This upcoming conversation and study may well be worth your time and involvement. I know I would have loved to have had access to this kind of informed experience and support when my wife Martha and I were in the thick of living through Alzheimer’s for 17 years.
Rev. Dr. Ken Carder is uniquely experienced to discuss the emotional and spiritual issues that can impact families living through dementia—those diagnosed with one form or another and those who are their primary caregivers. You may remember Ken from my post three years ago…Emerging from a Hard Season of Pandemic, Dementia, and Death. He’s a retired Methodist Bishop and Professor Emeritus at Duke Divinity School.
Equally important, if not more, Ken cared for his wife Linda for 10 years after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia, called ‘Frontotemporal Dementia.’ Linda died in October 2019. Ken obviously shares from hard-earned experience. We have become good friends staying in touch with each other every month or so.
Ken and Linda in better days
Starting in February, Ken and Rev. Dr. Scott Hughes will again be offering a significant three-month study and conversation on caring for loved ones with dementia. The basis of their discussion will be Ken’s book, Ministry with the Forgotten: Dementia through a Spiritual Lens. The study is focused on helping caregivers—family and professional—as well as pastors and faith community leaders, and congregational care staff. I’ve read and studied Ken’s book and it’s worth every penny.
I see that some of the main outcomes of this conversational study include:
A basic understanding of dementia and its prevalence in our culture.
An ability to reflect on dementia not only as a spiritual challenge but also as an opportunity.
Developing a sensitivity to seeing the person who is alive and well inside one with dementia, even though they may be unable to talk or remember.
Learning ways that you may be able to step into the world of those with dementia.
An understanding that caring for those with dementia does not have to lead to burnout. It often can be a catalyst for being drawn more deeply into God’s Presence and Love.
Helping a caregiver see early on, rather than as an afterthought, that their church or faith community can be a place of comfort and support. Meanwhile helping faith leaders reframe their care ministries so that dementia care can become an integral part of their church ministry, rather than being a forgotten need or one out on the periphery. Believe it or not, those with dementia can offer gifts to their faith community.
These and more are hard lessons for caregivers and church leaders to learn even when learning from a group like this being offered by Ken and Rev. Hughes. I spent a lot of time on my own spinning my wheels while looking in a thousand directions for such help and insight.
For a full description of this study and to pre-register (it starts sometime in February) go to this link… United Methodist Church’s Discipleship Ministries. Psst…it offers access to a deep discount on Ken’s book.
By the way, if you don’t have three months to give for this, I think it would still be worth signing up for in order to listen in when Ken personally participates on three zoom meetings. He tells me that he also will answer as best he can any emails sent to him.
Please do give this conversational study serious thought if you’re deep into caring for a loved one. Or if you’re involved in pastoral care.
Thank you.
Carlen Maddux
PS1 Feel free to forward this post to anyone you think might find it of value.
PS2 An inexpensive way to support the end of Alzheimer’s is to buy several sheets of the Alzheimer’s first-class, forever stamps ($15 for a sheet of 20). As you know, the net proceeds from its sales go to the National Institutes of Health for Alzheimer’s research. As of December 2022, 10.5-million stamps have been sold, raising over $1.3-million for research. Join me and thousands of others to Help Stamp Out Alzheimer’s. If you can’t find the stamps locally, you can order online by clicking here.
PS3 If you’d like to sign up for my blog, there’s no charge; just click here. (If that doesn’t work for some reason, you can always email me direct at carlen@carlenmaddux.com, Subject Line: Add to Blog. And I will manually add you to the list.)