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.
I still remember waking up in the hospital, surrounded by about a half dozen men and women in white lab coats. They were all just looking at me, like I was a new species or a classroom exhibit. With this and many related experiences, all this time later, I routinely follow a thoughtful process, researching potential supplements, medications and alternatives to medicine, whenever my doctor makes a recommendation, and that includes vaccines. COVID vaccines are no different.
Shortly before Dr. Grcevich’s book Mental Health and the Church was published, we asked our readers to share their experiences, both good and bad, about mental health needs and church support. We continue to get responses, and want to share a few that we have received since we made our initial request, for the insight that churches and ministries can glean from the experiences of others.
In the last four months, one significant and concerning trend I’ve noticed in social media conversations among ministry leaders has been the uptick in the need for suicide information. Reducing mental illness stigma and prevention are the techniques with the most impact. Here are some other approaches that may help.
