How can the church better embrace individuals and families with special needs? - Podcast Episode 61

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00:25

Hello and welcome to the Got Questions podcast, your questions, biblical answers. My name is

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Jeff. I'm the administrator of the BibleRef .com website, and today we're going to be talking about a topic that has become much more interesting to me lately, partly because I've had my eyes opened to a way in which the church interacts with a particular group of people.

00:48

And it's something that we don't often think about as Christians, but it is something that's important. And what I'm talking about is something that we refer to as the special needs community.

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Now that phrase has a lot of variation. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

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And it's also a sensitive subject. A lot of families have members who they would consider special needs, and that can involve a lot of different things.

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That can be anything from Down syndrome to autism, social issues, or things that people have maybe never even really heard of or thought about before.

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And what we're doing today is we're going to talk about exactly how we can discuss some of those.

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And especially we want to talk about how can the church be a more inclusive and welcoming and friendly place to families who are looking at special needs.

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We often talk about diversity, but usually when we think of diversity as Christians, we're thinking about things like race or economics.

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But ability and disability also comes into that. So the person that I asked to come on to talk to us about this today is a friend of mine named

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Linda Garber. And without getting too far into the details, I'm going to let

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Linda sort of introduce herself and explain sort of how she comes to her perspective on the special needs community.

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So Linda, welcome to the podcast today. Thank you, Jeff. It's nice to be here. Absolutely.

02:12

I'm glad you were able to join us today. What I'd like to do is to start with having you give us an explanation of your journey of how you came to know and understand the special needs community and how that connection brought you to connecting that to things like the church environment.

02:29

Great. Yeah. Jeff, just to go back some 60 years, I was the sister of a brother who had

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Down syndrome. And at that time, this was the early 60s, my parents would have been advised, like most people back then, that this was not a situation that they were prepared to handle.

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So it probably would be best to place him in some kind of an institution or another setting outside the home.

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My parents were not of that understanding. They felt that he was a gift from God.

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And in that, he was a member of our family, just like I was a member of the family.

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And we were going to work through this together. And that's just what we did. His name was Jimmy. And the

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Lord used Jimmy in my life for many purposes. But for one, he got me into the field of special education.

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So the Lord used him to place that desire in my heart. So I became a special education teacher, case manager, and did that at the public school level for 30 years.

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Coming alongside that, I actually happened to marry then someone who became a pastor.

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And so I brought that special need, understanding, and sense of community to the church where we would then serve at.

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So that's kind of, in a nutshell, how I, my, let me see how

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I can word this, just my experiences with special education, I guess is what I'm saying. Right. Now, I, sort of to give people a little bit of a behind -the -curtain idea, when you and I had talked about doing this podcast,

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I remember you were a little hesitant because part of what you were thinking was, I'm not sure if I have exactly the kind of expertise that people are looking for.

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But I think what you've explained is something that's valuable. You've had personal family experience with the special needs community.

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You've also had professional and educational experience with that. And you've had the insight into what it means to really be involved with a church family.

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Now, one of the other things that we had talked about before was you said that there was a time when you got to see how a pastor in your early life interacted with your family and your brother.

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Can you talk a little bit about that, too? Sure, sure. Yeah. Growing up, we went to church and my family felt that because Jimmy, like I said, was a part of our family, he was going to do what we did.

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And so he went to church with us on Sundays. And the Lord really blessed us in that the pastor who was at the church took a real interest in Jimmy, not just because he has special needs, but he took an interest in him because he was a person from his church and he wanted him to know the saving grace of Jesus.

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And so going about it, maybe in a little different way than you would with most people, he would actually invite my brother in.

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He would meet with them. They talked about God on a very simplistic level, a level that Jimmy could understand.

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He pulled out some scriptures that he thought Jimmy would be able to memorize that would be pertinent to his salvation.

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And he worked with Jimmy a lot. And Jimmy did, as much as we can say that he understood, he understood what salvation was and what

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Christ had done for him. And he prayed to receive Christ. So he and that pastor had a very special relationship.

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He, over time, would then go in on Sunday mornings and pray for the pastor before the pastor would come out to do the service.

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And many times that pastor would even let Jimmy come up and pray at the end of services. So he was very included in his church and in his church family.

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I like that you use the word included. I know in the conversations that you and I have had, and I've seen this echoed in conversations

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I've had with other members of the Christian community, that that idea of inclusion is a big deal.

