Evangelicals have finally noticed seniors (but it’s too late)

In a recent opinion post, Thom Rainer frets about people age 65+, who are apparently leaving evangelical churches in great numbers. And lately, more evangelicals like him are noticing that older Americans, once the mainstays and so-called “anchors” of churches, are leaving their clubhouses in greater and greater numbers. Unfortunately, evangelicals are getting squeezed from both demographic ends right now—and as usual, they’ve got no idea in the world how to handle this huge problem.

(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 11/4/2025. They’re both available now! From introduction: Retirement homes are where evangelicals’ prey grazes.)

SITUATION REPORT: Seniors are leaving churches!

On October 12, 2025, Thom Rainer wrote a story for Christian Post about his usual topic: Churches failing. This one concerns “seniors,” who he defines as people over 65 years of age. He writes:

We’ve analyzed the data on millennials. We’ve debated how to reach Gen Z. Entire conferences are devoted to the “next generation” and what the church must do to keep them engaged. All of that is needed. But there is another exodus taking place in our churches, one that rarely makes the headlines and seldom finds its way into our strategy sessions. It is the quiet departure of senior adults.

(As usual, nobody cares about or even remembers the existence of Gen X. But it’s okay. We Gen Xers don’t care.)

Rainer is deeply concerned about this situation with seniors for a very practical reason: They’re the most consistent church attendees, tithers, and volunteers. In smaller churches, they’re the majority of the members. Oh, and they are also “the most reliable prayer warriors,” he adds, but it’s interesting that he mentions their real, very tangible importance first. (Later, he’ll hammer harder at their financial impact, including not including the church in their will!) Either way, once one of these seniors leaves a church, it loses a lot.

Then, he speculates about why older people are leaving churches in larger numbers than before. He names a few reasons, including health, fewer friends attending, and “shifting church priorities” in emphasizing the needs and desires of younger congregants that makes them feel left out.

Finally, he outlines ways for churches to reach seniors before they drift out of the congregation. This is the most hilarious part of the post—and the part we’ll focus on today.

Everyone, meet Thom Rainer

This definitely isn’t the first time we’ve encountered Thom Rainer around here. He’s been a subject of discussion—er, I mean a guest star—for about a decade now. (He even has a site tag!) For most of that time, he was the leader of Lifeway Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) publisher and propaganda producer.

Nowadays, he works independently as a church revitalizer. That’s the new cottage industry for Christianity in its decline years, and he was one of the first evangelicals to recognize its up-and-coming importance. So church leaders pay this guy to figure out why their churches keep declining in membership, and he tells them what they need to do to reverse the trend.

Though he’s generally a really nice, genuinely likeable person, his ideas are to say the least surreal. We’ve had big issues with how he arrives at those ideas in the past. He rarely tells us where he gets the supposed research that informs them—or shares anything about his sources that could allow anyone to analyze their validity. When I did a deep dive into his oft-repeated claim about 10,000 churches closing per year, I couldn’t find anything credible behind it at all.

But there’s a far bigger problem with his work, and this post is a great example of it. Before we talk about that bigger problem, let’s look at his actual suggestions to churches.

How Thom Rainer thinks churches should capture seniors before they leave

In his post, Thom Rainer outlines four solutions he thinks could help churches retain their seniors before they leave:

1. “Intentional care.” Intentional is an evangelical buzzword that means roughly “with a purpose.” It’s not accidental care. Churches must plan to provide seniors with transportation, technical support with devices, and visits when they can’t make it to church.
2. “Intergenerational opportunities.” Deliberately mixing all age groups with worship, “service projects,” and small groups. Seniors apparently love that stuff.
3. “Visible leadership and mentoring roles.” Pairing, say, “a retired teacher” to mentor “young parents.” Or a “widower” as a grief counselor. He doesn’t provide illustrations of visible leadership roles.
4. Addressing “the struggles seniors face” in sermons.

Rainer’s solution set clearly centers on a vibrant, multigenerational church community that loves and cares for its older members just as much as it cares about its young adults and kids. It’s hilarious that this is the exact same advice I saw circulating in evangelicalism to keep Millennials in the 2000s, then Gen Z in the late 2010s (bonus Thom Rainer sighting here), now Gen Alpha in the pews. (Again, nobody ever cares about or even remembers the existence of Gen X. It’s a rule. And we Gen Xers still don’t care.)

It’s a beautiful vision. In years past, I belonged to a Pentecostal church that did these sorts of things for its oldest members. But that was when the money flowed freely and evangelicals weren’t quite as politically polarized as they are now.

