In So Many Words

Sunday Best is usually a collection of links to blog posts that really touched me over the past week or other online resources that I felt were important to share with others. This week, for some reason, I only bookmarked this one link (I know I read a lot of great posts, but this is what really stood out for me).

Special Needs Ministry

Podcast #1 – Your Church & Children With Special Needs – The folks at ministry-to-children.com have started a podcast and for their first one, interviewed Amy Fenton Lee from The Inclusive Church (who was recently interviewed in print here). It was great for me to put a voice to the person, and I would recommend this podcast to anyone who is involved in any way in children’s ministry.

Some Thoughts on Inclusion

I spend so much time thinking about inclusion as it relates to school. And, although I agree with his placement in the regular classroom, I feel guilty about how hard it is sometimes for him to be in that environment all day. Part of my feelings stem from the fact that he doesn’t have a lot of other socialization with peers in other environments and I don’t want school to be his only measure of what it’s like.

I mean, we do have playdates from time to time, but that can be hard to arrange given everyone’s schedules and other commitments. Sports is just not an option; we’ve tried that numerous times. He has both OT and playgroup weekly, both of which are special needs environments. At church, he greatly prefers the special needs room to the regular children’s activities, and I don’t press him because the buddies available haven’t had success in supporting him in that environment, so I would have to do it myself.

Last week, a paper came home from school about Cub Scouts and Michael expressed an interest in going. He had mentioned it late last spring, and I hadn’t followed up on it at the time, so this time I decided to look into it a little bit more. I spoke with the person in charge of our local pack and we are going to the informational meeting on Tuesday night. I am feeling quite hopeful about it, as the sense I got was that they just deal with each child individually and that this might be a good opportunity for Michael to feel that he is an equal part of something with his own contributions and achievements.

Then this weekend, we didn’t make it to church on Saturday night and I had the idea to visit a church that is very close to our house that has a large children’s ministry. We have been there several times over the last 15 years that we have lived here, but Michael had only ever been in the preschool room before.

So I took him there this morning and spoke with the leader before the service to explain our situation and apologize for not calling ahead. The 1st-5th grade is all together this month, so he suggested I just check in a few times to see how things were going. Michael did pretty well, and, even more importantly, he loved it!

It was so amazing to get in the car after the service and hear him explaining to me about how being spoiled isn’t so much about how much stuff you have, but it’s about your heart and being spoiled or blessed in your heart. (I’m not saying he wouldn’t learn awesome stuff like this at our home church, just that it’s so much harder to get him in the class to learn it.)

This has been a bit of a ramble, I know, so thanks for listening. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you find ways to include your child that work for them.

Hopefully you caught yesterday’s post with Part I of my interview with Amy Fenton Lee of The Inclusive Church Blog. If not, I would encourage you to bookmark it for later (they don’t have to be read in order).

My first three questions dealt with the definition of inclusion within special needs ministry as well as some ideas of how it would apply in different situations and how typical families can reach out to families with special needs children. While time and space here allow for some very general answers, I found Amy’s responses to be extremely thought-provoking, and you can also find lots of nuts and bolts information on her site.

My last two questions involve one that is very practical and one that touches on something that comes up far too often for families in this situation – not feeling included at all.

What are some of your favorite resources for training and educating people who want to become directly involved in this area?

I started The Inclusive Church Blog largely because of churches’ great need for resources. There are some ministries and organizations that do a good job at creating basic awareness and education on why special needs accommodation is important. But I am not aware of many books or websites providing the nuts and bolt type “how-to’s”. The Inclusive Church Blog starts on the premise that a church has awareness for and recognizes the need for special needs inclusion. The reader (who usually represents that church as either paid staff or a volunteer) comes to the site not so much for inspiration but to find ideas and best practices.

Before this endeavor, I was a certified public accountant with a Big 4 firm and then worked as a regional sales rep for a national manufacturer. Because of my background I approach the blog as a way to help a church develop and execute a business plan. In addition, my father is the senior pastor of a large southern church and has authored a book on the subject of church administration. As a result, I understand the culture and commerce of church world. I do hear and recognize the concerns of many who serve on a church staff and this is why I weave in the issues of liability and risk management to a number of blog posts.

