Victoria - Third part of this week already. My goodness, it's just flying by. So we  are now going to talk about those personalized plans for persons living with  dementia and again, think about those interdependent community teams that we talked about. 

You're going to hear me talk about them as wraparound support teams, but  that's what I mean. So again, I've just kind of updated the language, but I still  think that the content already recorded on this is great for you to learn from. So  enjoy this as we talk about what does it look like to personalize some plans  when we're worshiping with people living with dementia. 

We are thinking about how do we worship with persons with dementia and their  families? How do we stay in community as a church? This is very important to  us. 

And I think it's very true what Barb mentioned before about a family who really  needed some support, but didn't know how to ask for it, didn't even see the need for it. And we're talking about people with dementia who used to experience a  level of independence, who used to be able to see things, say things, do things  for themselves and their lives are changing now. Their perception is changing. Their memory is changing. Their abilities are changing and it's very  unsettling. Sometimes from day to day not remembering where they are or who  they are with or what they are supposed to be doing or thinking they were  supposed to be doing one thing and realizing that that's not their job anymore. 

Things like this. And so I think it's a very key place in life where we as the  church can come around the family and say let us be the church for you. Let us  care for one another. 

And as we've already talked about, right, everyone still has something to  give. And so as we wrap around families who are now experiencing dementia,  they still have gifts to give to our community that we don't want to miss out  on. So how do we do this well with a personalized plan for families with  dementia? 

Want to talk about what we call wraparound support teams. And as I said Barb  mentioned this a little bit when she was talking about that family who needed  some respite care for their kids. Have we thought about that for the individuals  with dementia in our congregations? 

Do we have some respite care in place? Could it be that we organize a  wraparound support team as one church did? One of the very first wraparound 

support teams that we had from our organization that used to be called GLUE  teams. 

The GLUE, G-L-U-E, stood for giving, loving, understanding, and  encouraging. And these folks thought that this material and this idea was such a great idea. And then they came back to our organization saying thank you so  much. 

Now we have a plan for this couple who one of them has dementia. And now we know what to do and how to stay friends and how to make this work in our  community. And we thought really? 

Tell us more about this. How's this working for you? And so we learned that what they did is they had four different couples interacting together with this couple  who was now going through the journey of dementia. 

And so what would happen is the one with dementia would stay home with the  other guys and they would have coffee and look at pictures and think about  things together while the ladies would take his wife out and she got to go out for  coffee and spend some time with the other ladies from church for an hour or  two. And this happened every single week and that maintained a level of  relationship when otherwise life could be very isolating for this couple. Because  something about this condition isolates people. 

What it does is because everything is changing and unpredictable, going to  church gets more difficult. This couple had thought about this. And so when it  got to be that church was no longer an option for this individual to attend, well,  one of the gentlemen from the group would come and sit with this couple and do church. 

These couples would do church together. They could listen to the podcast or  they could read the scriptures together that they knew would be a part of that  week's service. And so really bringing church to the home when that was  needed, but maintaining community and continuing to have ongoing relationship to know what was happening from day to day, how that doctor's visit went, what  is currently the favorite food to eat, how do they like to celebrate things, all of  those things that we need to maintain in order to still have continuous  relationship. 

Now this team happens to be made up of couples of about the same age, but it's very true that we could engage singles who are in their college years or who  also just don't have a lot of family around and need some more relationship and 

really crave that intergenerational community. And so could we connect an  individual with dementia and their family members who might need just some  more presence in the home or someone to sit with at church? Can we connect  one another and create these wraparound support teams so that we have  individuals who are consistently there with a person on a regular basis, whether  that's once a month or twice a month or every week, and every team can be  different and set up in a way that makes sense to each of the members of the  team. 

But the idea being that we are building a support system and as John and Ryan  grew in their friendship through some intentional segments of time where they  spent time together caring for one another and they grew into friendship, that  can be very true in these support teams as well. And so it's not unusual to have  people of differing ages be a part of this. And what a joy for us to have that small group that Barb talked about with our friendship materials from that together  curriculum. 

