BETWEEN SEVENTY AND EIGHTY million baby boomers are going to hit age sixty five in the next fifteen years. If 20% are evangelicals and they decide to serve a local church this means 20-30 unpaid volunteers at each place of worship. Tragically, we have bought the lie that our senior citizens are good for nothing but to be let out to pasture. Henry Durbanville provides some interesting facts to the contrary.
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| A Productive Senior |
“There are figures to show that the greatest
productivity of man’s life lies in the decade between his sixtieth and
seventieth year. The method adopted to learn the actual facts relating to man’s
working period was as follows: Some four hundred names of the most noted men in
all times from all lines of activity, were chosen. There were statesmen,
painters, warriors, poets, and writers of fiction, history, and other prose
work. Opposite to the name of each man indicated his greatest work or
achievement. This list was then submitted to critics, to learn their opinion of
the greatest work of each man submitted. The names of their greatest works were
accepted, or altered, until the list was one that could be finally accepted.
After this was done the date at which the work was produced was placed after
the name, and so the age was ascertained at which the individual was at this
best. The list was then arranged according to decades."
Durbanville continues, "It was found that the
decades between sixty and seventy contained thirty-five percent of the
world’s greatest achievements. Between the ages of seventy and eighty,
twenty-three percent of the world’s greatest achievements fell; and in the
years after eightieth, six percent. In other words, sixty-four percent of the
greatest things of the world have been accomplished by men who had passed the
sixtieth year; the greatest percentage, thirty-five, being in the seventh
decade”
Labels: retirement, serving
