The Evangelical Covenant Church has traced the growth of Crescendo, its ministry with people aged sixty and older, from a pilot project to a team of twenty-five unpaid coaches serving all regions of the denomination. The ministry began when Evelyn Johnson, Debbie Blue and Alan Forsman started talking about lasting purpose and holistic, missional discipleship in later life; the idea was tested in a breakout session at Midwinter and approved as a pilot in the summer of 2016. The first Crescendo-style seminar was held on 19 November 2016 in McPherson, Kansas, and the ministry launched officially at Midwinter 2018 alongside the book Crescendo: An Ascent to Vital Living.
Crescendo equips pastors, ministry leaders and older adults themselves, and builds its approach on the SPICES framework — spiritual, physical, intellectual, community, emotional and service. The Covenant said the population it serves is large and growing: about 10,000 people a day in the United States have turned sixty-five since 2011, and between 2024 and 2027 about 11,200 a day are doing so. By 2030 about one in five Americans will be over sixty-five, and in Canada the share will be about 22 per cent. Older adults are also more likely to be in church: in Pew’s 2023–24 survey, about 43 per cent of adults aged seventy-one and over said they attend religious services at least monthly, compared with about one third of all US adults.
The account describes how the ministry adapted. In its first three years Crescendo reached more than 180 churches, and follow-up workshops and downloadable studies on mentoring, grandparenting and caring for ageing parents extended its reach. When COVID-19 took the team “off the road” for almost two years, retreats and seminars moved online and the Connector Network emerged, linking local churches through coaches. In 2021 the team joined the Antiracist Discipleship Pathway, which led to the first Crescendo Justice Journey in Charleston, South Carolina, in March 2023 and three more through 2026; by September 2026 the team had held six virtual conferences, and in September it led seminars on mentoring and SPICES at Iglesia Transformados en Cristo in Hermon, California.
Source: Evangelical Covenant Church USA — covchurch.org/2026/10/28/crescendo-how-the-ministry-grew/
