A few months ago my dad was looking around his church in Winona and thinking about his grandson with disabilities – and decided he needed to do something at his church.
If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know my affections for my dad. God made him into a truly great man in my life, and about the best grandfather that exists on the planet for a little boy with multiple disabilities. I am grateful to God for him.
He just turned 80 in January.
So, his phone call to me last night was to report on the most recent meeting of the group that is creating a disability ministry at his church, a group that he quietly started and includes pastoral leadership as well as several others from the church. He was pretty excited about it.
I am sitting here in tears, grateful that my dad isn’t wasting his life but still looking for ways to bring more people into the kingdom of Jesus.
And I think about my boy, who will never be ‘productive’ from a worldly sense. Through his grandfather’s love for him, expressed in an entirely different setting, how many people will God call into that kingdom? Outcomes that lead to an eternity with Jesus seem productive to me!
I don’t think of my dad as ‘aged.’ But this verse is really appropriate tonight from Proverbs 17:6:
Grandchildren are the crown of the aged,
and the glory of children is their fathers.
Thanks, Dad, for continuing to teach me what love and perseverance look like.
The Works of God 
i loved this post.
however, i have a question. you keep using the term “a disability ministry,” and i begin to wonder if this is different than ministering to the disabled.
we have no official disability ministry in our church. however, we have a number of disabled people to whom we minister. our church is small (about 35 members, about 70 regular attenders in a rural community), but we have some elderly who use a walker or canes, a lady with autism, a young boy with downs’ syndrome, and 4 adults who are legally blind.
we try to meet these people where they are and meet their individual needs. for example, we prayed for a braille printer, which was too expensive for the church to afford, and the Lord provided one from an unexpected source. so now we can have study materials (usually visuals for the sighted) available for the blind. someone also donated an entire braille bible to the church library.
so back to the original question, is ministering to the disabled different than having a disability ministry?
I’ve never met the Patriarch Mr. Knight, but the man makes me smile!
I really loved this post. I totally agree that eternity with Jesus is productive. What a blessing your dad is. Every time you blog about your dad, I smile. Not all of us are blessed to have families that support us or fathers that are still with us, but knowing that there are faithful dads who are still serving makes me have hope for my husband and sons who I hope will one day be like your dad. God bless 🙂