In Part Six of our current blog series Key Ministry 2.0 we’ll look at four ministry initiatives that will shape our work in the months and years to come.

As part of our discernment process, our Board and staff at Key Ministry have reaffirmed our mission, cast our vision, defined our values, assessed our gifts and talents, and surveyed the current ministry environment. In light of what we’ve considered this fall, our team has felt led to pursue four specific ministry initiatives in the coming year…I’ll introduce the four initiatives today.

Key Initiative #1…Online Ministry

• Inclusion Fusion will be coming back next year as an ongoing monthly symposium featuring topics of interest to pastors, church staff, volunteers and families pertaining to disability ministry.

• We’re building an online platform to allow as many churches as possible to participate in Key Ministry training events…and will be making the platform available to other like-minded ministries so their training can be more accessible as well.

• We’ll be launching an online church platform in 2014 to allow families impacted by disabilities to experience church in the environments where they are most comfortable, promoting connections with local churches for the purpose of working toward the goal of kids and families worshiping on a regular basis in the physical presence of other Christ-followers. MUCH more on this later.

Key Initiative #2…The Free Respite Network

The software is finished…we need churches to beta-test our website to help families of kids in need of a break to find churches in their home areas offering high-quality, free respite care. We hope to build and expand our network through training available on our online platform. FREERespite.com should be up and running early in 2014.

Key Initiative #3…Promoting Advocacy for Ministry Among Senior Pastors

We’ll be actively seeking out opportunities to influence influence senior pastors and other church leaders to become champions of disability ministry. We’re reaching out to seminaries for opportunities to train future pastors and church leaders…not just leaders in children’s ministry. We’ll be establishing a presence at the conferences where senior pastors regularly attend. We’re fortunate to have a highly respected senior pastor in Hu Auburn heading up this effort as our Staff Director in 2014.

Key Initiative #4…Building Institutional Relationships

If we bring to the table knowledge, innovation and experience for churches seeking to serve kids with mental illness, trauma or developmental disabilities, it’s obvious we can’t have an impact without working with others. We’ll be looking to team up with publishers, conference organizers, other like-minded parachurch organizations, foundations and sponsors to optimize our capacity for influencing churches.

Interested in joining us? We’re going to need the gifts and talents of lots of Christ-followers if we’re going to pull this off. Are you…

• Serving at a church that currently offers respite care in search of additional training or access to a safe and secure website to help families in your community register for respite events?

• Interested in connecting families impacted by disabilities in your community/region to your church through online worship services?

• Serving with an organization interested in partnering with Key Ministry to advance the cause of families impacted by disability throughout the worldwide church?

We’d love to hear from you!

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Our Key Ministry website is a resource through which church staff, volunteers, family members and caregivers can register for upcoming training events, request access to our library of downloadable ministry resources, contact our staff with training or consultation requests, access the content of our official ministry blog, or contribute their time, talent and treasure to the expansion of God’s Kingdom through the work of Key Ministry. In addition to our downloadable resources, those who register for our resource kit can view any presentation from our Inclusion Fusion Disability Ministry Web Summits “on-demand”. All of these resources are made available free of charge. Check out our website today!