The Church and the Three-Quarter Life Crisis with Rob Myallis | Episode 273

Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, the most downloaded episode of 2025 was one featuring a Lutheran pastor by the name of Rob Mialis. Rob and I are both alumni of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I had him on the episode to talk about the decision by the seminary to sell their property and move to a new location in the cities. And that actually became a launching point to talk about the changing church in our culture, but also the changing pastorate. And like I said, it was an incredibly popular episode. And so I'm bringing Rob back now, and actually not for one episode, but for two, that are talking about two different generations, one that is definitely in our church and one that is sort of in our church. This first episode is going to deal with what Rob calls the three-quarter life crisis. And that means folks that are in their seventies, as they're facing all of the challenges of aging. And kind of how they deal with that. Sometimes it's not an easy transition as they reach a certain part of their life where things stop working and they're losing people around them that they've known for a long time, friends, family, loved ones. And this is actually, can be a challenge for pastors, but it can also be an opportunity. And what Rob writes about in an article for Mockingbird is how pastors and church leaders can find ways to help those who are in their eighth and ninth decade, so their seventies and eighties, kind of regain that sense of finding a place in the church. Now, next week, we're going to go to the other end of the spectrum, and we're going to be talking about Gen Z, and especially the ongoing debate on whether or not there is a revival among this generation. A little bit about Rob. Rob is the pastor of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and he writes a blog that I use a lot called Lictionary Greek. This is a great resource for pastors, especially I'm not naming names, but those who maybe have forgotten some of their seminary Greek. So with that out of the way, here is my conversation, part one of my conversation with Rob Maialis, this one featuring the three-quarter life crisis. Well, Rob, it is good to have you back. I wanted to talk today because you wrote something that ended up on the Mockingbird website about something I had not heard before. Because obviously we've heard about midlife crisis. And maybe a few of us have heard of quarter life crisis. But you talk about the three quarter life crisis. Um which i found was kind of fascinating and i think i've seen that a bit at my own congregation so why don't you kind of break down what do you mean by three-quarter life crisis and what led you to write it write this article sure sure again dennis it's great to be uh to be back here um, What I have observed is that time and time again, in different contexts with myself and with friends, the conflicts that people have with people in their congregations almost always involve people in the same age range, that kind of mid-70s, early 70s. And I started wondering what was going on. And as I've kind of seen the way my parents have kind of moved through retirement, I was just kind of thinking about kind of what maybe my life could or should look like in the next, you know, 15 to 20, 30 years. What I've observed is that many Americans, especially Americans, we get a lot of status and a lot of value out of making positive contributions. And that for many people, retirement itself can be like a real change, kind of going from the working world to the non-working world. But a lot of people in their retirement, they actually find it really generative. They're able to get involved in churches or in political causes or in food pantries or all sorts of things. I know so many retirees, especially kind of coming out of the middle upper class, this kind of this boomer sort of generation's wealth i mean they're they're in their retirement and they're traveling they're doing things they're busier now than they were when they were in their 50s when they were taking care of their parents and still kind of having to sort of the tail end of their raising their kids um but but i noticed that somewhere kind of in the mid 70s, uh people start like their health kind of starts to catch up with them and it's um, And they just kind of lose a little bit of steam and energy. And the way that I see this playing itself out is like the church or the pastor or a staff member wants to take something in a new direction. And suddenly something becomes like a big conflict. You're like, what's going on here? And, you know, or somebody who didn't go to the meeting, hasn't been on the committee or whatever in a year, or somebody's in your office or on the phone, like really upset with you for doing something. And so I just started to think like, what is going on here? And so I sort of thought, you know, there's kind of like a, I was kind of made up the term, a three quarter life crisis, where the first, the quarter life crisis is there's so many options in this world. I don't know which ladder to choose. The midlife crisis is I climb the ladder and like, well, was it the right ladder to climb? And I kind of feel like the three quarter life crisis is like, They took the ladder away from me because they were worried I was going to get hurt and nobody wants me to climb anything anymore. And that's just a big shift for people, especially in our culture that so values productivity. And I mean, what have you kind of noticed about these people once they kind of hit that age? What is it that hitting their 70s, especially their mid 70s, all of a sudden there's like this switch? Yeah, I think a lot of it. I think part of it is physical just for a lot of people. I remember when we were going through the COVID era, they always talked about underlying conditions. And I just began to realize that everybody in my family that I knew was in their 70s had an underlying condition. And I just think, you know, when people go in there, I just noticed that when I start talking to people in that age range, when I talk to people in their 60s, they're kind of joking about all the medicines they take. When I talk to people in their 70s, they're