Elaina sits down with Andrea Roseman from Access Ministry to discuss the highlights of 2024, the changes she wants to make in 2025, and the way the Lord is working in and through Access Ministry.
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Elaina Marchenko: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us again on Key Ministry, the podcast this week. I'm really excited to have Andrea Roseman and she works with Access Ministry. I'm just really excited to hear about her ministry and we're going to talk a lot about what last year, 2024, what things worked, what things didn't ministry-wise, and kind of looking forward to the new year. Hopefully it's helpful to other ministry leaders out there if they have similar reflections and we can kind of share ideas through this and start off 2025 together on the right foot, share ideas and just see what God does this year. So I'm really happy to have you.
Andrea Roseman: Thank you.
Elaina Marchenko: Yeah. Okay. I'd love it if you give a little bit of an intro for me and for all the listeners who you are and then how you got involved with Access Ministry and kind of where Access Ministry is now.
Andrea Roseman: Okay, I'd be happy to. So as Elaina said, my name's Andrea Roseman and I am from southeast Missouri, kind of the boot hill areas where I grew up. If you look at the state, we're actually the boot hill. I'm married to my high school sweetheart, Chris, and we have two kids. Grant is 21 and Meredith will be 20 in a couple of weeks. And like I said, we live now in Cape Girardeau Missouri. That's where Access Ministry is at. Kind of my background before Access, my background educational wise was my degree is child development, but I stayed home with our kids, actually homeschooled my kids all the way through. And so access kind of came to be when they were little kids before it was a thing. I had always worked in preschool and children ministry. I love kids. I had no experience with special needs or disability, but we had a lady in our church, her name was Shelby, and Shelby at the time that I met her, she was in her probably mid to late thirties and Shelby had down syndrome.
So she came to our church as a teenager and different ladies over the years had taken turns having a class for her on Sundays so that Shelby would have a place to go and her parents could have a break. And it was just Shelby leading up to this. Our families sat in church together for a couple of years leading up and became just very attached to Shelby. Everyone loved her. She was very feisty and she liked to write notes and I still have my stack of Shelby notes from her. I cherish them. Shelby actually passed away in 2017, and I love to get those notes out every now and then and read them. But her birthday was August 25th and everyone in the church knew because on August 26th, she started telling us my birthday is going to be August 25th next year. And so every year at her birthday, because she was the only one for so long, and when she came, our church was much smaller, everyone would bring her gifts and her nickname was Cupcake.
And so most of the gifts had cupcakes on them. And so this particular Sunday, well, let me back up for just a minute. In our preschool and children's area, we would kind of sign a commitment card for a year at a time. And in July of 2012, whenever we were given those commitment cards, I knew I wasn't supposed to commit to another year in preschool, but I didn't know why. I loved preschool, I loved children. I could do it with my eyes closed, which I think was part of the problem. God was like, I have something for you that you're not going to be able to do with your eyes closed. You're going to have to truly rely on me for this. But anyway, I didn't sign the card and I was scared because like I said, I had always done this and I loved that area of service.
So this particular Sunday, I was taking Shelby's birthday gift to her and she was with her teacher at the time. Her name was Cindy. And I said, Cindy, do you have a sub for Shelby if you miss? And she's like, I don't. I either have to cancel class or her mom has to do it. And I said, well, I'll sub for you while I'm figuring out what's next. And she's like, well, I may need to step down permanently. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. I said, I'm not jumping into this. I love Shelby. So it'd be very easy to just say yes, but I want to do what the Lord wants me to do, and I just really feel like I need him to show me. And so I gave the gift. She told me a date she was going to be out of town the next month. We set that up. I came home and I tried to just go about my normal day with my family. Like I said, my kids were around seven and nine at the time, and I couldn't, God, that day began to work in my heart. And he began to just say so many things to me. I have never heard the audible voice of God, but that day is as close as I've ever gotten. And what I began to hear from him is, "where are all the Shelbys? Where are their families? I have a job for you to do. And it's not just a class on Sunday. This is going to be an entire family ministry. And these families don't have a place and they're living isolated lives."
