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.
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.
Each summer, our Shine Disabilities Ministry team hosts Camp Freedom, which an action-packed weekend where campers with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities experience summer camp in a way they most enjoy. The blessings and the memories and the logistics from the event always leave me asking “How did we do that?” But as we see through the ministry of Peter and John in Acts 3-4, we didn’t do any of it. The Holy Spirit did it!
Strength in Numbers is a slogan that not only helped create a winning culture for an NBA team, but it also echoes the message from Scripture in Ecclesiastes 4 where a “cord of three strands is not easily broken.” In this week’s episode, Garett Wall examines how strength in numbers and the cord of three can serve as the foundation for helping your church build a pathway to belonging for adults with disabilities.
Effective ministry for the disability community is one that is built on the belief that your church can and should be pursuing lifelong family ministry for our friends and families impacted by disability. Through his journey as the father of a child with disabilities, Garett Wall has experienced how God does the equipping for ministry and he loves encouraging churches to be more prepared for lifelong family ministry for families like his. In this week’s episode, Garett shares how God’s plan for him and his family came full circle through one of the families at his church.