Part of the goal of the blog is to make readers aware of conferences they can attend and other resources where they find help. There are several blog posts already up and in the works that spotlight training opportunities and products that can help churches. I do speak at a handful of children’s ministry conferences teaching seminars such as “Teaching Tools & Behavior Management Strategies for Successful Inclusion”; “Supporting the Family through the Diagnosis”, and “Getting Started & Building the Team: Best Practices”.

As for other Resources I like:

• Joni & Friends provides a number of in-print resources and training opportunities for individuals and churches interested in this topic.
• Friendship Ministries provides curriculum and in-print resources to help ministries working with individuals with special needs. While most of the material is not developed for small children, much of it can be used for older children. This organization is well respected and their products are used by a number of seasoned special needs ministries inside of many denominations.
• Local special education teachers and pediatric therapists are often the very best people to help a church start and maintain a special needs ministry. Every church doing special needs ministry (that I am aware of) has someone they call on for advisement from the fields of special education or pediatric therapy.

Finally, what would you say to a family who feels they are not welcomed or included at their church, despite their best efforts to communicate with the leadership about their situation and needs?

Grieve the disappointment, pack up your bags and try again! I have personally walked through the devastation of a situation where a children’s ministry program was not as it ought to be. While not special needs related, I have learned from my own experience that there are times we are called to move out of a certain church and ask God to guide us to the right fellowship of believers.

Through such a transition, a family can offer a surrendered heart, asking God to work in their lives even in the midst of the deep personal hurt. Praying for guidance to find the best church for the family’s spiritual nourishment and service is so important. I would also caution and advise a family to view leaving a congregation as a last resort. Recognize that God does often grow people AND churches in pain. So it may take a relational bump or bruise (and time!) to help a church move into special needs accommodation.

In the meantime, don’t give up on the corporate church! I am encouraged every day to learn of more communities of believers “called” to start special needs ministries. Keep trying…and keep in mind that the church who “failed” two years ago may now have new leadership, new volunteers AND a new calling to include children with special needs.

Thank you, Amy, for your generosity and openness in sharing your personal story as well as what you have learned in your work with special needs ministry! I am so thankful for you and the other organizations who are giving so much of themselves to minister to children and families who are dealing with special needs.

Again, please feel free to post any comments or questions for Amy or myself below. You can also visit Amy and learn more about special needs ministry at The Inclusive Church Blog.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts about special needs ministry at 5 Minutes for Special Needs. Although I haven’t written much about it since then, it is still a subject near and dear to my heart, and I know there is so much I still need to learn.

What a joy it was, then, to find out about Amy Fenton Lee, who writes an incredibly informative blog about the topic of special needs ministry at The Inclusive Church Blog. I am honored to welcome Amy as my first interview guest here at Another Piece of the Puzzle so that you can meet her as well.

For the interview, I posed Amy the top five questions on my mind regarding this topic, and she answered them all with grace and eloquence. I am posting the first three today and will follow up with the last two tomorrow.

How do you define an inclusive church for individuals with disabilities and their families? For example, does having a separate room available for children with special needs exclude a church from that category, in your opinion?

The term “inclusive” is going to mean different things for different individuals with special needs and different churches. Generally speaking, my opinion is that ideal church accommodation provides all three of the below:

1. Fully inclusive opportunities (children with special needs fully participating in typical environments);
2. A self contained classroom with its own planned lessons and activities designed to specifically meet the pace of the participating students who prefer this setting;
3. The opportunity for a child to float between the above two environments depending on abilities or needs at any given time.

Every church I interview or observe puts their own touch on the definition of special needs inclusion. Churches just starting out in special needs ministry often provide only one environment, which reflects the needs of the individuals to which the children’s ministry first responded. But as church based special needs programming evolves, you typically see more advanced ministries offering all three environments and opportunities.

While I am a huge proponent of truly inclusive environments, one of my favorite churches doing special needs ministry is Shades Mountain Baptist Church (Birmingham, AL). Their “Hand-in-Hand” program is primarily focused on a self contained classroom catering to approximately 12 children with special needs. Together, the full class attends the typical children’s worship and then retreats back to their own classroom for the Bible lesson, crafts, and music. These children and their families have developed into a tight knit community and this environment works for them.

