During his long tenure as pastor of Northside Christian Church in New Albany, Indiana, George Ross would regularly take a spray bottle full of M&Ms and offer them to congregants in the lobby.
“I’d come up to people and say, ‘Just a little blood sugar check here,’” George recalls. “To me all that was was just a segue into, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’”
Now a year out of retirement, George is still doing the same thing: Handing out small kindnesses and avenues of connection to everyone he meets. Whether he is picking up Jeff’s Donuts to take to a sick friend in the hospital, mentoring younger lead pastors, or organizing a group to go caroling at a nursing home, for him, the purpose is the same: to extend the kindness of God to others.
“The word I’ve settled on is, ‘alongside.’ You come alongside others,” George says. “My mom died suddenly in 1977. I’m 22. It was very, very difficult. All these years later, I could tell you who was at the visitation. I can tell you today who came alongside, and I can also tell you who wasn’t there… So the language I’ve had in my life is the people God wants me to come alongside are the ones that are on my heart or in my path.”
George’s path began in a small farming community in Illinois, where hospitality across generations was a part of daily life. “My maternal grandmother was in our home as long as I can remember,” he says. “My grandpa died in ‘39, and my mom and dad were very gracious to take care of her. I think that — we talk about things that shape our hearts — that normalized for me that gray hair in the house is normal. I’m very generational in my comfort level, and I think that played out in the life of the church.”
George describes himself as a bit of a moving target after Bible college. He served in churches from Bloomington, Indiana, all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada, before settling in at Northside, where he and his wife, Sue Linn, served the church family and raised their two children.
“Our kids have been loved through the years by a lot of people in the churches as they’ve grown up, so they’ve got a lot of spiritual aunts and uncles and cousins,” George says. “I’ve just been so thankful to get to do some form of ministry and help encourage people. The goodness of God and the goodness of people has formed, shaped, and blessed our life.”
These days, George has a particular affinity for encouraging older adults in their faith. His son encouraged him to start Finishing Well, a regular event for people 55 and older to connect relationally and spiritually.
“I said OK, but I gotta have desserts and I gotta have a band,” George says.
Said band kicks off the event with a medley of radio tunes from the attendees’ younger years, then shifts into the ‘stained-glass medley,’ as George calls it, featuring classic hymns from growing up in church. Then, people have the chance to discuss questions in small groups.
“Some people haven’t had the chance to sit down at a table with someone for a while. They never have any peer time,” George says. “We’ll have people from 55 to 95, and there’ll be 300 every time. This is fun, and it’s cracking a nerve. People really have a good time, and they’re not invisible.
“We don’t want people to run out of gas. We want them to stay connected with their church and friends, and realize if you ain’t dead, you ain’t done.”
George is also working on an accompanying podcast featuring older adults who are inspiring in their faith and service to others. (Check out finishingwell.co for updates on this podcast as well as upcoming events.) It’s those stories of helping, caring, and loving that stir a continuous cascade of kindness — like this memory he recalls.
A man approached George around the holidays and asked if he would consider visiting the man’s mother in a nursing home in Jeffersonville. “It came to my mind that we should go caroling,” George says. He got a group together with a guitar, harmonica, and keyboard. “We’re just saying, ‘yeah, we’d love to do that, and we don’t need a thing for it. We’ll go play and visit,’ and I’ll be doggone, this fellow came up and gave us a Christmas card each with $100 inside.”
When the little band stopped at a coffee shop after the caroling, one member recognized someone she’d gone to high school with. They learned that this former schoolmate drove over from St. Louis every Wednesday to take his two sisters to chemo treatments.
“Automatically, we all knew that that guy had given us $100 apiece so we could give it to this man,” George says. “We’re not the bucket holding onto this; we’re the pipe it’s coming through. That guy could at least have his gas covered for a couple months.”
You don’t always immediately get to know the ‘why’ behind a kind act, George says, but you can keep passing out the M&Ms: “When kindness comes, keep it flowing as much as you can.”
By Jessica Alyea | Photo by Melissa Donald
P.S. Read how one person is spreading goodwill to those who need it.
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