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.
Ideally, every person is welcome and embraced by a church as Christ welcomes and embraces all with unconditional love. That, unfortunately, is not always expressed by the church. I believe in those moments when we do feel we need to leave, God’s love will guide the conversation and direct us towards a place that will be more welcoming and open to expressing the love of Christ for all people.
Unseen: How We’re Failing Parent Caregivers and Why It Matters made its global online premiere May 20. This is part 2 of the in-depth questions we posed to Jess Ronne to help our readers better understand the issues raised in the documentary and how churches can be supportive of caregiving families. Read part 1 here.
Unseen: How We’re Failing Parent Caregivers and Why It Matters made its global online premiere May 20. We caught up with Jess Ronne to ask some in-depth questions to help our readers better understand the issues raised in the documentary and how churches can be supportive of caregiving families.
God's directive for adoptive families is the same as it is for every family. But adoptive, special-needs families experience extra challenges to meet this calling. In part 2 of this 3-part series, Sandra Peoples shares practical tips for churches to provide places of inclusion and belonging for families.
Churches rightly encourage adoption and support families going through the adoption process, but are they prepared when the child or teen comes home and is diagnosed with special needs or trauma-related issues? Sandra Peoples shares three-part series on a theology of disability that can serve as a motivation for churches to meet the needs of these families.
When I learned my daughter would be born with a more severe genetic disorder than my son’s, the news devastated me. After her birth, I began to experience debilitating symptoms of PTSD. Months later, I made what should have been a lethal suicide attempt. My case was extreme, but is it that uncommon for caregivers to experience clinical mental health conditions?
