disability ministry weekly round-up {11-28-11}
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December starts this week. Oh, my!
This is an encouraging story of disability and faith. The story is supposed to be about a church and others coming together to buy updated prosthetic legs for a college student, but the real story that shines through in it is the one of a God using disability to capture the heart of a young man. That man says,
Carrie with Children blogs about Target's inclusion of a child with Down syndrome in one of their ads. This brought to mind a challenge for the church: do our ministry materials include images of those with special needs? If your church has people with special needs, then those materials should reflect that.
A church realized a family - including a single mom, a seven-year-old child with autism and a seizure disorder, and a grandmother on dialysis - was living in sub-standard conditions, so what did they do? They bought and fixed up a mobile home for them. Read about it here.
What December traditions do you look forward to each year?
This is an encouraging story of disability and faith. The story is supposed to be about a church and others coming together to buy updated prosthetic legs for a college student, but the real story that shines through in it is the one of a God using disability to capture the heart of a young man. That man says,
"People call this is a disability," he says. "I call it an ability to display the glory of God. He blessed me with this gift so I could see the goodness in people and in him. How lucky is that?"The thanks I owe my child with special needs & To my friends who struggle at the holidays: I am listing these two together because I think they can be read best as a pair. In the first, Ellen from Love That Max reflects upon what her son with special needs (or, as she likes to say, special powers) has taught her. In the second, John from The Works of God encourages those parents who aren't feeling as thankful. For those of us who minister to these families, we need to understand that parents can be thankful and not-so-thankful all at the same time. Or they might alternate between the two responses. Or dwell somewhere in between. The lesson? Meet them where they are.
Carrie with Children blogs about Target's inclusion of a child with Down syndrome in one of their ads. This brought to mind a challenge for the church: do our ministry materials include images of those with special needs? If your church has people with special needs, then those materials should reflect that.
A church realized a family - including a single mom, a seven-year-old child with autism and a seizure disorder, and a grandmother on dialysis - was living in sub-standard conditions, so what did they do? They bought and fixed up a mobile home for them. Read about it here.
What December traditions do you look forward to each year?