Ep 42: The Benefits of Starting a Caregiving Ministry First

church podcast Feb 24, 2023

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Shownotes


What is a caregiving ministry? In this episode, caregiving ministry refers to ministries that serve those who are caring for older loved ones. Listen to find out how starting a caregiving ministry in your church can benefit the entire church community, including offering much needed support to caregivers, creating a deeper sense of community, promoting a culture of care for the elderly, and more. Caregiving is not an easy thing, and a caregiving ministry can help people connect both within and beyond the church community. 

The Benefits of Starting a Caregiving Ministry First is part four in the Church series of The Value of Wrinkles podcast.


â–¸Intro by: My kid!

 

Highlights

  • Learn about different types of caregiving ministries and why it’s important to support those who care for older family members, including teaching people how to take care of their own parents and older family members.
  • Learn how it has a greater impact, helps build connections, and a stronger church community.
  • Learn how it promotes a culture of care within the church and shows younger church members that it’s important to value and assist their elders.
  • Learn how it can support a wide range of people and different groups within and beyond your church community.

Resources mentioned

 

Transcript

Ep42_the-benefits-of-starting-a-caregiving-ministry-first.mp4: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Ep42_the-benefits-of-starting-a-caregiving-ministry-first.mp4: this mp4 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Isabel Tom:
We have more impact with people who we already have a relationship with.

My kid:
This is The Value of Wrinkle's podcast. The church shares whatever age you're at or consider yourself to be. Maybe that's young, youngish, mid-life, older, or maybe you just call yourself old. You are welcome here. Let's explore how to love the older generation and ourselves more.

Isabel Tom:
My name is Isabel Tom and I'm an author. I am the author of the book called The Value of Wrinkles A Young Perspective on how loving the old will change your life. And just in one line, I have a heart to serve the older generation and to help those who are serving the older generation to support them and guide them. So if you have not been around, this episode is the last of a series that I've been doing for churches. Have you listened to all of them? I would go back to episode 39, 40, 41, and 42 at the value of wrinkles, at valueofwrinkles.com/listen. There is no the when you type in value of wrinkles. So valueofwrinkles.com/listen. And I would listen to all the other episodes including this one. I want to thank those of you who have been listening. And I really hope that this series has been helpful to you. This is a second series that I have done and I'm planning to do another one in April, so look out for that one. That one is specifically geared towards Asian American families and caregivers. The first series that I ever did was about the five love languages, and how we can use the five love languages to find many, many, many different ways that we can honor and serve and love the older people in our lives. So if you want to listen to those, go back to the very beginning, probably eight, ten, 12, 14, 16, somewhere in there, episode...those episodes.

Isabel Tom:
Today's episode is all about the benefits of starting a caregiving ministry first. So let's just first start off with what is a caregiving ministry. I thought this was pretty obvious in the beginning, and then as I've been doing some research, I realize it doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. When I talk about caregiving ministry, I am really talking about serving the caregiver, supporting the people who are caring for an older loved one, supporting the adult children who are caring for their aging parents, for their moms and dads, supporting the grandchildren who are trying to work at the same time and also care for their grandparents. Some of the churches that I found that have caregivers ministry, what they're talking about is really providing support to those church members who are sick or they're shut in. This is a term that I actually was not familiar with. Now, just background, I did not attend a lot of different churches growing up. I am a pastor's kid, and my dad stayed at the same church for pretty much my entire childhood, so I am not familiar with a lot of the different ministries out there besides the ones at the church that I grew up in. And so shut in ministry was something I heard later on. What is a shut in? A shut in is somebody, is often referring to the older population, or someone who is sick, who physically can't attend church in person.

Isabel Tom:
And so when a church has a shut in ministry or a caregivers ministry, what this ministry often is, is that people from the church are reaching out to these people who aren't able to come in person, and they are serving them and caring for them. Maybe they're going to nursing homes or assisted living facilities and really serving them. I think that's awesome. Really think a ministry like this is so powerful and so needed. However, when I talk about the benefits of having starting a caregivers ministry first, I'm not talking about this type of ministry. And the reason is because while having a ministry that reaches out to the sick or the elderly and those who are not able to come in person is really, really important. Really important. It takes a lot of coordination and it takes a lot of volunteers to be able to do this type of ministry. I think if you're trying to have the most impact and you don't have a lot of time on your hands, but you want to make a great impact, then I think we need to teach. The members in our church. We need to teach people how to care for their own family, care for the people who are closest to them, and what's the benefit of that? Why do I think that we should do this first before we start a senior adult ministry, before we do intergenerational programs? Well.

Isabel Tom:
We have more impact with people who we already have a relationship with. How often do you hear people say that they are praying for their parents who are not believers? One of the ways that I think we can reach out to our parents who are not believers, is to care for them well, and not just to care for them, as in trying to make sure that they say a sinner's prayer and that they are saved, but to care for their well-being, to care for their physical well-being and their emotional well-being, just like Jesus fed people and he healed them physically. This is a way that we can minister to our parents, to our older loved ones. Most of us, we want to have a good relationship with our parents, but sometimes we struggle with that. And so this, I really believe, is something that will bring long lasting impact. If you are a Bible believing church, then look in your Bible and you'll see that there are a lot of references to honoring your father and mother. If you look especially in Proverbs, you'll see that there are a lot of verses that talk about just not disgracing your parents, about not being foolish, about keeping your father's command and not rejecting your mother's teaching. So there are a lot of references about honoring our father and mother, but I think oftentimes in the church, we don't necessarily give examples of that.

