Larah Roberts goes back to the archives of Disability & the Church, and shares many compelling reasons for why you should plan to attend Disability & the Church 2025. We will be announcing the dates and location soon, so keep your eye out!
“My daughter has changed so much in this area during her 18 years of life. It’s progress, and it’s a small thing that I appreciate as her mother now. During those years when it didn’t go well, they were hard. Haircuts haven’t been the only area of growth. I recall being completely anxious every time I left the house with my daughter alone as she would run off and not respond to my pleas to stop. The running off and the anxiousness eventually stopped, but life was hard until then.” Evana Sandusky
The impact our words may have on the children we serve in whatever capacity––as their parents, caregivers, grandparents, teachers, neighbors, business owners, and more–– often goes unseen. We know our words make a difference because we remember how the adults in our lives impacted our childhoods.
You can pour from an empty cup. Some will differ with me. I will stick to it because I have lived it and perhaps YOU have as well. What do we do with an empty cup? We fill it when we need to drink from it. It’s upon need. Cindi Ferrini shares advice to fill a caregiver’s cup.
In today’s episode, Catherine Boyle lets you in on some of her middle school angst and shares a principle to help your disability ministry focus on belonging.
In today’s episode, Catherine Boyle shares about a new project Key Ministry has underway, designed to help you discover God’s ministry purpose for your life.
We all need to be encouraged. Our churches should be places where people are welcomed with love, where there is practical help, where there is provision. They also need to be places where there is encouragement and praise.
Last month I was in Columbus, Ohio for a state-wide training for Ohio’s Child Protective Services (CPS). This conference got me thinking about how the Church is responding to foster care, and other impacts with foster care and orphans. There are many people out there doing a lot of good work in foster care and adoption. Here are some resources that have moved beyond local mission.
The topic of domestic violence and mental health has come to the forefront for me in the last ten years. Here are two national training and ministry resources for pastors and church leaders to help prevent and address abuse.
We know there are many barriers to treatment. But I want to focus in this article on practical barriers to mental health treatment, where churches can help immediately to address them.
Misty, the beautiful puppy was so willing to learn. But when she matured into her doggy teens, she would decide whether it was important to obey or not. Misty reminded me of how we can respond to the call of God, particularly with ministry to the marginalized.
I’m willing to guess that everyone on the planet has experienced life off kilter in some way this year. Wow! 2020! A year we won’t easily forget. Life right now is hard for so many, feeling messy and downright immobilizing. There’s much confusion and unrest in the world today. What do we do? What do we believe?
Jesus loves me, this I know? Do I know? Do I feel His love in the midst of a pandemic?! All lives across the globe have been affected. Probably the strongest saint has been tested in some way. If you are struggling to know and feel God’s love today, consider these five things.
By now, disruption has become a familiar friend to each of us. But though coronavirus may be new, the concept of disruption—whether from a global pandemic, broken washing machines, or relational strife—is not. In much of scripture, it seems that God uses precisely the disruption that we hate to jolt his people out of negative patterns—whether it be their blatant worship of idols or their comfortable but self-serving career paths. God does not waste these disruptions.
We are living in an unprecedented time of history. COVID-19 is a silent, insidious enemy that lurks around every corner. How do we, as parents of children with disabilities, not only face but confront the fear all around us? Here are ten scriptural weapons we can use to defeat the enemy. We can, and must, teach at least some of them to our children, who are dealing with their own heightened anxiety.
For many special needs kids, they are more comfortable not socializing. I am concerned, as our social distancing and quarantine goes on for months, it will be difficult for many kids to transition back to socializing with more people, besides in the comfort of our own homes. Here are three things you can start now, to help your child not be too anxious or nervous to leave home, once we start getting back to ‘normal.’
It is week number whatever since COVID-19 began. The cutesy Facebook posts highlighting everyone’s Pinterest projects are starting to fade. The smiles are starting to looking more strained as parents are wondering how much longer they will have to be the counselors/craft room directors at “Camp Corona.” Are parents at risk of “burn out?”
Coronavirus? Quarantine? No handmade gifts from school or church? No cute pictures at church of everyone dressed up? This is going to be a Mother’s Day like no other. But this year let’s make it our mission to find joy in the midst of it all!
A Barna study reported only 30 percent of pastors feel well-equipped to help their people deal with matters of mental or emotional health.
In the UK, where I live, there are stories of people being kind and helpful to the old, lonely and vulnerable. Those in distress from the coronavirus are being supported. For a long time, many in the Church have been crying out to God for justice for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized and those who are often discriminated against, such as those with disabilities. It has taken a pandemic for us to realize that we all need to change.
Why is it important for pastors to support counselors? Because 25 percent of people go first to a member of the clergy for a mental health need. Pastors need support from professional counselors. If this relationship is strengthened, you will better support your community in the long run.
