Reaching a Forgotten People

Reaching a Forgotten People - Chapter I

CHAPTER I

THEIR STATISTICS

In the United States alone, there are 37,300,000 people over the age of sixty-five years old. To put this in a better prospective, consider that about one in every eight, or 12.4 percent, of the population is an older American. Over 2.2 million people celebrated their 65th birthday in 2006, but also approximately 1.8 million people over 65 years old died in the same year.

Since 1900, the percentage of Americans age sixty-five and over has tripled (from 4.1% in 1900 to 12.4% in 2006), and the number has increased twelve times (from 3.1 million to 37.3 million). The numbers are consistently increasing every year. Between 1990 and 2020, the population aged sixty-five to seventy-four is projected to grow seventy-four percent. What a large mission field to be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ!

The statistics go further to show that the older population itself is getting older. In 2006, the 65 to 74 age group (18.9 million) was 8.7 times larger than in 1900, but the 75 to 84 age group (13 million) was 17 times larger and the 85 and over age group (5.3 million) was 43 times larger. The numbers should prove to the church and to Christians what a great mission field reaching seniors for Christ should be. Sadly, many people in these age groups are forgotten about.

Out of the great number of seniors in America, over 1.6 million of them are residents of an institutional facility. In the institutional setting, more than ninety percent of the elderly people live in nursing homes, while the remainders live in mental institutions or chronic disease hospitals. There are over 18,000 nursing homes in the nation. These facilities have a total of 1.9 million beds with an occupancy rate of eighty-seven percent.
Considering the fact that the size of nursing homes increased from 75 beds per home in 1985 to 107 beds per home in 1997 , each nursing facility has great potential to reach people for Jesus Christ.

The residents of nursing homes usually don’t have much longer to live life on earth. This is a crucial time in their lives to make sure that each resident has made a personal commitment to Christ by receiving God’s free gift of salvation. For every one hundred elderly patients in a nursing home in a given year, thirty-five will die and another thirty-seven will be admitted to a hospital where they may die, recover, or return. The most common reasons for discharge from a nursing home were admission to a hospital or death. Only a small percentage (10 percent) of the discharges was discharged because they recovered. At this point, the reader should be able to see the great need to reach out to these forgotten people!