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.
My husband has advanced dementia. Many people I meet want to understand, but often make assumptions and therefore make mistakes. The Bible warns us not to look at externals; this is not how God looks at individuals. We need to be willing to look at our assumptions and make changes; we must be willing to learn.
“How are you?” It’s so hard to answer! “Yes, we’re fine. We are well, we don’t have the virus, we have food, and we have medication.” BUT, and a BIG BUT—sometimes I feel like screaming! I am despairing. This morning I read Psalm 77. The first few verses were how I felt in the middle of last night. This Psalm, and remembering God’s faithfulness showed me several things that helped my despair, and may help you, too.
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.
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.
After a meeting with our elder board about some missions support, our leadership team had an awakening of sorts. One of the elders said, “We need to understand disabilities better as a church,” and then asked, “How can we educate our people about this and do better together as it relates to our families affected by disability?” Read how one church became intentional about disability ministry and outreach.