Lately I’ve been focusing on being thankful. I‘ve posted “thankful posts” every couple of days, trying daily to find something to thank Jesus for. Mine is an ongoing season of caregiving for my 16-year-old twin girls who both have disabilities and will never live independently. But there is ALWAYS something to thank Jesus for: for the peace I had today, for the ones who prayed in their seats, for those who asked if we were okay, for this body of believers, who simply were there, alongside us, while we waited.
Sometimes words flow out of our mouths and we wish we could grab them and take them back. Other times our thoughts come out as words that aren’t really helpful and beneficial. In marriage and in parenting, our words can land hard on little hearts—and our hearts—if we’re not careful. Let’s consider a few ways we can repackage and recycle our words (and thus our actions) into ways that are helpful, beneficial, and life-giving.
Silos are the antithesis of inclusion. Are we truly practicing inclusion when we set aside a designated space for the special needs ministry at the expense of including most, if not all participants in age and developmentally appropriate ministry environments.
Loneliness kills. Loneliness is especially ravaging the disability community, where 85% of people with disabilities report being lonely, and 1 in 8 of them spend less than 30 minutes a day with other people. But the encouraging thing about all this is that the antidote to this pandemic of loneliness—and the loneliness of people with disabilities in particular—is remarkably simple. You and I already have the answer: God has designed the church to be the remedy.
We now recognize that there are alternative, nonverbal ways in which we can communicate. Most churches, however, still rely heavily on the traditional sermon to convey God’s message. As I contemplated how other forms of communication could be integrated into churches, I was struck by how Jesus communicated with people. He used a variety of different approaches to express the Father’s message.
There is hope and help in this simple thing I do. I believe you’ll find it and be able to encourage someone else, too. So, what’s this secret weapon?
The cost of starting to include people with disabilities is often not primarily monetary. The cost of including people with disabilities is primarily love.
As I spent much time on bended knee, tending to this little girl with her endless needs, I experienced deeper worship than I’d ever known. I often found myself at the end of my own strength and skills, and I learned to depend much greater on God. Without a spoken word, she’s taught me more about Jesus than any sermon I’ve ever listened to.
Many churches are at a place of that first talk with a pastor, where a concerned layperson might discuss whether churches should be worried about mental health. The American Psychiatric Association has created a guide is to equip faith community leaders to help with a mental health need, because “faith community leaders are gatekeepers or ‘first responders’ when individuals and families face mental health or substance use problems.”
If you’re a church that has an amazing disability ministry, here’s some practical things you can do to help extend your ministry beyond the walls of your own church, and help other churches take one more step on their special needs ministry journey as well.
How can each follower of Jesus pursue justice for people with disabilities? We see in David a paradigm when he meets Mephibosheth. In 2 Samuel 9, we see David exemplify three simple practices that can help combat injustice and inequity for people with disabilities.
I am not my child’s savior. We all know this, but saying my child is especially lucky or blessed introduces a “saving” dynamic. Despite the commitment I made and continue to make to him, we are just two broken people working out what it means to live in the community and family God has given us. We’re learning together how to love one another and love Jesus. And it’s often an awkward dance.
![Things to Say [Differently] on Orphan Sunday](https://keyministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/iStock_000078073687_Full-1-400x250.jpg)
This year, as we recognize Orphan Sunday, let’s be sure we do so with respect and care for all those affected by adoption: birth parents, children, and those who are already adoptive parents.
Ultimately, what I have found is that everyone needs to be heard, supported, and given hope. Redefine groups do just that by providing a community in which individuals can explore spiritual truths, psycho-educational facts, thought-provoking questions and empowering tools.
By preparing itself to receive that child, the church will not only express tender care for the family, but will truly help the child and family succeed—both immediately and in the long run—depicting the kind of religion James describes as “pure.”
Until science reveals more to help our children rewrite their genetic expressions and recover from the trauma they experienced, we must continue to provide safe, nurturing communities and skilled, professional support to allow them to process their traumatic experiences.
Though 79% of adoptees feel confused or worried at school, we can make church a place of welcome, safety, and hope by fostering an inclusive environment that values individuals for their inherent worth as an image-bearer of God.
For such a time as this, those of us who deeply believe Him to be kind and true have our golden moment to help those who struggle with mental health conditions.
And you can tell the temperature of your youth group very quickly at how they behave toward one another. Jesus says that people will know Him by how they love.
Mental illness and other limiting conditions can be incredible gifts, allowing us to rightly understand not only our frailty and the brevity of our lives on planet earth, but also the spiritual brokenness that only Christ can repair.
This is a hard post to write because it’s a big issue, it’s something I am constantly working on, an ongoing journey that changes along with the needs of my family. It is a post about parenting in the trenches, whatever that means to you, because mainly this post is about you, the parent, and how you are dealing with the extra needs in your family.