Shannon shared the news that she’s transitioning off our ministry team with readers of her personal blog this past week.

Our team is grateful for the time Shannon served with us. She’s a unique figure in the disability ministry movement in that she brings such a broad range of experience to her advocacy. She’s worked with at-risk kids as a special education teacher, served as a special needs ministry director at a large church, is a parent of a biological child and three adopted children with identified disabilities, and has personal experience of disability from rheumatoid arthritis, trauma and mental illness. She’s been extraordinarily productive while managing to keep lots of balls in the air.

Shannon has served as a passionate and capable champion for a number of important causes in the church…special needs ministry, adoption, foster care, mental illness, trauma and children who are HIV positive. She’s has a gift of being able to write about painful and difficult subjects in a manner that leaves readers feeling that someone truly understands their experiences. She’s truthful and transparent. She’s willing to speak into topics that others are reluctant to touch.

One of our goals as an organization at the time Shannon was hired was to develop resources for churches seeking to support adoptive and foster families. We’d struggled with getting churches to appreciate the need for ministry supports for children and teens with mental illness and trauma, and research and experience suggested that the need for supports would be most readily apparent to churches promoting adoption or foster care ministry. We couldn’t have asked for a better person to develop resources for adoptive and foster families than Shannon.

We encourage our readers who followed Shannon’s posts here to bookmark her new website and blog and to follow her on Facebook and Twitter, because God writes the best stories.

Shannon…Thanks for your invaluable contributions to the work of Key Ministry over the last couple of years! We’re honored to have served with you and look forward to the contributions you’ll make to the disability ministry movement for many years to come!

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Check out Shannon Dingle’s blog series on adoption, disability and the church. In the series, Shannon looked at the four different kinds of special needs in adoptive and foster families and shared five ways churches can love their adoptive and foster families. Shannon’s series is a must-read for any church considering adoption or foster care initiatives. The series is available here.