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Friendship Ministries are Monday nights at 7p.m.
Faith. We believe that faith is a gift from God that does not depend on any level of human intelligence.
Friendships. Our program model encourages the development of one-on-one, personal, and meaningful relationships: true friendships.
Belonging. We long for the day when people of all abilities are fully accepted—and expected—in the Body of Christ.
Our Vision is people with and without intellectual disability growing deeper in their relationship with God and with each other in community together.
Our Mission is to provide resources that support faith formation and congregational inclusion with individuals with intellectual disability.
Theme One: Equality
Core Truth: All humans are created in the image of God. They are created uniquely, equally suited for God’s particular purposes, and enabled by grace to enjoy redemption, worship, and a lifetime of service. Barriers that impede this primary equality are unjust.
Theme Two: Interdependence
Core Truth: All persons have qualities that enable them to serve each other. We do that best in community as partners, imaging God corporately, webbed together with God and each other to renew the world.
Theme Three: Compassion
Core Truth: The church is a worldwide, interdependent community in which we experience mutual compassion in the sharing of joys and burdens, giving in our receiving, and receiving in our giving.
Theme Four: Hospitality
Core Truth: Instead of trying to make others be like us, assimilating them and eradicating their differences, hospitality welcomes and capitalizes on “different-ness.” It overcomes fear of the stranger and instead celebrates communion in the midst of difference.
Implications for the Body of Believers:
To learn more about the Friendship Ministry, Visit their website at: http://www.friendship.org/
Friendships. Our program model encourages the development of one-on-one, personal, and meaningful relationships: true friendships.
Belonging. We long for the day when people of all abilities are fully accepted—and expected—in the Body of Christ.
Our Vision is people with and without intellectual disability growing deeper in their relationship with God and with each other in community together.
Our Mission is to provide resources that support faith formation and congregational inclusion with individuals with intellectual disability.
Theme One: Equality
Core Truth: All humans are created in the image of God. They are created uniquely, equally suited for God’s particular purposes, and enabled by grace to enjoy redemption, worship, and a lifetime of service. Barriers that impede this primary equality are unjust.
Theme Two: Interdependence
Core Truth: All persons have qualities that enable them to serve each other. We do that best in community as partners, imaging God corporately, webbed together with God and each other to renew the world.
Theme Three: Compassion
Core Truth: The church is a worldwide, interdependent community in which we experience mutual compassion in the sharing of joys and burdens, giving in our receiving, and receiving in our giving.
Theme Four: Hospitality
Core Truth: Instead of trying to make others be like us, assimilating them and eradicating their differences, hospitality welcomes and capitalizes on “different-ness.” It overcomes fear of the stranger and instead celebrates communion in the midst of difference.
Implications for the Body of Believers:
- We must make the gifts of all people visible so that we may participate mutually in our interdependent family.
- We must nurture the spiritual, social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of all persons so we can be faithful stewards of the gifts given by God and may respond gratefully to his love.
- We must remove any barriers – be they in attitude, architecture, or means of communication – that get in the way of the gospel or impede the participation of people with mental impairments in the life of the church. God’s family must in its structures (e.g., congregations, household groups, service committees) seek and model justice and inclusiveness.
To learn more about the Friendship Ministry, Visit their website at: http://www.friendship.org/