Elaina sits down and shares a few of the many reasons we have to celebrate here at Key Ministry this year. We are so grateful for all that the Lord has done in and through our ministry in 2024, and we can’t wait to see what he does in 2025!
I wonder when did being sensitive get a bad reputation and why does being sensitive tend to make others uncomfortable? After all, Jesus showed us how to use gifts like sensitivity, empathy and compassion for the Kingdom of God.
As 2024 comes to a close, we look back at some of the most impactful events and relationships we were part of this past year, highlight new resources we helped create over the past twelve months and look ahead to opportunities for advancing the Gospel in 2025 through supporting local churches in their ministry with the disability and mental health communities.
Sandra Peoples grew up with a sister with Down syndrome and now has a teenager with level 3 autism, so she knows how different the holidays can feel for a family like hers. But they don't have to feel different at church! With a few steps of consideration, she shares how families can feel included and valued. Let's make sure special-needs families can hear the message of hope this Christmas!
Every child is wonderfully unique, created by God with love and intention. For kids who experience and process the world differently, hearing affirmations rooted in God’s truth can be a powerful reminder of their worth and purpose.
A few months ago, Barna Group released a book titled Restoring Relationships that looks at their research on the challenges individuals and couples are experiencing with mental, emotional, and relational health, and how the church could help. Updated for the impacts of COVID-19, the research also looked at pastors’ mental health. But the most important question of all, which can help inform ministry for 2021, may be this: do people still feel connected during the pandemic?
Many of the concepts that the general population have experienced for the first time in 2020 are all too familiar to some in the disability community. The new reality that many of us are experiencing for the first time is all too familiar for many families living with disabilities who face manifold barriers to leave their home on a typical day. So what if we took this opportunity to re-imagine a church that was accessible to 100% of people—rather than just the 85% who don’t live with disabilities?
Just a handful of weeks into the pandemic quarantine, I was already starting to take stock of lessons God was teaching me. In the course of time and in the newly emerging chaos of rushing back to “normal” life, I’m already struggling to remember, let alone walk out, the lessons I was so certain would not leave me! How about you? During meetings with disability leaders and a recent check-in call with a group of pastors who are navigating ministry in these times, I have heard valuable insights from varied fronts.
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.
