Michael W. Smith and a star-struck teenage girl

/
During my junior year of high school, the Billy Graham Crusade came to town. I was copy editor for the school paper, so I managed to talk my way into a press pass. When the press conference for the first night's musicians began, the only available seats offered no clear line of sight to the front of the room (which I needed, because I was photographer as well as writer for the story!), so I crouched near the side.

When Michael W. Smith came in, I was determined to ask him a question. However, the press assistant running the conference didn't see me, squatting against the wall and balancing my camera, notebook, and pencil as I raised my hand to ask a question. As the assistant announced that no more questions would be taken, Michael W. Smith interrupted him, saying, "I'd like to take one more question from that young lady," pointing to me.

If you know me well, this will be hard to picture, but I was speechless. The question in my mind previously was forgotten. My mouth didn't work. I was humbled by this famous and godly man noticing me and breaking the rules to allow me to ask him a question ... a question I couldn't bring to mind or speech.

I did regroup, after being asked a second time, and ask the only question that came to mind: "If you only achieve one thing from the stage tonight, what would you want it to be?" (Well, let me be honest. I did consider asking if his oldest son - handsome and right around my age - was available, but I exercised restraint.)

I can't even recall his answer, though I think I included it in the article which I'm sure my momma saved. But, as I consider this instance in light of my current role as Access Ministry coordinator at our church, I think this provides a few takeaways for us:
  1. We need to intentionally look for those who are on the margins of church. It's easier to look toward those who are right in front of us rather than looking to the left or right. What I love most about John 9:1 is that Jesus saw the man who was blind; when he transforms our lives, we're more apt to notice others as well.
  2. We need to be willing to speak up when we do notice those on the margins. It's easy to divert our eyes. It's harder to do something more than that.
  3. We need to regularly ask ourselves, "If I only do one thing on Sunday morning (or any other ministry time), what would I want it to be?" Or, better yet, what would God want it to be? What is the one thing that would most clearly glorify him?
How do you intentionally notice those on the margins of your church?

And (be honest!) what musician had you star-struck as a teen?


Edited to add: Thank you to Rick Warren for sharing my post with his followers and for all who retweeted it. Please check out the other posts and resources I have here (you might find the why and how pages helpful; I'm updating them right now to include more posts since I haven't done that in a while!), and email me at shannon@theworksofgoddisplayed.com if I can offer your church any help as you welcome people with disabilities.

And I just found some pictures! I do apologize for the quality; I certainly didn't have a fancy camera in high school. The first one is of Michael W. Smith and the media guy, and the second one is MWS on stage (with me only about five or six yards away, standing on the field with the rest of the press, thankful for my interaction with a considerate man of God).


Weekly round-up {9/5/11}

/
What Does Alternative Medicine Have in Common with Biblical Counseling? This article by Ed Welch makes a valid point: if modern medicine met every physical need, alternative medicine wouldn't be as popular as it is. In the same way, biblical counseling can offer something - Jesus - that medicine cannot.

Suffering: How to Steward God's Most Feared Blessing: Suffering? A blessing? It can be.

I've written about the plights of abortion of babies with disabilities, so it shouldn't surprise you that I found this interesting: Half-Aborted, Why Do "Reductions" of Twin Pregnancies Trouble Pro-Choicers? In the past week, I've talked with one friend who has quadruplets who aren't much younger than me, another who has triplet boys who just entered middle school, and another who has twin babies - one girl who is crawling, one boy who is content to wait a bit longer. I am thankful none of those mothers reduced their pregnancies.

Randy Alcorn's review of Why O God?: Suffering and Disability in the Bible and the Church: I haven't read this yet, but it's at the top of my to-be-read-next stack! Another great review that graciously mentions this blog and our church's ministry is this one from my friend Kim, who is also the Director of Family Discipleship at our church.

In this post, a mom and children's ministry volunteer talks about how children's ministry opens doors to your church. People will come to church for the sake of their kids, even if they aren't personally interested in the church scene. For example, we've had a few different family members who had no interest in church until their kids were born and they wanted them baptized as babies, just like each of them had been. This post isn't disability ministry specific, but oh! how it applies.

Ellen at Love That Max talks here about emergency preparedness for kids with disabilities. It's good for us to be mindful that those emergencies that are stressful to us can be much more stressful for people with disabilities and their families. This gives us an opportunity to come alongside them and do life together.

Surviving a stay in the NICU: A guide for parents: This is useful for those of us who may be called to minister to these families as well.

Pasco author takes time with girl losing her sight: Scott Smiley graduated from high school in 1999 and lost his sight in an explosion in Iraq in 2005; Sofia Martinez is nine years old and will be blind in a year as her rare genetic disease progresses. They met this past Thursday.

Motherhood is Application: This isn't about special needs ministry, but (a) there are parallels and (b) I'm a mom, as are many of you. If I quoted all my favorite lines, then I would be reprinting the entire post here. Here's just one paragraph I loved; read it and then go read the rest: "The gospel is not just something to talk about Sunday morning while you are in clean clothes and the kids are looking orderly. It is not limited to quiet times and reflective moods. It is something to apply while you are in a difficult position in the back of the car trying to buckle a child up who is playing the kazoo and needs their nose wiped."

