When Jesus said that the second most important commandment was to love your neighbour as yourself, He made it clear that your neighbour is whoever life brings alongside you (Luke 10: 25-37). The two people involved in the story told in Luke’s gospel had never met before and had only a brief relationship, yet it was life changing for the injured one and a great blessing for the other (Acts 20:35).Unlike my church’s neighbourhood outreach, it was a deeply personal interaction.

When it comes to loving a ‘neighbour’ who is coping with dementia, it’s most effective when it comes from a personal, as well as a collective approach.   An example is Irene, (81) who I chatted with during the Covid-19 lock-down.  She was the sole carer for her husband Douglas, (85).  The thing she missed most was having someone from church sit with her husband so she could catch the bus into town where she’d visit the shops and stop for a coffee.  Family caregivers can be very protective, and it was fortunate that having been part of the church fellowship for years everyone knew each other, so Douglas was comfortable with the person who came to keep him company.  That stopped with lock-down, but Ruth, the closest friend from church stayed connected by passing her house when she went for a walk, and knocking on the sitting room window.  Irene would look out and see Ruth, then go to the front door where would have a conversation standing six feet away from each other.  As well as a break from isolation, Ruth would bring encouragement and spiritual support.

Most caregivers miss the ordinary, normal, everyday routines. One wife told me that she liked to do the ironing when the carer came to help her husband.  For her, producing a pile of freshly ironed clothes was satisfying, soothing, and normal.

‘Doing normal’ is what my friend Rose and I do when her husband Peter (names changed) goes to the Dementia Day Centre.  Rose’s health has plummeted in the four years since his diagnosis, and she now has spinal stenosis and a heart pacemaker.  Once in town we go first to the Post Office where she hands in her mail order Returns, then we visit shops in the High Street, (especially those with ‘Sale’ signs) and have lunch in the Garden Centre.  All the while we talk about life, reflexively for both of us within a Christian context.  Rose used to be a teacher and I’ve shown her how not to correct Peter when he gets it wrong, but deflect him to something positive.  For instance, when he told the family that tennis star Emma Raducanu had come to visit him in Wales after her first major loss and how he had encouraged her, Rose didn’t point out that Emma hadn’t visited but told Peter that he had always been an encourager and what a blessing that was!  We’ve had many talks about residential care, something that Rose wants to avoid.  She says that every morning she asks the Lord if He would bring them Home together, and thanks Him for the strength He gives her.  The harder life becomes the closer Heaven comes to Rose.

Sadly, although Peter is a retired pastor and church elder, they seem to have dropped off their church radar and only have an occasional visit from a member.  But God hasn’t forgotten them: their neighbours in their upmarket apartments help in dozens of ways.  The mail is dropped at their door on the second floor; Rose has telephone numbers to call should they need help, and during this year’s scorching summer they were given so many bottles of water that Rose had to stack them on their shady balcony.  Without knowing the Scripture, the neighbours are fulfilling it.

When it comes to loving your ‘neighbour’ with dementia, the greatest helps are listening, assuring her (or him) that they are doing a great job of caring, being pro-active with offers of help (‘I’m going into town do you need anything?’) sitting with the person with dementia if possible to give the caregiver a break, providing a touch of normality, making sure she has your telephone number, and above all, bringing Eternity into the conversation.  Christians with dementia can ‘come alive’ with spiritual support.  Peter beams when they sing the old hymns in, ‘Worshipping with Dementia’.

Church support makes so much difference.  Collaborating with others I’ve written a booklet called, ‘Dementia Inclusive Church,’ that describes what fellowships can do to become a little more than ‘friendly.’  It’s available here.

You’ll also find further helpful Dementia resources in the Faith in Later Life Resource Hub.

Louise Morse is a friend to Faith in Later Life, and an experienced cognitive behavioural therapist with expertise on issues facing older people, including dementia. To find out more about ‘deflecting not correcting’ please see our short interview with Louise here.

Our church is in a village in Cheshire. A few years back we had a rethink about how to reach our area. We realised there were two groups we had real opportunities with: families and retired people.

We were doing a lot to reach families, but the retired outreach was more ad hoc. We chatted to retired people in the church about what would serve them in reaching their friends.

Whatever your community is like, there are doubtless retired people you share the Christmas
message and welcome with. Here’s what we learnt:

A Perspective Shift

Before we get into the specifics ideas, the first thing we learnt was a perspective shift in terms of language. We went from speaking about “the elderly” to “the retired”.

Why?

Everyone in our church thought reaching the elderly was a good idea. But no one thought of themselves as elderly. And they weren’t! Most of our retired people regularly exercised, were involved in grandparenting duties and weren’t particularly struggling with ill-health. Their friends were the same.

