I read with interest – and some dismay – an article in Yahoo Finance explaining a trend among rich older Americans to pay millions of dollars to get into luxury retirement campuses.

The article explained how these so-called “life plan communities” cost from $100,000 to $400,000 per year, though it cited a Palo Alto, Calif., facility with annual fees of $1.7 million – and those fees were only after you had spent $7.3 million to purchase an apartment in the community.

The capitalist in me says, “You know, it’s their money, they can spend it how they want.”

But another part of me has real concerns about this trend. It seems to me that locking old people away in age-segregated enclaves – even if they go willingly, and even if their enclaves are gold-plated – impoverishes both them and our culture generally.

I’m by no means the first person to make such an observation. A recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review noted that in 19^th century America

every major aspect of daily life was age integrated. Older and younger people worked side by side in the fields of an agrarian economy. Multigenerational households were the norm. Even those one-room schoolhouses of yore frequently found children and adults learning to read together under the same roof. Indeed, there was little awareness of age itself. People didn’t celebrate birthdays. Most would be hard-pressed even to recall how old they were.

I don’t want to be sentimental about the past. Not everything about the 19^th century is better than today. I’m personally a fan of refrigerators and indoor plumbing.

But it’s hard not to lament this loss of multigenerational households, households in which the young learn from the old and the old are energized and given renewed purpose by their mentorship of the young.

So what happened? Answering that question is far beyond the scope of this article, but I do think it is fair to say that the evangelical church has not resisted this trend. It is difficult to find a more age-segregated institution than the evangelical movement. Our churches have youth groups that sometimes don’t even worship with adults. We have bus tours for seniors, and summer camps for teens. I once interviewed a pastor who said he had never done a funeral in the 10-plus years he had been the pastor of his church. There were simply no old people in attendance.

As a purely practical matter, such age segregation is a massive waste of human resources. We are living and staying healthier longer. It is not just possible but likely that someone who retires at age 65 will live another 20 years.

The good news is that some Christians are challenging these cultural norms. My friend Bruce Bruinsma has been a champion of what he calls a “Retirement Reformation.” Bruinsma says he is “on a mission to shake up our ‘me-centered’ retirement culture, and inject God-given purpose, joy, and real contentment into the Golden Years.” Bruinsma says, “When asked what they plan to do in retirement, most people say: “Nothing!” They’re clear about what they’re retiring FROM — but not what they’re retiring TO.” He goes on to say, “Thirty years is a long time to do nothing.”

When I was at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I got to see up close the power of purposeful retirement.

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Steve Verleye had been a successful serial entrepreneur, helping to build several technology companies, including Applied Microsystems as CEO and Coinstar/Redbox as Chief Administrative Officer. After exiting these companies, he had the financial freedom to do what he wanted, so he became the volunteer executive director for The Colson Center for Christian Worldview at a critical time, when the Colson Center was being spun off from Prison Fellowship. He served in that role from 2015 until 2023. I worked side-by-side with Steve for four of those years, and I got to see the impact of a purposeful retirement up close. Steve’s coaching and mentorship of me, of Colson Center President John Stonestreet, and of others on the Colson Center leadership team played a huge role in our individual and the Colson Center’s organizational success.

Since “retiring” again from The Colson Center, Steve has become a mentor and coach to other Christian entrepreneurs part of an organization called C-12, which is itself quietly making its mark as a networking and support group for Christian businesspeople.

The church and many thousands of Christian ministries need volunteers who are committed to this kind of purposeful retirement. Unfortunately, though, the rate of volunteerism in the U.S. has been slowly but steadily declining since the 2010s, according to Nathan Dietz at the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute.

But the real tragedy of this trend is not the rescue missions and the pregnancy resource centers that are not staffed – as tragic as that is. No, the real tragedy is in the wasted opportunities for service and purpose by those who do not volunteer. The impoverishment of their own lives.

Evangelical pastor and theologian John Piper’s famous “Seashell Sermon” makes this point. He tells a shorter version in his book Don’t Waste Your Life:

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you now to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was fifty-nine and she was fifty-one. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.” At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: come to the end of your life – your one and only precious, God-given life – and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.

Men like Steve Verleye and Bruce Bruinsma are showing us how to live what John Piper teaches – and that is how not to waste our lives. May we, by God’s grace, go and do likewise.

Article Topics

Retirees: Christian Ministries Urgently Seek Your Experience and Service

The Growing Need for Volunteers in Christian Ministries