Including kids with disability in youth ministry: An opportunity or an inconvenience?

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This was originally published in the Inquest Ministries, Inc. newsletter and on their blog. It was written for an audience primarily of youth ministry leaders, many of whom are not currently involved in special needs ministry.


Do you have teens with special needs in your ministry?

Odds are yes, given that 6.6 million children and youth have disabilities, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education. Of those, 2.6 million have learning disabilities. More than 800,000 have autism or intellectual disabilities (previously referred to as “mental retardation”).[1] Seven percent of children ages 3-17 have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD (including 11% of boys and 4% of girls).[2] And in 2011, one in 110 eight-year-olds had an autism spectrum disorder (1 in 70 for boys, 1 in 315 for girls)[3], and while the incidence has increased since then, I think the 2011 stats are most helpful for a youth ministry perspective because those were the rates for eight year olds then which means they are the rates, roughly, for the 11 year old kids in student ministries now.

Those certainly don’t include all the possible special needs a student could have, but it’s a start. This is the reality in which we do ministry. (And, if your ministry doesn’t include any students with special needs, then please let these statistics open your eyes to the mission field that exists within your community!)

So what can you do? Is this an opportunity or an inconvenience?

Well, let’s consider the benefits you and your ministry can gain from welcoming students with special needs. You’ll get to…

1) Partner with parents more effectively. In student ministry, we ought to be partnering with every parent, but it shifts from “ought to be partnering” to “must partner” with the parents of students with special needs. If a student has a disability, it is harder for parents to drop off the child and then bolt. They’ll probably want to talk to you. And that’s a very good thing!

2) Practice confidentiality. Most students don’t want to be different from everyone else, or if they do, they want to define the difference. A streak of color in their hair? Good different. A seat in special education? Not the sort of different they usually want shared with their friends.

3) Learn humility. I have my master’s degree in special education, but that doesn’t give me the advantage in special needs ministry that you might expect. I learn from each of our students with special needs and their families, because they can teach me far more about their disabilities and challenges than any textbook or website ever could. Realizing you don’t know it all and having to learn from others? That’s an opportunity to develop humility.

4) Adjust your teaching to benefit all students. Common modifications for students with special needs include limiting distractions, adding multi-sensory elements (visuals, audio, movement, touch), and breaking content into chunks and reviewing after each one. Every time I’ve made accommodations for students with disabilities, they have also helped non-disabled students. Seriously, what middle school boy wouldn’t benefit from fewer distractions?

5) Include all parts of the body of Christ. Ministering to and with students with disabilities shows that, in the words of 1 Corinthians 12:24-25, “God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” It’s our sin that bestows honor on some while rejecting others; it’s God who can bring unity where we – both in the church and outside of it – have created division.

And the number one benefit? Welcoming individuals with disabilities into our student ministries and every other aspect of the church is about the gospel. It's about the truth that our faith isn't accomplished by our own abilities or disabilities but by the sovereign will of God, purchased by the sacrifice of Christ and sealed by the Spirit. When we share that gospel with all students, including those with disabilities, it changes us and it changes them. It can change a generation.

Is it always easy to include students with special needs in your ministry? No. Is it an unequivocal display of the works of God (John 9:3; Psalm 78:7) and the value of all life? Yes.

It’s an opportunity, not an inconvenience.

Excluding people with special needs is one symptom of a much larger problem

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{This post originally appeared on this blog in May 2011.}


Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
{Hebrews 12:1-3, ESV}

One thing has struck me recently: The failure of the church to include people with disabilities isn't the problem. It's a symptom of a larger problem.

The problem is not that we don't love people with disabilities.

The problem is that we don't love Jesus. 

If we truly loved Him, then we wouldn't be relying on our own love to welcome people with disabilities and others who we often marginalize. Our hearts would be so fixated on Jesus that His love would overflow from us, spilling over to everyone else we encounter.

We wouldn't need Autism Awareness Month, because we would love people with autism enough to want to be aware of what life is like for them. We would love them enough to do life with them and run the race with them, aware of their realities.

