To read the Table of Contents and introduction, click the cover.

ISBN 9781506482392
eBook ISBN 9781506482408
Fortress Press ⎮ 226 pages
Publication Date: September 19, 2023

Mary McDaniel Cail calls upon extensive personal and professional experience to offer insight, context, and concrete guidance for congregations and leaders seeking to better serve the growing percentage of the population that is experiencing life with dementia. Churches have vital roles to play, Cail explains, in helping those living with the difficulties of dementia. By recognizing and supporting the full humanity of all people, congregations and leaders can help both patients and caregivers live more fulfilling lives.

Cail pairs poignant stories with practical advice for developing a holistic memory ministry. Dementia and the Church includes lesson plans, advice on programming, and many resources churches can use, in addition to pragmatic information about dementia. A gifted storyteller, Cail crafts her prose with care and intention. Readers will develop “informed compassion,” learning how to accept, pray with, relieve, and comfort all who cope with these increasingly common challenges.

Dementia & the Church Testimonials

Dementia is a complicated journey. It is one that we often fear as we anticipate it and wonder who will care for us and love us as we move into it. The church is a space of love within which Christians live out the beautiful truth that nothing can separate us from the love of God. In order to make the belief believable, we need a community who can live out that love and help us to live into it as we move on in our dementia journey. In this thoughtful, moving, and deeply practical book, Mary McDaniel Cail offers us maps, ways of thinking, and practical guides for the journey that can help us as individuals and communities to enable love, lament, and joy as we walk with one another along difficult roads. This is an important book that offers new and exciting possibilities for creating communities where everyone truly belongs.

Rev. Dr. John Swinton, professor in practical theology and pastoral care, King's College, University of Aberdeen; Fellow, British Academy and Royal Society of Edinburgh; author of sixteen books, including Dementia: Living in the Memories of God

This is a deeply helpful and much-needed book, filled with powerful stories, important information, abundant resources, pastoral wisdom, and practical steps that all of us can take. It offers both an unflinchingly realistic account of what it is like to live with dementia and a hopeful way forward for pastors, individual church members, and congregations as we seek to do better at walking alongside people with dementia and those who care for them. I will be recommending it widely in my dementia ministry with churches and using it as a textbook in my seminary course on ministering to those living with dementia.

Rev. Dr. Suzanne McDonald, professor of systematic and historical theology, Western Theological Seminary

Having been involved with ministry to dementia patients as a deacon and chaplain for over thirty years, I am so glad to have this book available. I teach pastoral care ministers and chaplains to the sick, and I wish this book had been available when I started many years ago. Dr. Mary McDaniel Cail's book is a touching and yet very practical approach to understanding dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It provides insight for those who are involved and are ministers to these wonderful and precious people. Having had my own family members go through these times in their lives, I have learned to value those who know how to minister to people in this time of their lives.

Deacon Jack Conrad, Director of Spiritual Care for LeBonheur Children’s Hospital, Board Chair of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, an ordained deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, and past president and vice president of operations for corporations including Siemens, Bristol Myers Squib, and 3M, among others

Dementia and the Church: Memory, Care, and Inclusion is a treasure chest of insight, inspiration, and guidance for churches that seek to practice "informed compassion" for people affected by dementia. With sensitivity birthed from painful personal experience and knowledge gleaned from extensive research, Dr. Cail has provided a much-needed resource for faith communities and their leaders.

Bishop Kenneth L Carder, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Professor Emeritus, Duke Divinity School, and author of Ministry with the Forgotten: Dementia through a Spiritual Lens

Mary McDaniel Cail has not only given us a glimpse and a firsthand account of dementia, but she has also presented us with a blueprint and model for what she refers to as “informed compassion.” This book gently guides the reader through the caring process for caregivers and for those who receive the care. She guides the reader through the process of creating a caring ministry, including educating the congregation and preparing leaders and volunteers to carry out this important work. She provides vocabulary, programs, and activities that work. As someone who was a caregiver for a parent and a spouse, I highly recommend this book to all congregations, pastors, deacons, and anyone else caring for someone with dementia. This book is well on its way to becoming a seminal piece of literature for caring ministries.

Deacon Dr. Cecelia Travick-Jackson, retired associate professor, California Lutheran University; Assistant to the Bishop for SeniorAdult Ministry, Southwest California Synod (ELCA); and deacon for senior ministry, Mount Cross Lutheran Church, Camarillo, California

There's no subtle way to put it: Dementia and the Church should be assigned reading for seminarians, clergy persons, pastoral care professionals, and counselors the world over. In it, Dr. Mary McDaniel Cail sheds desperately needed light on the crucible of cognitive decline and how best to care pastorally for those who live with it--which my decades in Christian ministry have shown me is many more people than we realize. This beautifully written, impressively well-researched, and deeply compassionate book is a gift to the church and all those who seek to embody the grace of God to sufferers.

David Zahl, Executive Director of Mockingbird Ministries, licensed lay preacher in the Diocese of Virginia, author of four books, most recently Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself)

Resources for Book Activities

If you purchased the book and need help finding links to materials used for activities or alternative activities for links that are no longer accessible, see below. Click the plus signs to expand each chapter.

Please believe me: I made EVERY possible effort (at the expense of my eyes and sanity) to ensure every single link worked before this book went into production and before it was cleared for printing. I’ll routinely check and correct the links below—These are the endnote links that are essential for activities or suggested as church resources. Email if you find one that doesn’t work, so I can fix it: mary@allweatherfriend.com. Email me, too, if you find a broken link in the endnotes of the book, and I will send you my link.

Chapters 5 & 6 contain skits church members can enact to show mistakes people make around people who are living with dementia. These skits don’t need to be memorized; they can be performed script-in-hand, as is demonstrated in the clip below, from “If You Could Hear Me Think” (page 103). In this scene, “Jenny”is in early stage and is struggling to keep up with a conversation. These chapters contain three skits, in which Jenny goes from early to late stage Alzheimer’s. Discussion questions follow. The actors here are from Four County Players, a non-profit theater group that delights audiences year round with consistently excellent performances.

A Book Club Alternative for Activities in Chapters 5 & 6

To convey, in a different way, similar information (being supportive and helpful to people with early, middle, and late stage Alzheimer’s and their caregivers) to small groups within the congregation, organize a book club (or clubs), perhaps over a 3-month period, using Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives, for which a discounted price can be arranged by emailing (click the link). This book takes a reader through the main symptomatic stages of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. Case studies describing each stage are followed by chapters that tell how to support a person in middle, early and late stage Alzheimer’s and how to support caregivers throughout the course of the disease.

Bookshop of Recommended Titles for a Church Library (See appendix 1, page 168.)

To purchase, click links beneath book titles. Note: Please purchase books from bookshop.org when you can—I have an affiliate link with them and they support independent bookstores.
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Will Grammy Remember Me?

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Cary Henderson

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Keeping Love Alive

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Creating Moments

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Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course

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Ministry with the Forgotten

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Reclaiming Joy

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Alz Daughter

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On Pluto

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VOICES

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Prevention Plan

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Living

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Making Loss Matter

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