just talking about all like the surgeries and doctor's appointments that they have to go to and their spouse. And, you know, typically by the time you get in your mid 70s, if people are married, one of the two is starting to have some pretty, I think, significant health limitations, either mental or physical. I also think emotionally something happens where, you know, I'm in my second parish. And there are some things I've done at the previous church and I've done at this church. I would honestly say, like, if I had to do that at another church, like, I don't necessarily want to clean up, you know, safe child regulations at another church. Like, I've done it. I did it twice. You know, I don't want to do it a third time. And so I think that for some of the people as well, there's just a sense of, like, they've carried so much water for an organization for so long that they really are ready for somebody else to kind of do that. And there what I think happens is that kind of their head is like, I don't really want to change the bylaws of my organization another time. I don't really want to reorganize the committee structure and, you know, cause they were there in 1960 when they merged these two committees, they were there in 1980 and they split the committees apart and then they're there in the aughts and they merged them together again. And now this pastor's saying, we want to split the committees, you know, okay, like I'm done. But just because they don't want to have that kind of that burden of more night meetings or this kind of stuff, it's very disorienting for them to go from people who were leaders in an organization who were always sought after for their opinion to people who only find out inadvertently in an email chain that there's been some change in how their church is going to do some worship or administrative or outreach. Yeah. And what I found was that I started talking to other pastors, and I just felt like so many people in the parish just instantly registered because they've had themselves experiences with people in this kind of cohort, long, faithful stewards of beautiful resources and giftedness, kind of hitting that kind of emotional, physical kind of wall of not wanting to kind of carry the church, but feeling guilty about that, feeling frustrated they're not a part of it, and just kind of observing. And so I was kind of thinking, like, what might it be like for us to be pastor to people who, in some cases, may be quite adversarial to certain pastors, but how can we be pastoral to them? And what's really, I think, a pretty profound shift in where they're going to get their meaning from. Yeah, you say something interesting in the article that for a long time, these people were climbing the ladder. And now they're at a point where the ladder is being taken away from them because you might fall from the ladder. So it's that sense of that they're no longer useful anymore. But it sounds like here is that there's also a lot of grieving because you're grieving the sense of maybe power or influence that you once had that you don't have anymore on top of… your body is not working the way it used to be, and you're starting to lose people around you. So it's all of that. Yeah. Yeah, it's really intense. And so sometimes some of my staff members will be frustrated with somebody in the church, and I'm like. Look, this is what's happening in that person's life. Or they were brought up in this kind of church, and this is what they were taught, and this is what they did. And when the church went to struggle, they were like one of three people that got the church through that five years when there was no pastor or... Yeah, they have a real sense of ownership. And now here we come along and we've only been at the job for one or two years. We're telling them the church doesn't operate this way anymore. You can see why it's kind of hard, but there's a lot of other grief. So there's a man in my town who doesn't go to my church. He used to be very involved in politics. And what I've observed is that he goes to all of these events. And it's kind of sad because nobody really asks him for his opinion. And so what he does is he just starts talking and kind of aggressively almost cornering people like, now I've got this captive audience to listen to. And what I observed, though, is that there are other people who kind of realize this is what's going on and they grieve. And then they come out on the other side and they're just really delightful people who have kind of said, like, I don't need to be at every meeting anymore. Don't forget me. I'll tell you things really, really, really get get crazy. But generally, they're just really, truly supportive people. So I want to say that this isn't like a final condition for people where they're going to live in misery the last quarter of their lives. I would say this is just a time of transition for them. And some people take a little bit longer to go through that transition. But I think as pastors, if we can help people gently name the grief or at least acknowledge it, find ways to show appreciation for them, they might find a little bit easier time of letting go and then kind of just stepping into whatever the next chapter is, which may still involve leadership or involvement, but just kind of in a slightly different way than they've done before. So, I mean, because what this is really leading to is kind of a time of pastoral care, is how do you do that? How do pastors be there for these people in a way that pastorally, because it would be easy, and I think you talk about this in the article beginning, of being frustrated at these people and why don't they get it? or why are they? How do we, as pastors, but even if you're not even not a pastor, just be there for a person pastorally? Yeah, I certainly don't have all the answers. And if there are people listening to this that have ideas, I'd love to hear them. One of the things that I find this generation really wanting to do and not quite sure how to do it is actually to talk about their faiths. I think a lot of them have been through a ton in their life. By the time you get to be 75, you've survived deaths of loved ones. You've probably gone through economic hardship. You've seeing the country at war and in times of social unrest. So, there's