New Commandment Men's Ministries
Using teams of men to serve widows, single moms, and fatherless children
New Commandment Men's Ministries
Using teams of men to serve widows, single moms, and fatherless children

An Intergenerational Orphanage and Retirement Community

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Photo courtesy Donnie Ray Jones

I’ve often thought that combining a retirement home with an orphanage, foster care facility, preschool, or even an elementary school, would be super cool. The resulting interaction would develop a symbiotic relationship where older adults help with childcare and share their wisdom, while the children give purpose and joy to the adults. It would be the ultimate “widows and orphans ministry.”

Last week, I came across just such a community. An article by Jeff Neely1 tells the story of Advent Christian Village in Dowling Park, Florida, a one hundred year old retirement community that originally focused on widows and orphans. It now serves as “a model for intergenerational ministry.”

Neely writes, “Far from a haven for senior escapism, [Advent Christian Village] was born with a baked-in vision for missional living. The non-profit organization opened in 1913 as a home for both orphans and retired ministers, and today, with its community-run youth mentoring programs and a high rate of volunteering, it may offer a model for post-career seniors who want to get away and yet continue investing in intergenerational ministry.”

Dr. Chuck Stecker, a good friend of mine and a well-known national men’s ministry leader, has made intergenerational ministry a focal point of his mission. He founded A Chosen Generation to help “churches and families create strategies for intergenerational ministry.” Most churches have multi-generational ministries instead of intergenerational ministries – siloed generational ministries that exist side by side but seldom interact with each other.

If you would like to harness the spiritual vitality of true intergenerational ministry, then I strongly encourage you to check out Chuck’s website and utilize his resources.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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  1. “Florida’s Oldest Place to Grow Old” by Jeff Neely, Christianity Today, March 2019.

AUTHOR

Herb Reese
Herb Reese is an author, public speaker and President of New Commandment Men's Ministries. Herb has a B.A. in History from UCLA and a Th.M. in Pastoral Ministries from Dallas Theological Seminary. He has done post graduate work in The History of Ideas at University of Texas, Dallas and in Church Administration at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. After serving as a pastor over a period of twenty years, Herb founded New Commandment Men's Ministries, a ministry dedicated to helping churches recruit, train, organize and deploy teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents. Herb has served as President of New Commandment since 2003 and has helped 1,000 churches develop men's team ministries in all 50 states and eight foreign countries. Herb and his wife, Patti, live in Arvada, Colorado, and have three adult children.

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