And I even went to my husband that night and I was like, I don't know what's happening, but I really, maybe I'm supposed to do this. And he's like, well, don't rush it. If you start this, you've got to see it through. You can't do that to these families. And I'm like, well I wouldnt. But I reached out to my pastors that night, and two of them, our senior pastor and discipleship, and I kind of told them what was going on and I just emailed them and said, Hey, will you pray about this with me? I don't know what's happening, but this is what I'm hearing. And they both said yes.
And the next day, our discipleship pastor called me who's now my boss, and he said, "Hey, I'm not calling to try to guilt you into this or sway you in any way. If God wants this, I want it. And if he doesn't, I don't. But I want to let you know that this ministry is something we've had on the back burner for years, and we know that we need to do more for this population of people and their families, but none of the staff can take on anything else. We can't add any more to our plates, and we just need a leader for it. So I'm telling you, if you decide to move forward with this, you have our full support." And so I was like, okay. So I just that week prayed probably by the end of that week, beginning of the next, I don't remember exactly, but I went from an immediate no to a very scared yes.
Because I knew without a doubt that this was what I was supposed to do. So I subbed in the fall of 2012. January of 2013, I took over. That first year really all that we added. We started doing some monthly gatherings. Maybe we would go to lunch together after church on a Sunday or we would go bowling or just little things like that. That first year we went from just Shelby and there was another man that kind of came here and there when he was in town. But we got to about six people, and that was just word of mouth. I started sharing on Facebook the only really thing I knew to do. I wasn't connected to anybody in the community at this point, and I didn't know what I was doing. And so it wasn't that the class was bad, the class was good, but at the end of that first year, we were getting ready to do a church wide fast.
And that morning in church again, it was like that first day, it was almost an audible voice of the Lord. Like, "okay, it's great that you have six people now, but you're not doing what I told you to do with this." And I was like, okay, show me. Show me. And so we did in that service, I knew what I was to give up. It wasn't food, but for that time of fasting, anytime that I would get on social media, I was supposed to get online instead and be researching churches that had disabilities, special needs ministries. And so I just sat down every afternoon when my kids would go to have a rest time, and I started calling all sizes of any church I could find online that had teens and adults. So I called all different sizes, all different denominations, and I just started asking them questions, how did you grow?
Tell me what to do. How do I get the word out there? And a common thing that kept coming up in these conversations was these quarterly outreach events where people would come and they'd kind of rotate stations and do different things. And so I went back to the pastors after this time and I told them, I said, Hey, I don't know how this is going to work, but this is a common theme that keeps coming up. I kind of told them what I'd been doing, and they're like, great, here's $500, make it happen. And I was like, oh, okay. Well Lord, what do I do? And so I put a notice in our bulletin and I just said, anyone that would like to help us grow this ministry, come to this meeting. And so there were about five or six people that showed up that day, and I give them this idea and they were all so excited.
We planned the whole first event and that first meeting, they were on board ready to go. And so we get to the end of it and I said, guys, this is all well and good and great, but I don't know how to invite people. I don't know what to do. I'm not connected. I don't know how to get connected. And one of the men that was there, he kind of chuckled. His stepson had started coming and he said, well, I know. And I was like, well, please tell me. And he said, I own a business in town and I work with adults with disabilities and I have connections to every agency and provider in town, and I'll not only make the invitations, I'll email them out. And that day I was like, okay, God, I see how this is going to be like, I'm just going to have to trust you.
I'm going to keep taking steps forward and you're going to provide what we need. And so he sent those invitations out and that first event, we had 42 participants, their staff, their families, everybody came. For three hours, everyone was happy. Nobody had a meltdown, nobody in anything. It was the most joyful room and area to be in. And so that was kind of the first big thing we did. So we started doing those. Now we've continued to add things. One of the next things we added, we were having a pool party one summer, and the moms were all at little different stages. Some had already had the kids leave high school and they had already gone through that process. And some were getting close and some were right in the middle of it. And I started watching these moms. There were probably seven moms there that day.