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That's something that seems to be a theme that runs through how we deal with the special needs community.

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I know a lot of parents in particular, or family members, they struggle with feeling like they're fully embraced and accepted in the church.

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And there's a big difference between being included and being tolerated.

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I know that you and I, when we were discussing this, we were talking about the difference between acceptance and accommodation and how those different ideas work.

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I know that when you had experiences at the church that you and I met at, that was one of the things that you were able to work with.

07:22

What's your perspective on that idea of the need for Christians to exert that sort of welcoming, accepting, embracing attitude that goes beyond just putting up with a special needs family and really goes to serving and loving and embracing them?

07:40

Yeah, I think one of the things today that we see is there are certain special needs that are very obvious.

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If there's a physical, if someone's coming in on a wheelchair, how do we treat them?

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Doors for them. We sit them in a certain location so that they can see better, have a hearing.

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I think what we have to get attuned to is people that have maybe cognitive delays or autism or things like that.

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They have the same need to be included. We just don't necessarily look at it the same way because they can be very maybe loud or be distracting to people or people are a little bit more,

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I think, apprehensive to engage them because it's on a different level than perhaps somebody that has a physical disability.

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So I think being a church that includes everyone is really going back to the basic idea that we're all different.

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We all come with different needs and gifts and abilities.

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And so, you know, we can't all be arms. We can't all be legs. Same idea.

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So how do we incorporate the person with special needs in a way that takes into account their abilities, their needs, their, you know, and what do they bring to the table?

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Because they do bring things to the table. I could share multiple stories about the life lessons that my brother taught me and not always with his words of wisdom because those weren't there necessarily, but the way he loved people and the way he was accepting of people and his honesty.

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So I think we need to just be aware of not cutting those people short and thinking they don't have anything to offer or provide.

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And so we don't need to, OK, they're here, but we can kind of set them off to the side maybe.

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And that I think where inclusion comes in. We want them to feel accepted and loved and included, just like anyone that would come in our church from off the street would feel.

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And I like that when when we've talked about this, you've emphasized a lot the idea that inclusion for anybody.

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I mean, this applies across the board, but in the context of today, we're talking about special needs community. That inclusion means something more than just having some physical spot that we will tolerate that person being in.

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It also involves wanting to make that person feel like they're fully engaged. And I know you and I have talked about this on two different levels.

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One level is the special needs individual themselves, that that person themselves needs to have a feeling like they have belonging, they have purpose, they have meaning in what's happening in the community.

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And there's also the side of the family and the parents, because having a special needs experience is not just different and difficult for the person who's experiencing that.

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It is also different and difficult for their family members and especially for parents of those who are dealing with those things.

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You had talked to me about the way that you helped to set up and trigger basically a ministry, very organic sense at the home church that you and I met at.

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I think people would benefit from hearing how that sort of started and how you guys saw a need and let that develop.

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Sure. Being from a family with a special needs individual and then speaking with families with special needs individuals.

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One of the things that I felt were barriers were that for them to be able to come to church and worship as a family was sometimes a barrier.

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And it wasn't always from people in the church. It was sometimes a perception from the family.

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They didn't want to come with their special needs individual because they didn't want to bother anybody, didn't want to be a distraction or a disruption.

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And so from that perspective, when we had a family come to our church who had two special needs children.

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My thought was, how can we come alongside them, not just as a church community and accept them, but to help them feel like they're not a distraction, they're not going to be a bother, so to speak, to anyone here.

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So we kind of came up with the idea of a buddy system. And for these individuals, we just sought people in our congregation who might have a heart to come alongside these children and be buddies to them so that their parents could worship and they could, when the kids were dismissed, they could go to class with the kids.

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They could be a part of the typical child experience at the church.

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And so we had a great outpouring when we sought people out. We had some people who were nurses, some people who were physical therapists.

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We had a doctor. We had occupational therapists. We had some former special ed teachers. There's a whole community of people in most churches today that already have a real interest in that, helping those kinds of children and would be set and ready to go.

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So if you're involved in a church that has some individuals with special needs, you've already probably got some people that you don't even know about that are sitting out there in the pews just waiting to serve in that area.

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But that's what we did. So we got some people. They came alongside and they served as buddies. Over time, word gets out and more individuals, more families that have children with special needs came because they felt, well, this is a place where I can come and I don't have to feel like I'm being a bother.