I asked one of the mothers of a participating child how she felt having her daughter in a self-contained setting at church, as opposed to having a buddy and fully participating in the typical children’s programming. Here was the mother’s teary-eyed response:

My child with limited verbal skills now has a set of ‘best friends’ thanks to this class. She absolutely loves coming to the Hand-in-Hand class every Sunday. This IS her community. So while she may not be doing all the things her typical peers are doing, she is happy and this setting works for her.

This mother and her husband serve as leaders of an adult Sunday school class in the church. This mother explained to me that without the Hand-in-Hand class this entire family wouldn’t be such an active part of the bigger family of faith.

Similarly, another mother of a very high functioning child with special needs shared,

My son often elects not to go to his typical classroom. We give him the choice of whether or not to go to the regular Sunday school class. More often than not he selects the Hand-in-Hand room.

The Sunday I observed the Hand-in-Hand classroom, this particular boy played a part in the drama re-enacting the day’s Bible lesson. This child was incredibly social and could easily be described as a class favorite among the other students and teachers.

My point in sharing about Shades Mountain Baptist Church’s program is not to say that self contained classrooms are the answer for every child and every church. Many of the churches I feature on the blog take a more inclusive approach using buddies. But because of what I have seen at churches like Shades Mountain Baptist, I tend to let the parents and children’s ministry together define “inclusive” for their particular church.

I do want to say that if a church is making a reasonable and concerted effort to successfully accommodate a child with special needs, their attempts are worth applauding even if there is opportunity for inclusion improvement. I don’t want to discourage churches who have small resource pools (volunteers, budgets, and facilities) that if they aren’t doing special needs accommodation a certain way, then they are failing at being “inclusive”. Because churches do not have tax dollars subsidizing their children’s ministries (like a public school would), ideal situations aren’t always possible especially in the short term.

What do you find are the common needs of families who have a member with a disability in regards to their attendance and, going beyond that, their involvement at church?

Generally speaking, I see two categories of need: 1) Accommodation and adjustments in typical settings for high functioning children with special needs; 2) The provision of loving and safe care for children who are medically fragile and/or with moderate to severe profound intellectual disabilities.

For the child who has a high capacity to learn, the parents are going to care more about the quality of the interaction and spiritual development their child is experiencing while in church care. And this concern impacts the other siblings’ involvement in the church.

So, for example, if mom wants to attend Wednesday night Bible study and an older, middle school-aged sibling wants to attend the youth group, then the children’s ministry is going to need to equip the workers teaching the child with special needs. Volunteer teachers may need to be added to the room, behavior management training could be helpful, and curriculum adjustments may be required for successful inclusion that impacts the entire family.

For the parents of a child with more significant intellectual disabilities or a child who is medically fragile, the primary concerns and needs of such a family will differ somewhat. In order for this family to attend any other church activities, they have to make sure the church caregivers can prevent and respond to medical emergencies. In addition, recruiting and keeping volunteers to provide this intense one-on-one care can require ongoing church coordination.

Keep in mind that safety-minded churches have a child protection policy which prevents one adult from ever being alone with a child. So there are times a church may have to figure out a way to have 2 competent and equipped adults available to care for a single child. The mother of this child is most likely less concerned about the curriculum and the craft than she is coordinating care for her child so that she can attend Sunday morning worship, let alone Wednesday night Bible study or the Thursday morning MOPS group.

How can the entire church body be involved in reaching out to individuals with disabilities and their families? What does it take to create a culture of acceptance and spiritual growth for “all who would come”?

Just like most things, living out your faith begins at home and in regular day-to-day life. I am the mother of a child who is considered typical (I only have one child). I am not a special needs mom. But a big part of my world is about families and children with special needs. As a result, my five year old son is around children with special needs often without really knowing it. And when he does see a difference and ask, we talk about it. Sometimes we include the parents or even the child with special needs in the discussion to explain the difference.

All that is to say, that “special needs” is already a part of my young son’s world. I wouldn’t exclude a child from my son’s birthday party invitation list because he has autism. Similarly, I wouldn’t exclude a child from the 5 year old Vacation Bible School class I teach each summer at my church. So if I’m willing to invite a child with autism to a birthday party, you bet I’m willing to adjust for and accommodate a child with a spectrum disorder in a church setting.

