ever have to pay kids to come to your child's birthday party?

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A friend of mine shared a conversation with me recently. It began with this question to a mom whose adult child has several disabilities: "What was the hardest thing for you about his childhood?"

Her answer? "Having to pay the neighborhood kids to come to his birthday party."

I can't even type that without feeling a lump form in my throat. To her, it was vitally important that her son experience childhood rites of passage, like birthday parties in the backyard with his friends. He'll never know that his neighbor "friends" required bribes to come; he just remembers fun parties with other kids.

His mom knows what it took, though. She knows that the other kids didn't think hanging out with her son was incentive enough. She has bittersweet memories of watching other children celebrate with her son and then doling out cash afterwards.

Most folks think that special needs ministry is about the people with special needs. And it is. But it's also about the mom who would love for her child to be included with other kids.

And it's also about the other kids who get the opportunity to learn that they can love a child who seems different from them. It's about seeing those kids come to realize that they have more in common than they realized. It's about blurring the lines between "us" and "them" and just being the unified diversity that is the body of Christ.

Instead of the family with special needs having to pay the non-disabled kids to come to the party, how about this instead?
He [Jesus] said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” {Luke 14:12-14}
 Now that's more like it, don't you think?

Michael W. Smith and a star-struck teenage girl

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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}

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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

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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.