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.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Along with the October Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I would love to see Christian pastors and Christian counselors be at the forefront of not only bringing awareness, but also coming up with the solutions to serve domestic violence victims and sexual assault survivors, to end abuse.
God uses the Church in important ways to come alongside people He eventually calls to leadership. God often places people in positions of receiving essential encouragement, prayer, support and equipping. In the process, He’s revealing their potential, as well as opportunities to move them into areas of ministry with other families impacted by disability.
I have the most amazing baby sister. She is goofy, loud, opinionated, and hard-headed. She makes me laugh and she drives me completely insane. My sister has a traumatic brain injury (TBI). She needs accommodations to be successful, especially in the church. These accommodations can help almost anyone with a TBI.
Caregivers and families impacted by disability are finding themselves most profoundly moved by the simple things these days. I’ve been wondering what ministry would look and feel like if we all just took a giant step back: back to the days of pie socials, potlucks, card clubs and barn raisings. Here are some ideas that any church or ministry leader can do.
Approximately five years ago, my husband Ryan and I began experiencing a mental health crisis. We lived in rural Tennessee with our 8 children, including our son Lucas who has special needs and profound autism. Our experiences in rural America, however, were not in vain. One of the ideas that emerged was that perhaps a documentary was needed to dive deeply into the unspoken mental health crisis that many caregivers silently suffer through.
Last week, Jillian Palmiotto shared the first part of this 2-part series on developing a house church model of special needs ministry. Today, Jillian shares the process she used to establish house churches, in hopes that it will spark some ideas in other leaders, and help churches prepare for our uncertain future.
Ministering to families who are impacted by disability was especially difficult for pastors during the start of the COVID pandemic. In June, I began to seek the Lord for a way that we could keep everyone physically safe, obey CDC health guidelines and provide the community that the people so desperately needed. And the answer was found right at home.
The global pandemic increased society’s awareness about the feelings and implications of being isolated. The question remains, what will be the lasting impact of that new awareness? Lisa Jamieson offers some observations and tips for churches and ministries to deepen connection with special needs families.