I started watching them jump in and help each other. And I was just amazed. And at the end I said, what can I do to help? How can I help you guys support you guys in this way? And so a couple of them said, we need to have a meeting with, and they named the two agencies. We need to have them come and kind of break down the process for people. And so one mom opened her home and we did that first in our home. One of the agencies wouldn't come, the other did. And at the end of that night, they're like, we need to do a bigger one. Do you think we could have one of these at the church? And I'm like, yes. And so that next fall, I guess maybe, or a few months after, we had our first transition there and we were able to get people to come and set up booths, and we had a couple of speakers that talked people through the process of guardianship, conservatorship and just some different things.
We had a parent kind of speak from a parent's perspective, and that first one was very small, but we did have families that come and benefited from it. Well, then one of our local schools heard about what we did and we had had things ours, more social activities like Special Olympics, our racing team, My Team Triumph, I don't know if you've ever heard about that. It's a thing in our area where the captains are the racers. And so if they run races, and so they're in a racing cart and the angels push them, so they're able to run even marathons. Some of them have done, they do biking, boating, all kinds of things. It's really a big thing.
Elaina Marchenko: It's like a kind of a team race.
Andrea Roseman: It is. Okay. It's a team race. Actually, one of the groups, two men, they qualified and ran the Boston Marathon last year and they started here with My Team Triumph. So I had things like that, the Heartland Down Syndrome Association, just different things because that's one of the things I saw too. These families, their kids lose the social outlet once they leave high school, they're not with their friends anymore, and how do we get them involved in things? And so the school came to us and said, can we partner together next year and can we have it at the church? And I was like, absolutely. And so we brought them in the next year. The next year we brought in another local school and then the next year another. And so that's become an event. Those schools don't have their own fairs anymore. Now those SPED teachers from those schools have formed relationships and they come together and do it together at our church,
We have people that walk in our church door for that fair that have never entered a church before for the first time, they hear somebody say, your kids matter to us, and they matter to the Lord and they have a purpose. And so that's one of our big things. We also do a mom's retreat every spring that's coming up. It's free. Everything we do is free for the families. We have a speaker come in, we cater in meals, we have crafts, games, it's just a time for these moms to come and have some time of just fun and laughter. And we usually have around 50 moms come to that each year. So we're gearing up for that. Our theme for that this year is to be known. We're going to be in Psalm 139 and just talking about how God knows us and he sees the hard that they do every day raising their kids.
We take campers to Camp Barnabas in Purdy, Missouri every June. Now the week that we go, it's for adults 18 and up. And Camp Barnabas is an amazing place. It's the yes camp. And so if you're in a wheelchair and you want to climb the rock wall, they figure out a way to make that happen. Anything that you can think of at a regular camp, it's there and they figure out a way for everyone to do it. So we go to that. We have a day camp now in the summer, three mornings in June. And you can kind of think of it as like an adult VBS kind of the format of it. We have a lesson every day crafts games. It's a lot of fun. We have some that just they count down the days until the next year when it's camp time. And then during camp, the moms have an option of staying and doing a mom's bible study.
And so several of the moms will stay and they'll do that, and they'll also do some kind of craft or activity every day as a part of that. And then we do a large outreach. Every year we do a hay ride that is handicap accessible or wheelchair accessible. We have ramps because I realized one of my ladies that is a wheelchair user, she hadn't been able to go on a hay ride since she was a little girl because she got too heavy for them to lift in and out of a trailer. And so we do the hayride, the bonfire, everybody gets a big pumpkin to paint. We have s'mores. It's just a really fun, another fun event that everyone looks forward to every year.
