement savings to a secular nursing home, or will you use it "to minister to the building up of the Body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12) and at the same time provide a home for yourself where you can eventually age-in-place? Our planned Agape Restoration Communities will be wheelchair-accessible for Independent Living and have a community room/chapel, 1-bedroom & 2-bedroom "accessible living units." [This is not a medical facility that requires a nursing staff on-site 24/7, but if people need occasional help, they can call one of our trained "Social Ministry" volunteers to help them, or an outside home health aide.]
Check out the six courses in our "Social Ministry of the Church" one-year program. And please download our brochure in PDF format for all our courses to print and distribute: SMC-brochure.pdf. This is how we can restore the Early Church's social ministry to "the poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind, to widows and orphans." You may become that person who responds to the call for a home health aide!
On the "Welcome" page to our courses, you'll see a "LOGIN" link. As it explains, you can log in as "guest" to ENROLL, or try out our lessons and send in your answers to see how our interactive courses work, or you can browse the lessons without logging in as a "guest".
When you enroll, however, you can participate in a structured class according to a syllabus, taking part in group discussions, getting graded replies for your answers to each lesson, and hopefully receiving a certificate upon completion of all six courses. Our 20+ years of experience teaching online has proven that people who study with a group of other students tend to stick with it much more than those who simply study our lessons solo. Enroll in our free courses to see how YOU can do diakonia-ministry. And Join "The ARC" Chat/Video Forum to Build the ARC!
At the bottom of our "Welcome" page you'll read the following for priests/pastors and deacons:
"Click HERE to see three ways you can help teach these courses:
1. We teach the entire course and you simply observe,
2. You lead your discussion group and we grade the lessons,
3. You lead your discussion group and grade the lessons.
(You can also use our software to create your own courses.)"
Yours sincerely,
"Dr. Bob"
Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., M.Th.S., D.Min.
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