When we spoke of reaching the elderly, their minds jumped to people that weren’t at all like their friends. Retired people was more broad. That included the lonely and frail, but it also included the active and healthy. We want to reach all retired people.

9 Ideas

Once that perspective shift has happened, you can think of some ways of outreach.

Here are 9 ideas. Some are time-intensive, some are easy. Some are gospel-proclamation, others are relational. I guarantee you can do at least one in your area.

1. Christmas cards

Deliver a card to every house on your street. You don’t need to know your neighbours’
names. Write a simple message:

Dear neighbours
Happy Christmas
Love
Fred, Jane and Sid the Dog (Number 42)

You’ll likely get 4-5 back, this time with the sender’s names. Keep a note for next year and you can start to build a relationship.

If you’re feeling daring, include an invite to a carol service. But that isn’t a must. The relationship is the priority here.

2. Christmas Bakes

Many people like to bake Christmas goodies over the Christmas period. What if you shared them with someone else? (It’s good for the waistline too!)

Just knock on your neighbours door and say “We just baked some minced pies, would you like one?”

As they scoff their faces, you can introduce yourself. This is slightly better than cards as you get to see people’s faces. Hopefully, that makes it easier to talk in the future.

Bonus points if you take cute kids with you. Everyone loves to see kids at Christmas!

3. Grandparents Welcome!

In our society, it is more common for both parents to work full or part-time. This means that grandparents are on duty more often. This can be physically and emotionally demanding. They need support just as much as new mums and dads.

We’ve found in recent years grandparents are much more likely to be involved in toddler clubs or looking after grandkids during the holiday.

If you’re holding an event for children, don’t just say “parents and carers welcome”. Specify grandparents are welcome. Encourage grandparents from church come too. They will make natural connections.

4. Carol-singing

Get a small group from church to go and carol sing around your village. Knock the doors, gather people round and take requests. You don’t need to be a choir!

My tip would be to do this in the daylight. People will rarely leave their doorstep in the cold.

You could also do this in a retirement home if there is one near you.

5. Neighbours Nibbles

Invite neighbours from down your road to come round for Christmas nibbles at a particular time. Also invite a Christian friend (preferably local).

Keep the time short (1 hour) so you don’t run out of things to talk about. You won’t get the whole street, but it’s likely you will meet some people who don’t know you very well.

6. Christmas Dinner +1

If you are already cooking a huge amount of food, why not invite someone who is spending Christmas alone?

For many of us, Christmas day is devoted to seeing extended family. But if it isn’t for you, considering inviting someone round. Of course, you’ll probably need to know them fairly well before this is an option. But consider if there are any retired relatives, church members
or neighbours who may be interested.

7. Carol Concert

Most churches have a carol service this time of year. Make sure local people feel invited.

Simply calling it a “Community Carol Service” and putting invites through doors may lead people to come.

Even better, invite people you actually know. For retired people, that inevitably means retired friends. Others of us surely have family or neighbours we can invite.

8. Community Lunch

4 times a year, our church organises a community lunch. Dinner is provided for free on a Wednesday lunch time, followed by a talk.
This is very hard work for those in the kitchen. But if you have the skills to do this, it’s a great opportunity.

9. Evangelistic Courses

At Christmas, we always invite people to a Christianity Explored course starting in the new year.

Because of the size of our village, a usual group size is 2-4. Over-65s are often interested. Most had some contact with the Bible at school or church. However, in my experience, they weren’t ever allowed to ask questions.

An environment where they can read the Bible, challenge it and receive answers is a great opportunity.

I like Christianity Explored because it’s rooted in Mark. But there are other courses that you might use. One of our church members has read John one-to-one with a neighbour.

Because it’s the most evangelistic, it’s easy to assume no one will come. But if you never ask, you’ll never know! I’m constantly surprised at the people who do say yes.

Other Ideas?

I’m sure there are other ideas that work in your area. No church or individual can do them all.

But could you do one on this list?

Tim Wilson is the pastor of Wheelock Heath Baptist Church in Cheshire, and part of the The Rural Project, helping to catalyse and facilitate rural mission in Great Britain.

And as a Christian that’s where things get interesting because the two highlights of the season revolve around the birth and resurrection of Jesus.  It’s a time when its normal to talk about Christian things and when the seasonal songs and images stir the memory, and the mince pies and mulled wine warm the body.

Love my Neighbour is a simple but potentially life-giving campaign to remind and encourage us all to connect with our neighbours. It’s good for everyone, but our prayer is that this would be especially good for older people this winter making the most of the season.

As the CEO of a charity that runs residential care homes, I know how valuable visitors are and I encourage you to see if your local care home(s) could be your neighbours this winter, and  if they would welcome the offer of someone to lead a worship service.  Research this year showed that at least 70% of people living in care describe themselves as Christian so you should get a warm welcome.