Isabel Tom:
We a lot of the examples in sermons, for example, often focus on loving our peers, loving our coworkers, loving our friends. And we don't spend a lot of time on how to honor and respect and love our own family members. Are we going to love the older generation? At the nursing home, but forget to love our own parent. And that leads me to the second benefit of starting a caregiving ministry first. And a huge thing that churches are often trying to do is they are trying to build community. And if you want to have a closer community, a deeper community, then I think caregiving is a unique and interesting way to really help people connect. And it really helps people connect at a deeper level in a way that you wouldn't expect. You know, on Sunday mornings you see people, you chit chat with others, you can learn something about people based on seeing them, like visibly. But there are a lot of things that go on through the week that go on in people's lives that they don't talk about. And I'll say that I hear a lot of people who are parents talking about their kids. I'll hear people talk about their jobs, but. So many of us who are, you know, in our

Isabel Tom:
adulthood. We have parents, but we don't talk about that often yet. That's something that can be stressful, and particularly if we have parents who are getting up there in age, that can be something extremely stressful. It can also be joyful too, but we don't talk about it. At my church when we started a caregiving ministry, and really the way that we started it is we started by going through my Prepare to Care course and two ladies from my church who are amazing. They led people through my Prepare to Care digital course, and I thought it was really neat because I had no idea there were so many caregivers in our congregation. And then when we came together to meet, the conversation was completely different than I have had with people the entire time that I've been at my church. It went to a deeper level because we were understanding people and their relationships with their parents, which is something, yet again, we don't talk about, but it impacts us. It impacts who we are. When you start a caregiving ministry, it what it does, it doesn't just open up conversation and talk and vulnerability about a job that you that people have, which is to care for their aging parents. What it does is it opens up a whole nother world that we may not have known about people. There may be people that we saw on, you see, on a weekly basis.

Isabel Tom:
But when you start talking about caregiving, it helps you understand them at a different in a different way. And so I think that is really cool. Why why else would you want to start a caregiving ministry first at your church? Well, what it does is it creates a culture of care for the older generation. And this is something that I've been talking a lot about when I've been meeting with churches, when I had the focus groups in January of this year where I talked to churches, and how what I think is really important is to create a culture of care for the older generation, because we're always often focusing on the youth programs and the kids programs and all of that. When you start a caregiving ministry, everybody else in the church, the younger people, they see that it is important to care for their parents and their elders, to care for those who are older than them, because they see that you have a ministry dedicated to helping people care for those for their parents, or care for those who are older than them. I mentioned this, I think, in an Instagram reel, if you have translation for other languages, then people can see that people who attend the church can see that your church values being able to share the gospel with people who may not speak the English language. And I think that tells a lot.

Isabel Tom:
It shows a lot when we have caregiving ministries, what it does, the benefit is that it creates a culture of care, a culture for the entire church, and especially for the younger generation, where they can see that it is important to care for those who are older than you. That is not all about them, but that we want to look all around at all ages and care for our family. Consider starting a caregiving ministry first, also because it can support a wide range of people and it can bless people of all different groups. For example, if you are a ministry leader or a pastor listening, you likely have aging parents or someone on your staff who has aging parents that they're caring for. They likely need support because caregiving is not an easy thing. A caregiving ministry, caregiver support that you provide. It can bring believers, unbelievers, church members, community members all together. It can be used as a form of outreach. Why? Because it is not a Bible study. And Bible studies are only going to attract people who love the Bible and who believe in the Bible. This can support people from all different groups and it can bring them together. It is a really great way to connect. What do you do now? If you know, if you are convinced that starting a caregiver's ministry would be the best thing to do. Well, I have two ideas.

Isabel Tom:
Number one, I want to encourage you to sign up for my church newsletter. Go to valueofwrinkles.com/church, valueofwrinkles.com/church. And you can sign up for my church newsletter. I send out helpful resources and tips and encouragement that you can use to help your church to focus more on the older generation, so sign up for that list. I am planning to host an informational session probably in mid-March. I haven't set the exact date, but if you are on my church newsletter valueofwrinkles.com/church, then you will find out about it. And I'm trying to confirm a date to have an informational session so that you can learn about my Prepare to Care video training course that I have created for individuals. And now I have am offering as a multi-use license for churches so that you as a church could host a caregiver, support group or you as a church could provide caregiver support to the caregivers in your congregation, in your community, in the show notes, or if you go to valueofwrinkles.com/listen and you go to episode 42 on that page. If you click on episode 42, I will have a link to the Prepare to Care course for churches, and you can check it out there. You can also get a two week trial for ministry leaders at the church who want to consider this video training course to see if it's beneficial for you.

Isabel Tom:
I have created the course so that you don't need a lot of manpower to be able to host a caregiver support group. You don't need a lot of coordination to be able to start a ministry like this. But I also want to encourage you possibly just to bring caregivers together, just to find out who the caregivers are in your church and maybe have twice a year a get together where you come together and you're able to share prayer requests and maybe share ideas. That's a great way to support caregivers and just to help them know that they are. Thank you so much for joining me for episode 42 of today's podcast. I hope that it has been so helpful for you. If there are other topics that maybe I haven't covered, then shoot me an email the [email protected] or go to valueofwrinkles.com and go to the contact page and let me know if there is something that you have a question about that was not answered, or a topic that you would really love to have addressed. If you listen to today's episode and you thought, wow, I think my church could really benefit from listening to this share valueofwrinkles.com/listen with them so that they can listen to every episode in this series. Thanks a lot for joining me and I will be back next show with another great episode.

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