We wouldn't need Mother's Day, because we would show His love to our mothers every day, as well as to the women for whom Mother's Day can be difficult. We would love them enough to know them and to want to serve them.

What is hindering you from loving Jesus fully and letting His love overflow in your life? Whatever it is, it's sin. Even if it's something good, if you let it keep you from loving God, then it has become a hindrance that is entangling you.

Examine your heart, and repent. 

And love Him.

"Jocelyn, do you think Robbie is going to die?": on considering a different perspective

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This post original appeared on this blog in September 2011, back when I had two children instead of our current six and back when my oldest was just four years old. While she's seven now, you can still find her in a princess costume at 6:00 some nights.


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.

watch out: adopting a child with special needs might impact your other children.

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Like our firstborn, who wrote the sermon notes below yesterday, out of concern for one sister who was home sick with me and another sister who was in the nursery. Patu has asthma, we discovered yesterday, and Zoe has cerebral palsy, which we knew about before we ever saw her face.

About the one originally from Uganda and the other born in Taiwan, our all-America from-my-womb girl wrote:


In case you didn't catch all of that,
"God and Jesus Christ, can you heal my sister Patricia (who was home sick yesterday) and help my sister Zoe walk, talk, and use her right hand because of the boo boos on her brain."
And a month or two ago, this hung in the lobby of the school, as our girl's award winning essay in response to the prompt, "If I had $100, I would..."


Yes, I'd say our adoptions have impacted our first born girl, wouldn't you say?

The Power of One {a guest post by Bill Gaventa}

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This post was originally published on this blog in February 2012. Bill Gaventa, M.Div. offered these words as a guest post, drawing from his experience as a leader in the inclusion of people with disabilities in faith communities and an Associate Professor in Pediatrics and the coordinator of Community and Congregational Supports for The Elizabeth M. Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. I'm thankful that he allowed me to share his words in this guest post.
Over the years of my ministry, I have heard stories of people with disabilities and/or their families being unable to find a welcoming congregation. That also has included staff working in group homes or providing other forms of support to help assist adults in taking part in community and congregational life.

But early in November, 2010, at a Saturday conference sponsored by the Lancaster Christian Council on Disability, I heard two parents, now fully included in congregations, tell their stories of being asked to leave previous congregations because of their child. One was a parent of a son with a mental illness; the other’s daughter is on the Autism Spectrum.

The first family had been asked to leave 7 congregations, the latter, 13. I was stunned.

A congregation may not feel that it is equipped to deal with a child with intense behavioral issues or may think, this is just one family. But it is not just one person or family. When a child is asked to leave, the family does as well, and word ripples about that congregation to other relatives, extended families, other families of children with disabilities. When an adult is not welcomed or asked to leave, word also ripples, not just to families but to young staff in those agencies who may be struggling with their own faith, and end up being further disillusioned.

It is evangelism in reverse, sending people of all kinds into the ranks of what some Christians call the “unchurched.”

The opposite is also true.

When a congregation welcomes a child, their family, or an adult with support staff (many of whom may not have ever been in a church like yours) and really helps them feel included, it not only is good for those individuals and your church, but it is also a witness. The word gets out. Through family networks, to others in a support agency, and to extended family. That is why some congregations are now citing their development of inclusive ministries as the primary reason for their church growth, because intentional and radical welcome and inclusion often extends to many others as well.

If there are issues or problems, then simply deal with them. First, ask the family or staff what they need, and how you can best support them and their child or person they are accompanying. Find congregational members who may be professionals to help figure out the supports needed. Connect with school teachers or agency staff to help you. Figure out ways to address behavioral or other issues that give the individual a chance to learn your rituals and routines.

After all, those individuals and families are not the only individuals or families that may have posed challenges for a congregation. If we asked everyone who posed a challenge at some point in their life to leave, our sanctuaries would be empty and our light dark. The amazing fact about the two families in Lancaster was the faith of the individuals and families who kept searching and hoping, in spite of the lack of faith and love demonstrated by the rejecting congregations.

Start with the one.

If you have 99 in a congregation to help you figure it out, then the shepherd has lots of help, and your congregation has the possibility of a journey that will benefit everyone.