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.
When we see the presence of a disability in the New Testament, we are exposed to some very important Kingdom of God values that are essential in the Christian life and in the life of the local church. The value in having leaders with disabilities in our churches is that the church will remain intimately involved with the type of ministry that expresses the heart of God’s kingdom.
When I think about the scripture that exhorts Christ-followers to number our days correctly, I kind of get the meaning backwards. I think about things from a natural human perspective, when what I really need is God’s perspective. The verse isn’t so much about the volume of what I accomplish, but the quality and the purposefulness of what I do. It’s also what I let ministry do to change me. Without anyone reminding me, do I actually see the personal dignity of every person?