What a great opportunity to have intergenerational worship happening,  intergenerational learning happening, and now intergenerational relationship  happening. With all of the multi-sensory options and the different ways to  engage with the materials, people of all ages and abilities can join in that  material and learn the Word of God together and find that common language of  worship and scripture. And now there is a basis for communication and  enjoyment and community all the time for each of those individuals. 

So there's so many opportunities that this brings about for our community. But I  want to talk to you about too the idea that wrapping around and supporting this  individual does not replace the caregiver in this situation. In fact, sometimes it's  the caregiver who needs the most support. 

And so we don't want to come in and suddenly rescue everyone who is in need  of care and in need of support and suddenly be bringing in all of the meals and  making sure that there's always a person 24-7 by the bedside of this person who now pretty much stays in bed all day long. I was talking to a woman at my  church the other day. I said, how is your husband? 

How are things at home? Her husband is in the final stages of dementia right  now. And she just said, you know, there are people at my house 24 hours a day. I think I just need to be alone for a minute or two. And so we sort of laughed  about that, but I thought how true is that sometimes? She's the one that just  needs a break.

She needs to be able to go out of the house and have people leave her  alone. Or could we be creative and get her husband into a different space for a  time so that she has time to go off and fold the laundry all by herself without  thinking about other things? Do we not take over the caregiving for this person,  but simply see what they need in order to be supported as a caregiver? 

Did you know that caregivers across the world have the highest percentage of  depression and suicidal thoughts of any population? They get so overwhelmed,  so tired, and often there's so much guilt. And the spiritual aspects of what is  happening in the caregiving situation just gets very difficult. 

Spouses are now seeing themselves as caregivers and managers of who used  to be their mate. And so it gets very interesting and difficult sometimes for them  to process how to ask for help. What help is needed? 

How can we as the church come alongside people, not take over for them, but  come alongside? And it's a very key thing to think about the holistic health of a  caregiver, too. There are lots of great resources out there for mental health and  thinking about our own condition as we care for someone we love. 

Whether that is a mental health condition, or a physical condition, some  resources that are out there like Grace Alliance is a wonderful online  resource. Many free resources out there, great blog posts, lots of information on  how to care for yourself, and the person who is also a part of your family that  has a chronic illness like dementia or other things that affect mood and emotion  as well as brain. Some other resources that are out there that I would encourage you to look at are things called The Heart of the Caregiver. 

It's now a full website. There are a couple of different books. I happened to do  this book study as a bible study for a 10-week course when I happened to have  a chronic illness and it encouraged and helped me such a great deal to even  work through my own need for care as well as caring for my very young children and my husband who happened to have chronic pain and had had a surgery  that took six months to recover from. 

So many pieces that it brought to light for me. So I encourage you to think about things like that. How can we create opportunities for caregivers to be growing  spiritually through the experience of being a caregiver not always in spite of it? 

So supporting caregivers can be a key piece and as always get to know the  person and ask those questions. What will help you and how can we come 

alongside you as the church? What can we do to wrap around you in the ways  that are needed? 

Because our true goal as a church is to provide hope which is why I want to  bring Barb back in to give a great story of some interaction with her father  regarding the concept of hope and that common language of scripture. 

Barb - So you probably remember that story that I told a few weeks ago that  story about my dear father when I was sitting across from him. Do you  remember and I was holding out my hands? Do you want me to say a scripture  verse or sing a song and how he chose this and chose it again? 

And it was that beautiful time when he said stop on that word hope. May the  God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may  overflow with hope. Stop. 

Hope for me. You remember that right? And I guess Tori and I now have done  this presentation on dementia enough that it really has allowed me along with  my father's great counsel that day to think about that word hope. 

How we set up our structures, how we interact with persons with dementia mean a whole lot to those that are watching to those caregivers that are part of that  individual's life. Do we because I've seen this so many times just back away  from those individuals and we don't know why they're doing what they're  doing. So we're just going to move away or do we continue to do teaching about training? 

