Adorning The Gospel

God’s doing some pretty creative ministry during coronavirus.

Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and during COVID-19, we’ve really put on our thinking caps to come up with some unusual and creative ways to do ministry among isolated and sequestered families that have disabled kids. Like, I mean, these children with disabilities are at high risk, and mom and dad need more help than ever, yet they can’t get out. School programs have been cut back, and forget about after-school therapy. No wonder the heavy cloud of depression has settled over so many special-needs families during this difficult time.

So here we are at Joni and Friends, thinking: How can we help them? What can we do? We can’t let these families suffer alone. God, give us your ideas! And you know what? He did. You see, through our internship program, we developed a partnership with the nursing school at the University of Northwestern in Minnesota. So, our Joni and Friends team in that state decided to lay a challenge to the senior nursing students at that university. We devised a 10-week program, and we asked 40 of these students to provide much-needed respite for 17 families with kids who have disabilities. These nursing students could not only earn their clinical hours, but they’d have a chance to get an inside look at the day-to-day struggles of families with special needs. The nursing department loved the idea. And so with masks on and with health safety protocols in place, these 40 students rolled their sleeves up, arrived at the front doors of these 17 families, and brought into the home the love of Jesus Christ in such practical ways.

While mom and dad went off to have coffee with friends or went out into the backyard to garden; while dad went to Home Depot or to the golf range, these students – they read Bible stories to kids; they played games; they made crafts; they took kids to the park and playground, and most of all, they just hung out and shared the love of Jesus with the entire family. And that’s what really warms my heart about this Respite at Home program we’re doing with nursing schools. We’re actually having the chance to train these nursing students in our Beyond Suffering Bible course. Before one of these nursing students knocks on the door, he or she gets trained in what the Bible has to say about disabilities. They learn how the God of the Bible’s in control of things like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome. And after spending weeks with these disabled kids, each student comes away so enlightened. I mean, you can learn about disabling conditions from a textbook, right? And in a lecture. And you can listen to your professor and memorize statistics, but that head knowledge pales in comparison to actually lifting a child from the couch to his wheelchair or feeding him lunch or playing a game or wiping his drool, knowing that you are giving his parent a much-needed break.

The book of Titus speaks of how our good deeds adorn the Gospel of Christ. And our internships do just that and more. So during this National Mentoring Month, visit joniradio.org where we have provided a link to our page describing all our internship opportunities. And get your church involved. Let’s make the love of Jesus practical, hands-on and close up, especially when it comes to disabilities. Find out more about it at joniradio.org. Again, that’s joniradio.org. And pray for us as we spread this program to many more nursing schools all around the country.

Oh, and one more thing – I want you to have a copy of our Joni and Friends newsletter. So just go to joniradio.org. It’s filled with opportunities for you to serve people with disabilities all in the name of Jesus.

© Joni and Friends