"Dealing Faithfully With Dementia"

On October 29, 2018, Rev. Dr. Suzanne McDonald, Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Western Theological Seminary, joined us for a discussion on dementia and dementia care in the light of scripture and our faith. We’re pleased to have permission to share the recording of our conversation with you below. This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kivet family, who established a memorial fund to make worship and christian education events possible at The Wyckoff Reformed Church.

Due to some technical difficulties the recording is missing the first 5 minutes of the conversation. Here is a quick summary to get you started:

Two sides of being faithful - In our discussions we want to make sure to be faithful on the one hand to God, to scripture, and to our faith. On the other hand we want to make sure we’re also being faithful to the difficult road that dementia is. We can’t minimize or dismiss the difficulty of it.

Some statistics - 5.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with dementia, but that number doesn’t include the spouses, children, and close family who are caring for them. There are over 12 million who are affected deeply by dementia in the United States, and that number is growing.