I'm now involved in the community. I go, there's one specific day hab that I go to four times a year and do programming with them. They then bring their entire day hab program to our summer camp. I was just invited this year to start at a brand new one going in once a month and doing a bible study with their consumers that come there. We're involved in our church's city to city program, our outreach. It's a one day thing where we just canvas our area doing service projects. So our access families and friends, we have found a project that we can do and participate in as a class. We do that.
Just a lot of little things that thrown in there, just different. The moms went to dinner and went and looked at Christmas lights together. So we do things like that. But I think I've kind of named all of the big things in addition to the class. Oh, we also started a parent class and it meets while our teen and adult classes meeting, and that's kind of become our support group as well. Instead of having a different time, we know that childcare is already covered or their kids are already taken care of at this time, so we don't have to figure that out. And then we also work with children now we have buddies for our kids, but we also started a sibling support group last year. And so we've got a couple of leaders leading that who grew up with siblings with disability, so they know what it's like and they're leading that for me.
Elaina Marchenko: As a sibling, I'm always happy to hear about that!
Andrea Roseman: So that's kind of what Access is and how we came to be. So for 10 years, I was a volunteer leader, kind of built this up as a volunteer, and it just got to the point that it needed to be a paid position. So two years ago I went on staff, I work part-time, and it's just been great. I love it. I said, there's never been a day that I haven't wanted to go to work. And I can honestly say in 12 years, there's never been a Sunday that I haven't wanted to go and serve. I love this. I cannot imagine the blessings that I would've missed out on if I'd said no out of fear because it was something new and something that I hadn't done. And the Lord has been so good to guide me each step of the way and show me what to do. And I love my family so much.
Elaina Marchenko: I love That's so good to hear. It seems like God is just really blessing your ministry and all of those families, and I love that it's for teens and adults. I think we talked about that a little bit before we were recording, but I have siblings who just are entering adulthood and finishing high school, and I just think it's so important for parents to know their options, how to do all of those things, all the steps they need to take, and then also for those individuals to know that it doesn't end high school is not the end of their life and it shouldn't, right? You say that to anyone else and it's crazy. So it shouldn't be just because you have challenges or a disability or a physical, something that is making parts of your life more challenging. That doesn't mean that your life should be over when school is done. And I just love that. I love all those things. All of the things you're naming, I'm like, oh, my sisters would love to go to, they would love to be a part of. And I think just the community too, and for the parents, I think it's so important.
Andrea Roseman: Yeah, because before, I think I shared before this started, I love to show the picture of last year's mom's retreat. There's 50 women in this picture, and 12 years ago, only maybe two of them knew each other and they were all living isolated lives. And now they have community and they have each other and we have group messages going, and they know that they can ask for prayer. And it might seem like a silly prayer or prayer somebody else doesn't understand unless you have a kid with a disability. But they know that nothing's going to sound silly and everyone's going to immediately pray for them and support them and help. Or if somebody's hospitalized and they're going to be out of work, everyone chips in and donates money to help that person. It's a true, it's the body of Christ and they're getting to experience that and they didn't before because they didn't have a place.
Elaina Marchenko: Praise God. I love that. Yeah, community, that's what it's all about. Like you said, the body of Christ. That's what it's all about. I love that. Everything you mentioned sounds like a great success. God is working and blessing all of the time everyone's put in and all of the effort and prayer. But if you could look back at the last year, 2024, what maybe the best moments or the most, I don't want to say success, but the times that what things stick out to you, I guess what was the best of 2024 if you had to look back and reflect on that?
Andrea Roseman: I think one thing that happened outside of the church, which is a big part of what my church has allowed me to do, is just continued connections in the community with different groups, different organizations that I've been invited to be a part of and experience because those people are able to connect me to families who need this and who needs the Lord. And so that's been one of my favorite things, to just continue to see God work in that way. I think just continuing to see too, God send new families to us.