a way in which this cohort, I think, has a deep faith. But many of them, as is evidenced by the sort of the decline of religious participation, especially among Gen X and millennials, somehow the boomer generation didn't know how to talk about their faith when they were in their 30s and 40s. Yeah, we can blame the sort of the collapse of the mainline Protestant or the sort of the church in the West on a lot of things. But I think it's clear that the boomer generation didn't quite know how to talk about why faith mattered to them. And I meet so many people who they took their kids to church, their kids don't go to church anymore, and they just feel trapped. But they don't know actually how to give witness to faith. Even though they're having these powerful experiences in their life, reflecting back on all that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done for them. So I think if there's a way that we can equip people to talk about and share their faith, that can be really profound. One of the ways in which I've done that is that people will have anxiety about funeral planning. I mean, and I have no problem planning this funeral. I mean, we're going to sing Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, How Beautiful Savior. We can do this. We're going to read from Romans 8, John 11. But what's really what I've encouraged people to do is I give people a sheet and I have them, their funeral planning is actually, you know, what hymns or Christian songs mean something to you and why. Why? Because a lot of people are like, oh, that was at my wedding or that was at, you know, the baptism of my children or that was at my mom's funeral. You know, what Bible verses are meaningful and why? What were places that were spiritually meaningful to you? or what were times when faith was drier in their life. Kind of just kind of giving people the kind of the encouragement and the tools so that then when, you know, Grandma Jones dies and we're all gathered as a family, I can say, well, what was, you know, what was meaningful? And they can say, oh, well, it turns out that number 375 was meaningful. Well, why? Well, it turns out that, you know, when they were a kid, they sang that in the church they grew up in when they went to church with their mom or whatever else. So I think that, again, Finding ways to give people a space to tell their stories in a way where people aren't feeling like they're trapped by them, but they want to listen to them. I also think that finding ways to connect people in those ministries with listening ministries. Yeah. Like when i was like younger i really wanted people in their 20s to help out with confirmation which for those of your listeners that might not know is kind of like a typically a middle school early high school kind of faith formation program related to kids being able to affirm their baptism that they had when they were a child or an infant and but what i realized is that 20 somethings were still working out all of their junk they were terrible listeners to 13 year olds, but somebody who's like 70 75 like they're not trying to be cool anymore and they just look at the youth and they're like oh you know how was your soccer game and the youth does what youth does they just say nothing or they go on a 10 minute rant and all sorts of level of details that no other adult would care about but the 75 but says oh okay wow you know that's great you know, oh, well, way to go. Or, you know, oh, I went, I played soccer as a kid. Oh, you like that? You know, I'm like, and what happens then is that like, sometimes it's formal. And then, you know, a couple of weeks later, you know, that adult is going up to the kid after, you know, before church and just saying, you know, hey, I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks or things. Okay. Like, you know, it's forming ways to empower the elders of the church to not just be the elderly, but to be the elders, those who know the stories, but also are able to listen. Because youth, right, think that whatever they're going through is the end of the world. And people that are older are like, well, I only did that seven times in my life, and each time I came out, okay, so you're going to be fine. So I would want to equip the elderly to be the elders and to give them a capacity and a voice, especially to share and to mentor. You also talk a lot about in that article about justification and i found that it kind of interesting because so much of their of people's life is trying to justify ourselves and you are, I think you adroitly kind of talk about that theologically, and that at that age, in some ways, they don't have to justify themselves. They don't have to talk about their accomplishments or all of that, because it's just them, and that can be a gift in some ways. I think for some of them, you can tell they're struggling with that. You know, a lot of the most powerful hymns in the Christian faith are those where there's kind of a moment in the hymn where we recognize that our true worth, that our true justification is in Christ, in Christ alone. And I think most of life is a struggle with that. like we all know that in the end we're well at least protestants would but i didn't think catholics i i just think that humans would say yeah in the end like you know it's god's grace of course um but uh i i think for even those of us that are seeked in that kind of tradition of wanting to emphasize god's grace i think our whole lives we're always wondering like have i done enough uh and and trying to sort of prove to others that we have value. And I think you get to a certain age at which some people look back and just take extreme pride in what they've done. But I think others are just able to make a big shift to recognizing that their value is going to be ultimately in Christ. But if it's going to be in generative, productive works, it's going to be in praying for people and listening to them. And being patient when other people can't be patient. So I think it just really shifts from a, you know, a life that's about achievement to a life that's really, you know, productivity to presence. And I don't think that is just an on-off switch in some people that's easier than others. But I think for all for people in that age range when they shift