Do we continue to show people the frame of words that's around that individual's life? Do we continue to be in relationship to treasure the gifts that that person  brings even if that gift is to allow us to walk at that three mile an hour pace. That  pace that Jesus walked. 

That pace that John Swinton highlights that as we slow as we as we face eye to  eye with somebody that opportunity to have a connection. That opportunity to  tap into the language that we share of worship. What a beautiful thing not only  that my dad could ask about hope on that day hope for me but dad hope for me  as well and hope for those who are actively right now engaged in caregiving or  being diagnosed or understanding what that is. 

Oh if we turn our face and walk away that's one message. But if we continue to  be engaged continue to use that God vision that eyesight that that we talked  about that that we see my dad and others in that situation through that frame 

and that lens. What a beautiful way that we as a community can overflow with  that hope to others that surround. 

Overflow with hope on my dad so we can talk about what that's like. That gift  coming so soon dad of heaven. That place of healing. 

That place that is no longer hope. It is a realization. Hope realized for my father. We can talk about that place together. Those are the kinds of conversations  where I think as we overflow with hope and not on our own volition but allow  God's spirit to invade our worship our time together because even the ability to  overflow with hope right is by the power of the Holy Spirit. So I hope that as we  have expressed this time and these thoughts about dementia that it has lit some excitement in you some opportunities that you might have thought no longer  existed but now could be in community with persons who are part of your  environment who might be part of your family situation. 

We are excited for you to use this information. 

Victoria - Well, you got to hear from Barb. You got to hear from me even in a  different context from the previous version of this course and now I want to show you a couple of new resources that have come out and so engaging in worship  with visuals as you've heard us say many times works again really really well  with people living with dementia and I had the privilege of participating and  collaborating in a project called the Evening Star Worship Guide and the  Dementia Institute put this resource out and it's just fabulous and they make  great use of visuals so they actually have a box full of materials that you can get as their kit to go along with it so that you have things that are for example a  representative of church and a representative of being in the place of worship so that you can establish that this is a worship space If you might be going and  doing some worship activities with a person maybe in their living their group  home or their care facility or simply in their own home because they cannot now  come to church if you are coming to church, then these kinds of tools are just  fantastic for again engaging with visual and tactile and real objects to help them  to engage more fully and if you notice in here the the worship materials even the message is very very brief in our meetings we always talked about yep this is a  great sermon, but it's got to be about half as long because a five-minute  message is about as much as you want to get because too many words will  simply get lost and so lots of visuals, few words, a nice slow pace, a steady  voice and good calm loving interaction are really going to help engage people  living with dementia in what it means to participate in worship so experts have  poured into this resource and I really think it's a great one Some other resources to find out more or that we leaned into while we were creating this resource that 

the Dementia Institute recommends are resources from an organization called  Positive Approach to Care an expert by the name of Teepa Snow who is an  absolute expert on dementia and very much has approved this Evening Star  Worship Guide book her whole approach to care is that until there's a cure there is care and she talks about these gem states of dementia which you can also  learn about right in that Evening Star Worship Guide but also on her website and in her resources and in the free book called the Dementia Care Handbook which I will put links to this in the course resources, but that's just a really helpful free  downloadable resource that you can get a hold of. We've already mentioned  John Swinton's book so there's just what those covers look like and then I've  mentioned several times but again we leaned into these resources in order to  create this worship guide that accessible gospel inclusive worship and you will  see the vertical habits sprinkled around in this worship guide as well as the  concepts from Barb's final book and a lot of the content that you will be very  familiar with from this course that worship as one varied abilities in the body of  Christ. 

So just wanted you to see that there's some really exciting things happening and that Dementia Institute continues to come out with new and innovative  resources and supports for family so do not despair if you are in a ministry  context where you feel like people living with dementia are slipping away from  your congregation or if you have a loved one now entering into that dementia  journey and you're just wondering what what you can do and how you can  continue to engage. 

So hope that we've given you some options and some ideas as well as had a  really great example of personalized planning with this very specific context. So  next week we're going to move on to some other areas to consider.



पिछ्ला सुधार: सोमवार, 4 मई 2026, 9:15 AM