As a Dominican nun, doctor offers unique perspective on stem-cell research: She's a nun. She's also a doctor of internal medicine. And she spoke about stem-cell research at St. Philip Catholic Church in Franklin, TN, last week.

And, as usual, a list of churches committed to welcoming people with disabilities:
Finally, I enjoyed this protest sign, found here:


Fridays from the Families: Communion, the cry room, and funerals

/
This week's edition of Fridays from the Families is a little different from usual. I have found a few posts written by moms on their own blogs, and I'm sending you to each instead of having you read them here. In other words, it's a sort of Weekly Round-up for family posts.

First up, The Crying Room. This mom writes about a sweet moment in her church's cry room with her daughter CB. On the intro page to her blog, she describes CB as "16 year old, lanky blue-eyed girl with a sweet soul and good nature. She has been diagnosed with severe Autism, severe cognitive impairments, a seizure disorder, hypothyroidism, and scoliosis. She is non-verbal, receptive language at about a 8-10 month old level, needs all self-care done for her, and she is still in diapers. She has a smile that will melt your heart." And this post will melt your heart too.

In this guest post on the Autism & Alleluias blog, Take This All of You and Eat, parents share how they prepared their daughter Danielle, who has autism, to take her first communion using visual cues and communication. Then their son used the experience as the foundation for his Eagle Scout project to provide resources to other families and churches in this same situation. While the qualifications for receiving communion and the preparation for it vary from church/denomination to church/denomination, there are useful ideas (and a sweet story) for any church leader here.

And this is a great post about how to help families who have a child with autism attend a funeral. Tips include providing childcare if needed, offering tools like social stories if the child will attend any part of the services, and making meals for the family that take into account any food allergies or sensitivities.

And, finally, Gillian Marchenko is a pastor's wife and mom of four girls, including two with Down syndrome (one who also has a diagnosis of Moyamoya disease and has survived a stroke and two brain surgeries, and the other who was adopted into their family internationally through Reece's Rainbow). She is asking for input from parents of kids with special needs and mothers who have experienced a miscarriage as she prepares for some MOPS speaking engagements. If you fit those categories, please visit this post and leave a comment.

considering a different perspective

/
Two nights ago, my husband was cleaning the kitchen, I was taking a bubble bath (yes, my man serves me well!), and the kids were playing ... that is, until my son sliced two of his toes. Thankfully, we didn't have to visit the ER or urgent care, but I thought we were destined for one until the bleeding slowed.

Our master bath looked like a horror scene, and I have to say that it's a good thing I was already planning to replace the rugs in there. Robbie didn't want us to touch his foot, and we couldn't convince him in his two-year-old logic that pressure would help and that a bandage was necessary. Eventually he allowed it, but only after he asked for bandaids on his knee, ankle, and right big toe ... none of which had any cuts or booboos. As I put bandaids in places where he didn't need them, I gained his trust to put them where he did need them.

(I think there's probably a lesson there about building trust with families in need at church, but you can go ahead and draw that lesson out, because I'm taking this a different direction.)

As we cleaned him up and fixed him up, my daughter stood in the doorway of the bathroom. My husband, concerned that she would get blood on her princess costume (aren't all four-year-old girls in princess costumes at 6:00pm?), asked her to go to her room. She hesitated, and I saw something in her eyes that made me pause as well.

"Jocelyn, do you think Robbie is going to die?" I asked quietly.

She nodded slowly, her gray eyes large and brimming with tears. Bless her heart. She had never seen more than a single drop of blood before, so she drew her own conclusions.

We assured her that Robbie wasn't dying, and Lee found a clean place she could stay in the bathroom while she comforted her brother and we comforted her. But if I hadn't noticed that look in her eyes when Lee asked her to go to her room and realized the fear in her perspective, we would have sent an anxious girl to her room where she would have thought she was waiting alone for her brother to die.

Many people with disabilities aren't familiar with church because churches haven't had a great track record for  welcoming them. As such, we need to be willing to consider their perspectives. What regular activities that are common to us might seem odd to them, such as communion, baptism, or even just the cues to sit and stand at various points during the worship service? What words are mystifying, such as grace, mercy, triune, or hallelujah? What phrases could be confusing to someone who thinks more literally, as some people with disabilities do; would "invite Jesus into your heart" (which is a phrase I think we all should retire, but that's a post for a different day) or "pass the peace" make sense to them?

If you're a ministry leader or someone who has attended church for at least a few years, you may have trouble considering the perspective of someone who hasn't entered a church in years. Or maybe you know your specific church so well that you forget what aspects of it could all be strange to newcomers. For example, my church doesn't look like a church because it was once a hotel building; I'm used to that, but it is a little weird.

Ask God to open your eyes to consider what church is like from someone else's perspective. He knows their perspectives already, and his perspective is invaluable.