Ministry amongst those with memory loss
Ministry amid those with memory loss, frequently through the onset of dementia, can be very challenging—merely information technology is a growing aspect of life equally people live longer. In the latest Grove Mission and Evangelism booklet, Steven Morris tells the remarkable story of the development of a Retentiveness Café at his church in Northward Wembley.
The retentiveness café at St Cuthbert's N Wembley attracts people from across our community. It has become a identify of joy and friendships that has created a sense of community and belonging. Information technology has been featured on radio and in example studies and articles, including in Christian Today. Retention café has been an unthreatening place of mission and evangelism and has led to an increase in our Sunday numbers besides. We have plant older people to be a fertile mission field, a source of joy and a approval to this church.
What we have set up is not a niche event for a single group—merely for those with Alzheimer's or the onset of dementia. Instead information technology is a strategy that has been nearly broad and deep customs-building (just the kind of thing we as church are uniquely well placed to practice). The majority came considering they were lonely and wanted to be part of a loving, inclusive community. They stay considering they are loved and because they are now part of something bigger than themselves.
We did not set information technology up with anything in mind other than wanting to exist a blessing to our community. Nosotros also had a deep sense that our customs was pain and we wanted to do something about it. That hurt was loneliness and isolation and our hunch is that this is a hurt that is growing in many places around our country. We have people who tell us that their contact with our memory café is the only social interaction they take each week.
The atomized life seems to exist part and parcel of being a modern person. At the fourth dimension of Jesus the kind of sheer and utter isolation of our elders would have been hard to countenance. He ministered in a close community, where people knew each other, and about each other and hospitality and care for elders and others was a sacred duty.
The simplicity and honey of our café take taught united states of america many things well-nigh how to exist church and how to government minister creatively to elders. It has revitalized our church and has changed the way I remember nigh ministry building. The more I retrieve virtually it, the more I run across the deep roots such ministry has in the life of Jesus and in how we do church in the hither and now.
What has fascinated us is the way retentiveness café does non just add numbers to church on Lord's day, although it does that, only the way it creates a new community—and in our case a multi-faith, intergenerational i. And that is an exciting, unexpected by-product of this kind of initiative. Retentivity cafés are highly attractional and the games element seems to draw men in. Past calling information technology a memory café, rather than a dementia café, yous remove stigma and broaden the entreatment.
It is our heartfelt desire that memory cafés spring upward around the country. We want this because we see people coming to us disheartened, lonely and hopeless and we come across them becoming part of something that brings faith, hope and honey.
We come across memory cafés as a frontline evangelistic activity, although we let the gospel speak through action as much as words. We see information technology as a way of re-engi- neering church building and a function of church growth. It is also enormous fun, a source of joy and something that will make people grin.
In improver, they are very like shooting fish in a barrel to set up. All you demand are a few regular volunteers, a kettle and some tea and coffee and biscuits and some retentivity games. A memory café will add life to existing groups. By adding a memory focus you can revitalize an existing group for older people. They bring in people who generally do non often come to church and they generate a swell deal of loyalty. Elders are merely amazed that the church building cares for them and is prepared to do something for them. This is, of course, a pitiful annotate on the way the church has, and frequently has not, valued the wisdom and presence of older people.
The Christian Bible has much to say about memory and its value. It is a main theme in this holy book. Retention maketh the man (or woman), or at least memory defines a holy people.
Remembering who God is and what he has done is a key part of the Bible narrative. The Old Testament is full of the big story so precious to the Israelites—their release from slavery at the easily of the pharaoh. The story is lovingly told and so remembered for centuries. Rituals and festivals grow up around it. It is part of the precious commonage retentivity that de nes a people, that gives them identity and promise. The people are exhorted not to forget God, his person and his mighty works. But at that place is a strange problem, seen through the lens of what happens in this long period of corporate remembrance.
Despite the starring advent of God, the Ten Commandments, the heroic rescue and all the remainder, the people nevertheless find it difficult to link retentivity with holiness and fidelity to the God who is there. Memory is not enough to remake the globe. The people of Israel at times forget who they are, and whose they are. What people retrieve is non always enough to in uence the way they are in the here and now.
It is a relief to know that God tin live with our faulty memories. Even his called people sometimes forgot to remember. And when they did forget, they constitute it harder to make links to the here and at present. Our faulty memories are not a barrier to existence loved past God. In some sense he holds the memories of communities. He remembers fifty-fifty when we do not.
Dementia is humiliating and public and desperation upon desperation. It looks like there is nothing good to come from it. It is public and information technology looks equally though it cannot be redeemed. But that is not the full story. The love I have seen of partners and carers for their loved ones is so powerful and strong that I begin to believe that the power of evil and hell cannot prevail.
In memory café nosotros proclaim God's love for all people and that dementia is non the cease of a person. Retention café is not only a social group at church, or a bit of manufactured jollity. It is us, the people of God, standing with those who suffer. We practise this in the proper noun of the broken God who suffered beyond suffering.
God became weak and imperfect as he was tortured and crucified. He chose information technology, and in choosing information technology he proclaims maybe that we need to think again nearly our attitudes to strength and weakness. We demand to challenge the myth of perfection that we cling to. Paradoxically, it is in weakness we are fabricated stiff. So how practise we view those who come to us in a state of profound disablement?
Retentivity is powerful so are the stories that nosotros tell each other, and which our customs cherishes. That is why nosotros set upwards retention café. And that is why we tape the life story of every precious person who comes. We exercise it because that thief on the cantankerous called to Jesus, 'Recall me.' And our Lord reassured him, 'You are coming to paradise this very day.' Hallelujah, I say!
We declare in our faith that every person, every animal, on God'southward globe has significance.
Steven'southward booklet explores all the practical problems about how to set up a Memory Café, what the aims should be, how to involve volunteers, and suggestions for retention activities for dissimilar levels of date. It think it is going to exist an important resource for an really vital surface area of ministry for the local church.
You tin order the booklet Memory Café: How to Engage with Memory Loss and Build Customsfrom the Grove website for £iii.95, postal service gratuitous in the Great britain or as a PDF e-booklet.
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