There is a phrase I have heard more than once in church life
“I think it’s time for me to step back and let the younger people do it.”
Sometimes that is exactly the right instinct. Churches need mature Christians who are willing to train others, hand over responsibility and rejoice when a younger believer grows into meaningful service.
But sometimes that sentence hides another assumption – My useful years are behind me.
Christopher Ash’s Not Old, Not Young, Not Done: Following Jesus in Your 50s and 60s is a warm, wise and necessary challenge to that way of thinking.
Ash writes about what he calls the “afternoon of life”, broadly speaking, our fifties and sixties. It is an interesting season. You are no longer ‘young’, but you also aren’t old. Children may have left home. Work may feel more settled. Retirement begins to appear on the horizon. At the same time, ageing parents may increasingly need care, bodies begin to slow down, and there can be a growing awareness that more of life lies behind than ahead.
Ash’s concern is that this stage of life contains both real dangers and remarkable opportunities.
One of the clearest challenges in the book is the temptation to coast. After decades of work, family responsibility, church rotas, leadership, giving, serving and caring, it is understandable to think “Haven’t I done my bit?”
Ash is not arguing for frantic Christian busyness. There is no virtue in exhausting ourselves for the sake of it. Different seasons require different patterns of service. But he does expose the danger of confusing a change of pace with a retreat from discipleship.
Our culture offers an attractive vision of later middle age – work hard, pay off the mortgage, travel, enjoy hobbies, spend time with grandchildren and prepare for a comfortable retirement.
None of those things is wrong. But they make very poor ultimate ambitions. Jesus never said, “Take up your cross until you reach retirement age.” The call remains “Follow me.”
That is one of the book’s most important contributions. Ash reminds us that retirement from employment is not retirement from discipleship.
There is also considerable pastoral wisdom here. Ash understands that these years are not simply full of opportunity. They can also be marked by grief and disappointment. Children leave home. Adult children may make painful choices. Elderly parents may need increasing care. Marriages may carry scars. Careers may not have turned out as hoped. Health may deteriorate.
This gives the book a tone that is challenging without being harsh. Ash writes gently, but he does not allow the reader to drift into complacency. He wants Christians in this season of life to ask not merely, “What can I now enjoy?” but, “How can I continue to honour Christ with the years, strength, experience and opportunities he has given me?”
That question matters enormously for the local church. Evangelical churches are often rightly concerned with developing younger leaders. We want younger Christians preaching, serving, discipling, leading and taking responsibility.
But “making room for younger people” must never mean pushing older Christians to the edges of church life.
Titus 2 gives us a very different picture. Mature believers have something distinctive to give.
Think what a Christian in their sixties may possess – decades of answered prayer, experience of suffering, wisdom learned through failure, knowledge of marriage and family life, experience of church conflict, deeper awareness of personal sin, and years of seeing the faithfulness of God.
Why would the church want to put all of that on a shelf?
The answer is not for older Christians to cling to every role forever. It is to serve differently.
Train someone. Mentor someone. Open your home. Pray with younger Christians. Help them avoid mistakes you made. Hand over responsibility without handing over usefulness.
That, I think, is where this book is especially valuable for churches today.
There are some limitations. Not every reader will recognise themselves in every example. Life in your fifties and sixties can look very different depending on marriage, singleness, health, finances and family circumstances. Some readers may also find parts of Ash’s approach more structured or diagnostic than they prefer.
But these are relatively small concerns. The central message is one many churches badly need to hear.
Older Christians should not be treated as though their main contribution is behind them. Younger Christians need their wisdom. Churches need their prayers. Families need their faithfulness. The next generation needs their example.
Paul’s ambition near the end of his life was not simply that he had started well, but that he had finished the race.
That is the challenge Ash places before us. You may need to step aside from a role. You may need to hand something on. You may need to slow down. But do not confuse slowing down with being finished.
You still have wisdom to give, people to encourage, prayers to pray, Scripture to learn, holiness to pursue and a race to run.
You may not be young. You may not yet be old. But, by God’s grace, you are certainly not done.
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