to realizing that like they're invited to the party just because you know their grandma or their grandpa and, like it just you know and they're just automatically going to make the kids happy because everybody loves to have their grandparent come up to them and say nice job I love you um yeah it's just it's just a really so I think some people are able to kind of. Embrace a different way, a different sense of worth. But I think for, probably for many, it's a really pretty, a long struggle. I predict for me, it'll be a long, hard struggle too. So, why do you think that is? I think, well, I mean, I guess on the Enneagram, I'm a three, so I love achievement. But I also just think that, you know, as I've been a pastor for a year, as a leader in a community. And in one day, like I'll just, I mean, every week people like listen to me talk for 15 minutes, but one day people will not want to hear me talk for 15 minutes. So this is true. Yeah. Yeah. This is most certainly true. Right. As they say. So I would just want to offer that. I think there is a way in which for many people in this age range. We've talked their whole life about how we're saved by grace and first of all they're really looking at their own mortality now really wondering like am i say like you know it's the people that care about whether they're saved or not i think it would start to be in your upper 70s yeah like start to think about like really like you know what is next is there you know is this is there really an afterlife you know is there really a resurrection of the dead and am part of it so i think there's just it's going to be a more natural question and it becomes more difficult to stack up your life's achievements especially if you've done stuff in the past and you can't atone for it anymore you can make the worst mistake in the world at 20 you have your whole life to fix it but you know the mistakes you made at 20 about time you're 70 you know it's a little bit tougher to to kind of rectify them at that point so sort of you start to see like wow like resurrection and forgiveness sort of become the only options on the table for redemption rather than our own kind of fixing it. Hmm. And I think that what's also interesting about all of this is that I think it's going to be, I mean, as our society is aging, and I think, you know, this year is kind of the first boomer turns 80, I think. And so that's a big thing, is that this is going to be a big issue of how do we help older Christians in our churches feel that they still matter, that they're still loved, and that they still have something to give in a community. And I think that we haven't always talked about that as much. I think partially because we've been so focused on decline that we kind of focus on the young. And we don't as much focus on the people who are there and what they have to bring just by being who they are and that their giftedness is, as you've said, they've lived a life and have something to give to that community. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Dennis, I think you're absolutely right. Like this isn't, this is going to be a huge issue for the church. Um, Outside of a handful of mission congregations, just congregations in the United States are going to be dominated the next five to 10 years by retirees. There's always a skew towards retirement because they're the ones who typically have the time. But I mean, the next five to 10 years in American church is just going to be really dominated. And the question is, how do we, on the one hand, ensure that the next generation has space and room to have ideas and to become leaders and to grow themselves. But also to really truly honor and i think in our society uh going back to what i was kind of elderly versus elders earlier i don't think as a culture we tend to value the elderly i don't think we know we don't elders i mean it's america right we're a culture that loves youth since i was like seven every single church event that i've gone to has told me that i was the future of the church or the people that were younger than me was the future of the church, that the church, you need to be getting more young people, more young families. So there's always been this push that the young people are the good thing at a church and the old people who are just give their money and that gets all. But I really think that for the church to be vibrant in the next five to 10 years, helping the people that are retired, not just that they can volunteer, but to really view them as spiritual elders, as the ones who know the songs of the church, who know the stories of the church, who have the stories of faith. If you're 15, you just don't have as many. If you're 75, you just should have six times as many stories of faith as a 15-year-old by life. So I think that, yeah, I would want a church to have a culture where the elderly were not threatened and the elderly were viewed as elders so that they were not threatened and allowed younger people into leadership positions, accepted that something was just going to have to change, but that they were viewed as pillars of faith and really looked at to draw on their strength and their wisdom. And recognizing, at least from a pastoral perspective, that they're likely going through the most spiritually generative time, almost akin to like when they were like that preteen, really kind of forging an identity and thinking about who they are. But there's just this huge kind of growth. And I've seen it. I'm sure you have, too. There are some people much later in life who they're just really having like an incredible epiphany of God's grace in their life. And it's glorious to see. So that maybe would be why kind of what I'm going for in the article is not like, hey, you know, if you have 73-year-olds in your church, just get ready. They're going to complain to you in the next year. My point was more to say, hey, there's a big life change that's going to happen at this point in life. And that the beautiful thing is that your church can be blessed by elders. But like all transition phases of life, people are going to need some congregational and pastoral kind of love and care to kind of help them through that transition. I'm kind of curious, what do you think, especially about, you kind of talked about