In partnership with Embracing Age, Faith in Later Life have a Love My Neighbour service plan which teams can deliver in care homes. You can download it here: LMN-Care-Home-Service.docx.

And as Christmas approaches there is help for organising a carol service that will be accessible to care home residents

And whatever you do or don’t do in person, please pray for people visiting care homes and care home residents to help them love their neighbour. Here are some handy tips to get you started: LMN-Care-Home-Visitors-and-Chaplains.docx

Stephen Hammersley

CEO, Pilgrims’ Friend Society

Indulge me in a thought experiment that tells more – you can save a life and we, together, can save lots of lives.

This winter there will be around 30,000 excess winter deaths according to government statistics.  These are predominantly older people who get ill and cold but who don’t seek help soon enough because they are isolated and lonely particularly when it’s dark and cold outside.
Age UK estimate that 1.4 million people in the UK are often lonely.

How do we connect with 1.4m people whose wellbeing is suffering because the relationships they have do not match up to those they would like to have and who are at risk of being one of the 30,000?

Well, if every listener to BBC Radio 2’s Sunday programme at or around 8 am visited just one neighbour then we would have just enough visits, and by 9am the number of listeners mean we would have over a million too many visits.

If every adult who attends church on a Sunday morning, visited just one neighbour on Sunday afternoon then we would also have 1 million too many visits.And if everyone who went to a Premier league match this weekend, buoyed with enthusiasm visited two neighbours in the week that would reach just the right number people.

So we could save this lives this winter, and all we need is the encouragement to reach out to someone living near us.  That is where “Love My Neighbour” kicks in, a simple but potentially life-giving campaign to remind and encourage us all to connect with our neighbours. It’s good for everyone, but our prayer is that this would be especially good for older people this winter.

The Faith in Later Life website contains some simple tools and ideas that help people and churches reach out and make a start by showing that housebound people are valued: individuals with unique strengths and interests as well as challenges; people whose voice matters and should be listened to; but whose confidence and self esteem might be low; and who might need a little help to help themselves.  And amongst these people will be some at real risk this winter. For people who want to help more people more deeply we signpost other organisations that provide training and can help with more extensive schemes.

The Beatles pleaded “love love me do…someone to love, somebody new, someone to love, someone like you”  As for me, I’m off to visit my 96-year-old neighbour armed with a fresh scone and ready to chat about the King’s birthday.

Stephen Hammersley  CBE
CEO Pilgrims Friend Society

Additional Signposting

1.    NHS England Workforce, Training and Education

2.    Campaign to End Loneliness

3.    Age UK Loneliness Report

For many older people however, these shorter and darker days will be a time of increased loneliness as the cold prevents some from venturing out to their usual groups and activities.

This is understandable; travel confidence dips in the winter, and who wants to stand at the bus stop in the cold and rain, only to come back in the dark to a silent, empty home?

But winters can be long, and this loss of social connection and companionship, can have serious consequences, affecting peoples’ mental and physical health.  This loneliness is so bad for us that its impact on our health is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of premature death.

It gets worse in the winter months most years when loneliness is a key contributor to around 25,000-30,000 excess deaths, most of which are represented by older people.

We all have a God-given need for community, as early as Genesis 2 God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone”, even God himself is a community of three. Loneliness and social isolation over a prolonged period are not His plans for anyone.

Love My Neighbour is a simple but potentially lifesaving and lifegiving campaign to remind and encourage us all to intentionally connect with our older neighbours this winter.

Whether we live in a house, a flat, in a care home, or anywhere else; this is a wonderful opportunity to share God’s love with people within and beyond the church family, and it’s so easy!

In essence it’s as simple as:

·       Praying for our neighbours

·       Popping by for a chat

·       Inviting our neighbours

·       Getting to know each other

For those who want to go a little further, we encourage you to introduce your older neighbours to church, where they can be fully known and embraced into a loving family, to enjoy purpose and meaningful friendships well beyond these winter months.

And of course, we believe that a relationship with Jesus is the ultimate lifelong and eternal response to loneliness, and so we have a few ideas about helping older people gently explore faith.

You’ll find ideas and resources to help you pray for and bless your older neighbours on our website, and we’ll share regular inspiration on social media too.

Some of this will take us away from that cosy fireside idyll, and we might get cold toes as we stand on our neighbour’s doorstep, but these are small sacrifices to help bring life to our older neighbours this winter, and they may yet bring us more life too.

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40

Whether you’re one person, a couple, a homegroup, or a whole church, we hope you’ll join in with Love My Neighbour this winter to help shut this window of winter loneliness and open the door to connection, friendship, and God’s incredible love.