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.
Over the summer, my husband Fred and I have been working through some course material from an organization which has as one of their objectives, “To help one’s family member to achieve ‘An Awesome Ordinary Life.’ ” It is so easy to lose sight of how extraordinary it is when an ordinary life is lived in faithful ways. Let me explain.
Parents of children with special needs are often labeled negatively: ‘troublemakers,’ ‘confrontational,’ ‘needy,’ ‘over-sharing.’ The reason we (as yes, I’m one too) can sometimes pick up some of these negative labels is that we won’t take no for an answer when it comes to our child. Why do we enter into conversations, meetings and appointments with our boxing gloves firmly on? Because the world cannot understand.
On this particular morning, several years ago, my Bible reading for the day took me to Romans 10:9-10, the Scriptures that lay out God’s path to salvation. What wasn’t so clear to me was how my son, who suffered with cognitive disabilities, would be able to meet these requirements. “How, LORD,” I asked, “is Myles gonna be able to receive salvation?”
Some individuals with limited speech may use AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) speech-generating devices. For roughly 7 years, my own daughter with special needs used a speech-generating device to communicate when she was nonverbal. Here are five ways I used my daughter’s device to aid her spiritual development and increase her participation in our faith.
Many young people with learning disabilities do not have adequate preparation for adult life. The reason sometimes is that people mistakenly assume that having learning disabilities means not being able to learn. This is not the case. Rather, it means that they have difficulty learning. To help with this needed preparation, I have just published a teaching pack for parents, educators and church leaders.
The Sunday following my son’s autism diagnosis, we ventured out to church. I could never have predicted the way that attempt would go up in flames. What we experienced was not biblical, and all these years later, I’m now a disability inclusion pastor. What if, as we strive to make churches inclusive for people living with disabilities, that the greatest change from inclusion efforts is that the church finally develops revolutionary love?