Our class on Sundays itself, I mean it's really grown. God sent us several new people this year. We got to experience some of our Access friends, getting baptized, accepting the Lord and getting baptized and to walk through that with them and see the life change in them. That's really been miraculous. Getting to see some of the moms who, one of the moms came to me at the end of the retreat last year and she said, I want to grow. I want to know how to study the Bible. Will you help me? And so this year we did that. This summer we met together every week, and there were weeks I was tired and I thought, oh, I want to cancel tonight. But I didn't. I did it, and I won't share it all on here, but a really cool story happened from that mom this week where God used her to confirm something with me and give me peace because the Holy Spirit is speaking to her and she's learned to listen to him. And so that has been such an amazing thing to be a part of and to watch and to see God transform lives!
Elaina Marchenko: Praise God.
Andrea Roseman: Those are probably my favorite things from this year.
Elaina Marchenko: I'm sure you have much more. Yeah. A year is not long, but long enough to have. Yeah. That's amazing. And then just kind of looking forward to 2025, what are some changes you think you want to make, some tweaks you want to do, and moments where you maybe thought this event went really well, but if I change this one thing, imagine it would go so much better or the impact? I'm curious to hear because you have so many programs and so many activities going on, I think it'd be really helpful for everyone to hear and maybe get ideas for that too.
Andrea Roseman: Well, actually, the biggest change that I'm making this year, the biggest thing that I'm doing, it doesn't involve necessarily what we're already doing. We're kind of keeping all of those things. They're all going, well, obviously I'm always evaluating. I don't ever want to just get stuck in a rut of we just do the same things over and over, but also so many of the things we do, our families have come to love so much. If I took them away, they would be very sad. And so one of the things though, that God really laid on my heart, I'm also, I didn't say this in the beginning. I'm in seminary right now. I'm working on a Master's in Christian Ministry through Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And I had a class on personal discipleship and disciple-making last semester, and it's something I thought about before the class, but then God just really spoke to me during the classes, what am I doing to pour into and disciple my volunteers?
And I do care about my volunteers and I'm very close to them, so I'm always checking in and we have a close relationship, but what am I doing to make sure that they're growing spiritually, not just that I'm using them as a volunteer, but that they're growing. And so last year I started an official lead team of volunteers. I had five people on that committed to do that. And these were people who had always stepped up to the plate on their own and been very supportive from the beginning. And I knew it'd make a strong team. I learned to delegate more to them this past year instead of trying to do it all myself. But I kind of reached out a few weeks ago and gave a challenge to them and kind of different levels. And one of the levels was, you're committing to study this portion of the Bible, go a little deeper with it, meet with me once a month as a group and then commit to enter the same kind of relationship with another person in 2026. And four of my five took that full challenge. And so this year I'm focusing more on my volunteers and their spiritual growth versus adding new things necessarily for our families and our Access friends.
Elaina Marchenko: I love that.
Andrea Roseman: And so that's probably the biggest thing I'm doing. And it was just, again, confirmation from the Lord. I mean, their responses were within probably 10 or 15 minutes. They were like, yes, yes, yes. And one of them, the one that didn't commit fully, she still committed to one of the levels. It just wasn't the full level. And so again, it just shows too, people are hungry for relationship and for going deeper in God's word.
Elaina Marchenko: Praise God. That sounds very wise, I think, it can be easy to be excited about the programs and the things and "results," but you just see people getting really caught up in that and numbers and how many people and how many programs and how many whatever. But yeah, you forget that really it's about discipleship on every level. And I think it's so important to serve those volunteers because without them you don't have anything.
Andrea Roseman: I couldn't do it. Nothing. We would be in big trouble if I did not have them.
Elaina Marchenko: And we know with any sort of, I've learned this, any sort of disability work ministry especially, I'm never worried that they're not getting anything from their actual work their day-to-day. You know that God is using that, and that is actually a huge blessing to them, and they might be getting more than maybe the kids or the adults sometimes in the programs. God just uses that, and that's one of the biggest blessings. But from a kind of the next level of boss to volunteer, leader to volunteer, you're so right. It's so important. So I love that.