In the Wild: Evangelicals getting concerned about seniors

Though it’s true that evangelicals focus like lasers on young adults and young families in particular, some of them are paying attention to their older folks. Mostly, these sources focus on evangelism specifically. One source likely written in late 2021 still used the buzzword “relational,” a very popular late-2010s Christianese word, to describe the ideal form of seniors evangelism. The source combined it with the newer, trendier word “intentional,” which the Christ-o-sphere still uses today.

One evangelical wrote an entire journal paper about this topic in 2022 that astonished me with its Machiavellian focus on effective emotional manipulation, noting that revered senior converts “may use their influence for the evangelization of their families, communities, clans, and even people groups” (p8 of the PDF).

An evangelical site, Premier Christianity, opportunistically noted in 2023 that seniors have a “real need for community and connection.” The post’s writer suggests that members should try to recruit seniors with the same basic suggestions Thom Rainer made.

In 2023, Focus on the Family drilled down on that exact influence in a post about the importance of evangelizing seniors. In their character “Jim’s” manipulative evangelism visit to her nursing home, elderly “Gail” converted—and she subsequently converted others in the home. But any evangelicals daring to try to recruit this age group knows it’s difficult. Billy Graham’s site even noted that difficulty.

But even existing church-attending seniors must be carefully pastored, as a 2022 9Marks post illustrates. There, we find the same basic instructions Thom Rainer offered: Go intergenerational, spend time with the elderly, get them involved. Christian Living cried out in 2022 that churches “need” seniors’ example of long-term faithfulness, their wisdom, and their impact on younger congregants.

London City Mission’s site praised seniors last year for being rude during services, which their writer says means he “felt at ease” there. He also suggests listening to seniors in the congregation and being very loving toward them.

In 2023, The Gospel Coalition (a hard-right Calvinist site) suggested guidelines for sermons tailored to seniors. Their writer suggested being more “uplifting,” simple, not too political or “philosophical,” and geared toward uniting people rather than dividing them.

The basic problem that seniors can’t solve for evangelicals

Thom Rainer’s work faces one essential underlying problem that always prevents his ideas from being adopted by evangelicals:

His solutions require evangelicals in America to start living up to their own hype about themselves. And they can’t do that. They don’t even want to do that.

American evangelicals can’t act loving, caring, communicative, fairness-loving, rule-abiding, generous, and gracious. They can’t. That whole notion is fundamentally at odds with the reason why evangelicals today join churches and support them in the first place.

Nobody converts to evangelicalism because they’re desperate to be kind to elderly people. When you look at the stuff Jesus ordered evangelicals to do, the stuff they really think the Bible has literally, inerrantly, authoritatively ordered them to do, not one bit of it will ever show up in an altar call or an evangelism pitch. Heck, even if we concede that the so-called “Great Commission” is actually something a god told evangelicals to do, which we absolutely shouldn’t, nobody converts to evangelicalism because they’re eager to evangelize others 24/7.

Literally no preacher ever has ever told a revival audience:

Okay, now, please just bow your head and close your eyes and let’s just pray for Jesus to just speak to our hearts. Maybe you’ve never felt what you’re feeling right now: An urge to step up, to be present, to help others. Now, with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, if you’re ready to be his hands upon the world, won’t you just slip up your hand? Ah, yes, I see you, and you, and yes, you too, sir. Thank you. And now, won’t you all just repeat after me in your heart:

Jesus, I’ll give half my paycheck to charity this week. I’ll bring a bunch of new and very gently used clothes to the local charity box, and nice big towels to the nearest animal shelter, and I’ll volunteer at the food pantry and library. Most of all, Jesus, I’ll call the widow down the street that I know is lonely, and I’ll make time to help at the local public school that I know is struggling. In your name, Jesus, we promise. Amen.

Nope. Ain’t ever gonna happen.

Evangelists and churches do not sell service to others. They sell safety from Hell and superiority to other flavors of Christianity. People who convert to a religion because they’ve bought into a me-first, me-focused recruitment pitch are not going to be able to pivot 180-degrees into an others-focused life philosophy. They’ll resent even the implication that they should.

This isn’t an age thing at all. It’s a fundamental mismatch between hype and reality. That’s just not a problem that evangelicals can solve. So it won’t ever be solved. And that impossibility will only spell ongoing decline in the years ahead.

NEXT UP: Young women continue to leave evangelicalism behind—while young, hard-right theo-bros find new usefulness in the worldview. We’ll check out this ongoing gender split next time. See you soon! <3

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