Missing Links?

In a recent meeting, our good friend David Messick did some quick research and discovered something interesting about our community. As many of you know, our church, like most churches, is made up mostly of older adults, although we have a good number of children and youth – not enough, but many more children and youth than we have of people between the ages of 20-65. It turns out that Hampton also has a good number of senior citizens and children under the age of 18, but not nearly as many adults between the ages of 20-65. If you laid the statistics out, both our city and our church would look like an hourglass. To be sure, it isn’t a big hourglass, but we truly do not have as many adults between 20-65 as we have of children and senior citizens.

Where is the missing middle? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I suspect two things might be true: One, those adults may be living elsewhere, like Virginia Beach, or there simply aren’t as many of them in general.

In that same group, we’ve been talking about loneliness, all the problems it leads to, and what our church might be able to do to deal with it. We’ve been talking about how many people simply haven’t come back into society following the pandemic, and they’ve stayed out of not only church, but also restaurants and public events. We’ve been discussing things we could do as a church to help people connect, and David’s insight has helped us come up with a focus – building bridges across the generations. We have lots of ideas (and if you’re interested in joining our team, you are welcome to come), but the one that makes the most sense right now is to start planning a monthly “Thursday Night Life” dinner to begin in July, or possibly August. The idea we’re working with is “It’s Just Dinner.” Instead of focusing on small groups, we want to focus on getting people to talk and spend time together. We will add groups as it makes sense. In the meantime, we’re also thinking of how we could involve the AA groups, Scouts, and people from our community so that we can have multiple generations together.

What has become clear as we’ve talked and met is that we all have something to gain from connecting the missing links between people, especially connecting seniors with young people. The more understanding and friendships that build across generations, the safer, happier, and whole we can all be. By the way, we are targeting our first dinner for the week after VBS, July 25, so that we can invite people to join us during the week of VBS, which is scheduled for July 16-19.

So, even if you are not interested in cooking, cleaning, setting up, taking down, or inviting neighbors, I invite you to be interested in spending time with neighbors, church friends, families, and others. We will need help to make July 25 happen, and the biggest help will be your presence.