Andrea Roseman: Another thing that I'm excited about, a new thing this year, and this is kind of, I'm saying something on here that people in our church don't know yet, but it's okay. So my ministry Access, our college ministry youth and children's, we kind of went together and purchased one of the big foam machines. Have you seen those that blow out foam and they run and play in the foam?
Elaina Marchenko: Oh, yes. Yeah.
Andrea Roseman: Okay. So we purchased one for our church to use within all of our ministries, and I also got a cotton candy machine and just I invested in some things like that. So we are getting our own space this year. We're in the middle of a building project and Access is going to have our own space for the first time. I'm so excited. We're not going to have to set up and tear down every week anymore, and it's going to allow me during the week to not just go to the day Habs, but to also have them come to us. And so I plan to use this stuff as an outreach to new Day Habs to invite them just for a few hours, Hey, I'm going to set this foam machine up. We're going to have fun activities for you to come and do and invite them to us to come. Again, getting people on our church campus that maybe won't come on a Sunday yet. We have people that are very involved now. They came to our events for probably five years before they ever walked in the door on a Sunday. And so I'm excited about being able to do further outreach, with just some of the new equipment that we've purchased as a team.
Elaina Marchenko: I love that. That's a great idea. And it's God's timing, so you never know when someone's going to show up at church and they're not even at church. They're at an event on a Wednesday. God can use it, and that's amazing. I do think location's so important, so I'm glad you guys are able to have your own space and have people come to you. That's such a blessing.
Andrea Roseman: Yeah, we're really excited about it.
Elaina Marchenko: That's fun. I want to come play in the foam!
Andrea Roseman: When you come visit your parents, you let me know and you can come down and play with this.
Elaina Marchenko: I'd love it. Okay, last thing, you kind of talked about what you want to do next year, but I'm curious, and maybe I didn't tell you this before, so it's okay, but maybe a couple, I don't know if you have a couple words or a word or something of your goal for next year if there's kind of a mindset. It seems like you're someone that thinks kind of long-term planning ahead for a year. Even what you mentioned with the Bible study, it's a very long-term goal in the best kind of way, and so I'm wondering if you have a word or maybe a verse from the Bible or something that you're feeling like God is really calling you to do this year?
Andrea Roseman: Actually, I kind of usually do a Word of the Year. This year I was thinking about this and it didn't come to me as plain. I didn't know exactly when and where, but I think it kind of goes along with what I'm wanting to do with my volunteers, but then for myself and it's rest and I don't mean physical rest. Yes, because if you can't tell I have trouble ever stopping and resting, I'm a go, go go person. I'm a type A. I've always got a plan. We're always doing something, moving towards the next thing. So yes, physical rest, but then just resting in him and making sure that in the busyness of the things that I'm in the word and I'm helping others to be in the word as well and I'm resting in the things he's promised us.
Elaina Marchenko: Yeah, I love that. It's such a good reminder for everybody wherever you are at whatever you're doing, whatever this year looks like. Yeah. There's just essentials that we always seem to be reminded of, and so I think that's so helpful. Well, thanks for coming on. I loved having you. I honestly, embarrassed to say, I didn't know a lot about Access Ministry before, so I'm really happy to have learned more about it and have talked to the person that's behind a lot of the things going on, and it's really encouraging to hear about all of the things that you guys are doing and that God is doing through your ministry and in the families. So thank you for coming on.
Andrea Roseman: Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me. I love to share about it. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about it and I can't imagine my life without this ministry as a part of it
Elaina Marchenko: And all because you just said yes, even though it was a scared, timid "yes," God used it.
Andrea Roseman: And that's what I tell people now, find your Access. God has a place, it might not be Access, but he has a place for every person that's going to bring them the kind of joy and blessings that this Yes Has brought me. He has that for all of us.
Elaina Marchenko: I love that. Praise God. Well, thanks for coming on, and I hope to have you back on at another time, maybe next year, but next year you can say this year, remember when I was on?
Andrea Roseman: Yeah, well just let me know.
Elaina Marchenko: Okay. Sounds good.
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