Building Adult Ministries, Leadership for Adults Over 50

Young at Heart is a group of senior citizens in Northampton, Mass., led by their director, Bob Cilman. They perform contemporary songs by bands like Sonic Youth, the Ramones, and Coldplay. They regale audiences with songs that are honest, intelligent, and at times even deep, taking a 90-minute nonstop show from theater stages to prison yards, moving listeners from laughter to tears and back to laughter. We’re offering you a link so you can enjoy for yourself the Today Show’s Bob Dotson’s American Story.

Dixie and I went to see an afternoon showing, wondering if we’d be the only ones in the theater. We had to sit on the third row from the front! The place was packed with patrons ranging from young children to adults with walkers. We rate all our movies on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best. We gave Young at Heart a solid fifteen and decided right there to move to Northhampton so we could join the group ourselves!

It’s the kind of movie everyone in your family will talk about afterwards. It should cause those who keep telling you how old you’re getting and how terrible it is that time is getting away from you and that life has no meaning for the aged to think again. Here is a group of folks, average age 82, who didn’t get that memo. They are life lessons for us all.

Virtually unknown in America (before this movie), these wrinkled grandmas and grandpas sing Sonic Youth’s “Shizophrenia” to sold out audiences in England, Europe, and Australia. But they are more than entertaining. They are inspiring. My hat is off to Bob Cilman, their director. He could be a poster-child inspiration for any pastor to older adults for his patience, encouragement, sensitivity, and for expecting the best from the gang, even when at times their best was not very good.

Bring your Kleenex. You’ll need them. Their performance of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” in a prison yard just after learning that one of their choir members died the night before is a moment you can’t forget. And when one of the male members sings Coldplay’s “Fix You” as a solo because his choir companion with whom he’d rehearsed for this event is no longer there to make it a duet ... well, pass the Kleenex this way again, please.

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