things like confirmation and how that's been helpful to have older people instead of trying to get someone in their 20s, which, remembering my 20s, yeah, you're still trying to work through your stuff. I mean, what other ways do you see older people being kind of a part of the congregation and giving in their own way, fitting their own kind of stage in life? Yeah, Dennis, feel free. I mean, if you've seen other things at churches or have ideas, I'd want to hear from you or whatever else you've seen as well. I mean obviously i mean people who are uh retirees are going to uh you know be involved in the committee apparatus of a church i don't i don't see any mainline protestant church that's not going to have or even established evangelical churches that just aren't going to have their boards i mean you kind of almost have to to try to find younger people because they don't have the time. So I think you're obviously just going to have volunteers. And there's probably a number of ways of, again, certain, I guess, megachurches probably have just staff on stage. But if you have volunteers involved in your worship, there's probably going to be a lot of ways in which they can be involved in worship. And I think this is really where the challenging part comes. I think that most historically mainline or established churches have had church choirs. And there was a time in American life when everybody sang all the time. Like, I mean, Boy Scouts sang. Fraternities had songs, right? I mean, like men in their 40s, men in the 1940s would just sing with each other. Like, totally unheard of for us today for men to sing in that way, typically. So, you know, choirs were such a sort of a part of the American kind of mindset. And now we have all these church choirs in our churches that typically just don't have a lot of younger people. And it becomes really tricky for churches. How do we honor the people that care about that when maybe anymore at certain churches, their sound isn't as full anymore? So how do we, you know, kind of invite to an intergenerational choir? What ways in which does the choir ministry need to be redone so that you can have people, not just, you know, four people who are 80, but, you know, how could we get different voices in there or even for easier? But I think that's going to really take a lot of, this is where it's not just pastoral care, but also leadership to figure out ways to take some of the things that were really meaningful to this cohort of people in the way that they did church for six, seven, eight decades, and to try to say, okay, can you get enough trust and can you respect them enough that they're going to be willing to kind of tweak the model a little bit to allow that next generation to come up alongside of them. So, yeah, I guess, again, I don't have the magic wand. And in part, Mockingbird kind of didn't want me to write just for clergy. They wanted me to write more for general society. Yeah. But I would say that if there would be a way to, I think, again, this takes leadership to figure out ways to take some things that are really more meaningful in terms of committee involvement. Certain outreach ministries that likely kind of developed in the 60s and 70s, maybe 80s, and maybe now have kind of lost some of their steam. I think every church at least has one of those things like church choirs that were super meaningful for the buster and boomer generation, for the builder and boomer generation, but maybe not as much for Gen X and millennials. So what are ways to kind of expand those or figure out different ways to kind of get people involved? And that probably actually, you know, requires listening and asking people, you know, why is this choir meaningful to you? You know, and if you can get to the why, then sometimes you can then rearrange the how, if you can honor the why. So I would say working with any of these kind of institutions within our churches, these organizations, to help people, again, to do the listening work, that's the pastoral work of getting to the why. And then I think once you get to the why conversation, then sometimes people can let go of the how and can be more open to figuring out ways to, again, make room to honor the people that have been doing it a certain way for a long time, but kind of make room for the next generation. Because once you get people from generations together, that's really exciting stuff at a church. And then you have people learning and laughing together. are, yeah, I think that's, the church may be one of the last truly intergenerational communities. I think that can be pretty exciting. So I will include links to the article that Rob wrote for Mockingbird and also links to his blog and links to that episode from last summer. If you haven't heard it before, it's, I think, still timely. It's basically dealing especially with mainline Protestant congregations as they're facing. Not being able to find pastors. So, I will put all of those in the show notes. Just a reminder that if you ever want to learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, check us out at churchinmain.org. You can also visit churchinmain.substack.com to read related articles. I have a new one up, kind of my take on the parable of the sheep and goats that is entitled We're All Goats. You can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and please consider leaving a rating or a review that helps others find the podcast. You can also make a donation. There are links in the show notes. And if you want to receive Leave the episode when it goes live in your email inbox. There's a link for that as well. That is it for this episode of Church and Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. And actually, before I go, just one more thing. I'm going to be in the very near future changing podcast hosts. You probably won't see anything change unless you are someone that has subscribed to Podbean. If you have, you may want to consider resubscribing on your favorite podcast app, or you can subscribe to the new podcast host when that becomes available. But I wanted to let you know that's happening in the next few weeks, and just to help you to be aware. So again, that is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, everyone. Godspeed, and I will see you very soon.