I see neighborhood play groups and general networks of moms often not doing a good job of integrating families of special needs into their social circles. My point is that as soon as typical families active in their congregations will start engaging families of children with special needs, they may help create the bridge for church inclusion. Just like any effective ministry, God is going to call passionate believers to enter the lives of families with special needs and then to take action in their churches. Typical moms can go to their church nursery coordinator, their MOPS leader, their women’s ministry director all to begin a dialogue about how to include a family where special needs is an issue.

Unfortunately in America, the church has not been a trendsetter by including people that look different. I live in the deep South, where religion plays a big role in our culture. Yet the make-up of our congregations are still largely homogenous and do not reflect our multi-racial society. While I see the movement in churches improving towards greater special needs inclusion (and the explosive growth in my blog’s readership is evidence), acceptance is still evolving.

Probably the biggest catalyst spurring a church to start a special needs ministry happens when an influential church member or already active family births a child with special needs. Or this can happen when such a family discovers their young child has a diagnosis like autism. Many churches are being forced to develop a formal plan for inclusion as an increasing number of their existing members are being affected by special needs.

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Stay tuned for Part II of the interview tomorrow! I know there is a lot to digest here, but Amy & I both welcome your comments and questions. In the meantime, you can visit The Inclusive Church Blog to find out more about Amy and her heart for children with special needs.

For my general post at 5MFSN on Friday, I decided to spend just one more week on the topic of special needs ministry. Since I have talked mainly about my own experiences for the last two weeks, I decided to post a list of resources related to this area. I included several books and ministries that our team researched prior to starting the Friendship Station, as well as some others that I found.

Some of you may remember my series of Autism Resources posts back in April of this year, as part of the Blogger for Autism Awareness effort organized by Genevieve at Mother of Confusion (currently a mother-to-be of more confusion!). I finally updated all the links on the table of contents for those posts and put them up as a separate page on this blog, so you can see the entire list under the Resources page.

As a follow to last week’s post at 5MFSN about our experience with church attendance in the last few years, I am sharing today about how our special needs ministry has gotten started and what we are doing to welcome the children with special needs, and their families, to our church. Please visit me there to find out more!

Just a quick note this morning to let you know that I am over at 5 Minutes for Special Needs today talking about our church experience since Michael’s autism diagnosis.

Okay, back to getting him ready for the school Halloween parade and party followed by a sleepover at his best friend’s house. Have a lovely day, everyone!

June marks not only the beginning of summer for our family this year, but also some big changes in regards to our ministry commitments.

For the past couple of years, we have been attending one of our church’s small groups (recently renamed Life Groups). This particular group met once a month and was based on the topic of parenting. As the leaders had decided it was time for them to step down, we finished up the discussion on the book we had been reading in May and had our final official gathering last weekend.

We had a great time eating and spending time together, and the kids (big and little) especially enjoyed the inflatable water slide they set up! The Little Guy is often pretty nervous about water on his face, but he jumped right in there and had a wonderful time climbing and sliding down with the other kids.

Although the hubby is continuing his involvement with another ministry on a weekly basis, he is no longer going to be helping with children’s worship. He had been volunteering in that area for the past several months as they got it up and running again and now will return to occasional events such as Preschool VBS this summer.

As he is ending his regular involvement with the kids, I will actually be moving in that direction! I had worked in the toddler nursery for several years but stopped soon after the Little Guy’s autism diagnosis coupled with his entry into preschool. As he needed extra help to handle the more structured classes, I began spending 2-3 Sundays per month as his “buddy” and was barely getting into services myself.

Well, now that he is doing very well without me (due in part to the education that has taken place with the teachers and helpers in his classroom) and will be moving into the kindergarten room in the fall, I am re-entering children’s ministry. But this time I will be helping in our new classroom for special needs kids. The Friendship Station, as it is called, is for preschool or elementary age children with disabilities whose parents do not feel comfortable leaving them in their regular class. The coordinator will also be working with the regular teachers to actively support the kids who are in the regular classes, such as my Little Guy.

Our main goals are to minister to the children, of course, and also to help parents and families who may not otherwise attend to feel that they can come and be involved in the worship service while their child is well taken care of. For children who are in regular classes, the parents can also choose to allow the coordinator to bring them to the Friendship Station if they are not having a good day rather than immediately calling the parent out of service. I am so excited to be a part of this ministry and help other parents not to struggle in the same way that I did with church attendance.

So lots of changes coming up this month – stay tuned for even more exciting things!