Tag Archives: Mike Woods

Missio Dei

How might the way you do special needs ministry beyond the walls of your church be affected by recapturing the sense of being sent? Continue reading

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So there’s this kid…Key Ministry’s FREE consultation service

We were of a single mind in affirming that we will offer churches relationships along with resources. Continue reading

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From outreach ideas to action in three easy steps…Mike Woods

What can you and your special needs ministry do to help people with disabilities in your community achieve their potential and experience God’s good design for their lives? No one special needs ministry (or church) can do everything . . . but each special needs ministry (or church) is called to do something.
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The secret to launching a missional special needs ministry

But BIG is not always better…or most effective for creating a missional movement into the disability community. Continue reading

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Mike Woods: So I Send You…Missional Special Needs Ministry

The first phase of a missional special needs ministry must be a willingness for us to move out—to simply make a decision to go to the people that we want to serve, wherever that might be. For most of us, what is required to engage in missional special needs ministry is to rely on the Holy Spirit to give us the desire to reach out to others, to take a risk and get involved in what God is already doing in our disability communities. Continue reading

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Special Needs Ministry: Salt Block or Salt Shaker?

The challenge is that Sunday morning success, or church-event success, can end up becoming the dominant strategy to share with others the love of Christ: a salt block approach. This is the way it is in a lot of church-based special needs ministries. We operate primarily, almost exclusively, as salt blocks. Paid staff and/or volunteers knock themselves out, week to week, trying to offer the best ministry possible to get both Christian and non-Christian to attend. And that’s a good thing. It’s a needed thing.

But…is it the only thing? Continue reading

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Thankful for the opportunity to serve…

In my day job as a physician, I have the opportunity to do work of significance. The work we get to do through Key Ministry will have eternal significance. Continue reading

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Why the decision to eliminate Asperger’s Disorder was absurd…

From a clinician’s standpoint, kids with Asperger’s are VERY different from kids with “classic” autism. Kids with Asperger’s have the intelligence and language skills to very effectively communicate their thoughts and perceptions. They also have a far greater capacity for self-awareness of their social deficits…and are far more amenable to treatment interventions to ameliorate their weaknesses in social situations. They’re so different that the vast preponderance of kids with traditional autism in our community receiving medical intervention are seen by developmental pediatricians and pediatric neurologists, not child psychiatrists. Continue reading

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Not Alone

Not Alone is a collaboration of parents of kids with special needs, writing for other parents of kids with special needs from a Christian perspective. Many parents involved in the project have become widely read authors in their own right. All have firsthand experience with the struggles involved in raising children with disabilities. They seek to provide a place where parents with similar challenges can “do life” together.
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“Thinking Orange”…A Parent’s Perspective-Mike Woods

I could list a handful of wonderful gifts that you give my children by providing a special needs ministry. Today, however, I’d like to share with you four wonderful gifts that you bless my wife Linda and I with by providing a special needs ministry to our children and by being a welcoming church: Continue reading

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