Elaina sits down and talks with Lisa Jamieson from Walk Right In Ministries about family caregivers, the holidays, and ways the church can better support them.
The training, content, gatherings and experiences that we’ve created for pastors, church staff and ministry volunteers produced with the assistance of like-minded colleagues serving in disability ministry have become our principal service. So much of what we’re able do to help churches welcome and support families, we accomplish by bringing together experts from other ministry organizations.
November is Caregiver Awareness Month. As someone who became one of my dad’s caregivers before I started school, I grew up thinking everyone in the world was aware of caregivers and caregiving. As a young adult my husband and I cared for a son born with a life-threatening medical condition, and his typical sibling. As members of the sandwich generation, my brother, sister, and I cared for our mother for 15 years after she was diagnosed with dementia. This explains why, when I first heard that November is Caregiver Awareness Month, I was incredulous, and I still am.
In this episode, Lauren Hickman shares her personal journey and calling to disability ministry, describing how God has guided her every step of the way to serve families impacted by disability.
In today’s episode, Sandra talks about the challenges small to normative-sized churches face in disability ministry and shares how the churches she’s been a part of have overcome these challenges.
We’re supporting this project because persons with disabilities are disproportionately represented among children and adults who embrace non-traditional gender identities and leaders serving in disability or mental health ministry will greatly benefit from a deep understanding of gender and sexuality from a Biblical perspective.
David reminds us in Psalm 139 that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made and that the works of God in us are truly wonderful. David helps us to understand the value of life because he reminds us that God knew us and formed us and designed us for his glory. In this week’s episode, we reflect on that Biblical truth and how the church is called to celebrate God’s wonderful works in all things, including disability.
Guest blogger, Shannon Blosser shares his experience as both a pastor and a special needs dad.
While our son loves being in the church and especially enjoys looking at our stained-glass ceiling formation, he cannot always handle the crowds and noise that come with being in worship. We try to meet his needs while living into the realities of being a pastoral family.
Ideally, every person is welcome and embraced by a church as Christ welcomes and embraces all with unconditional love. That, unfortunately, is not always expressed by the church. I believe in those moments when we do feel we need to leave, God’s love will guide the conversation and direct us towards a place that will be more welcoming and open to expressing the love of Christ for all people.
In part two of his blog post, Tony D’Orazio from Jacob’s Ladder Fitness continues with this important question: what has humanity missed out on without all those people with Down syndrome in the world?