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Right. Not only that, but my children are actually engaged in learning something at whatever level that might be to them.

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Yeah. Typical aged peers, they're learning, you know, lessons from the

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Bible. They're involved in praise and worship, which most of them absolutely love. So we started to think,

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OK, so now we don't necessarily have enough buddies on a Sunday because that involves a lot of people.

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Right. What if we developed a sensory room or a place that we could gather them all together and then according to their need, take them out and put them in classes or keep them in the room or do whatever?

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And so it kind of morphed into something a little bit bigger and a little bit more structured and organized.

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Right. I remember when we first started going to the church that you and I met at, that was one of the things that we noticed was sort of a prominent aspect of the way the church operated.

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There was a very natural feel that, you know, we have a room for nursing mothers to go to.

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There's a nursery that people take the infants during their service. We have a sensory room where people with special needs can have a place that they can be.

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It was none of that was considered something out of the ordinary or strange. It was just part of the normal course of business.

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And people that I've talked to have said that that's very helpful in what we were discussing about acceptance, that parents, that family members don't feel like this is some kind of a excessive burden or a bother to the church.

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They're not sneaking in the back door and feeling guilty because they're trying to engage in it.

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They feel like they're really involved and they're really part of the accepted community. Another neat idea that you had discussed that unfortunately, because of COVID restrictions,

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I know that our church hasn't done too many times very recently, but you guys also came up with the idea of having a designated service for the special needs community.

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And I wouldn't feel good about doing a podcast like this without at least giving you a second to explain what that was like and how that worked at the church.

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Sure. Yes. What we felt was there was still as the children got older and it maybe wasn't as appropriate for them to go in with their typical aged peers because they still could have benefited from hearing

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Bible lessons in those types of things. Those their age peer group had then moved on to youth group.

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And so there wasn't necessarily something for them on Sunday mornings. So we decided that it might not be a bad idea to just have a totally different service once a month or once every couple of months where the families could come as an entire family unit and they could sit through an entire service together as a family.

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Because again, when we're constantly taking those with special needs out of the service so that they're not bothering or distracting anyone, they're still not really able to worship as a family unit.

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So we decided to put together a service. And basically what the service was, you came as a family unit or maybe it was caregivers bringing those with special needs.

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We had a lot of different people coming on a lot of different levels throughout the course of that service.

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But it was a time to come where we would do, again, praise and worship. We would pray. There'd be a short message.

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But for anybody there that needed to get up and walk around the service during the service or fine, get up and walk around the service.

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It was not because everybody there using a kind of a flippant term was in the same boat.

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Right. So it was like, OK, if your child or your adult, you know, person with special needs that you brought, if they need to get up and they're going to need to jump for a few minutes, get up and jump.

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We're all fine with that. That didn't distract us because we were there basically to just have a worship experience as a family.

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So we, again, called on our church family and said, hey, we're going to do this. We might need some help at the doors because we don't want people like children leaving the service.

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So we had initially people at doors that had bubbles and we had a table set up with activities at a table in the back.

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And so we were trying to be as accommodating to everyone's needs, but still keeping them together as a family unit.

18:55

Right. Right. I really like the idea of that. Now, the other thing that I wanted to do as we're having this conversation, hopefully people can see that there's a very natural sense in which these things can happen.

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We don't have to be artificial about the way we include the special needs community in the church.

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The church that Linda and I met at is absolutely by no means a mega church. This is not a gigantic congregation with huge resources.

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And like you were saying, there are people already in most congregations who have a heart for this and they have some experience in this and they have some of the skills that are required.

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One of the things I wanted to do with the time that we have left is to speak to church members, church leaders about the different aspects that come into how do we make the church more accepting, inclusive, the practical sort of the things.

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One of the things I wanted to start with was you talked about the idea of having people be around others and that being important.

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One of the things in my life that I think was important for me was having some level of experience with persons with physical disabilities.

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I had very close family members who had very obvious physical disabilities. And because I just was raised with that, that has never been something that I felt especially awkward about.

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I don't feel the sense of apprehension when

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I'm speaking to somebody who's in a wheelchair or who is missing a limb or something like that.

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And part of that, though, is because I've also had experience with knowing the things that you don't do and the things that you don't say and the ways that you do not interact.

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And I know that's one of the things that's awkward for people is they're not necessarily sure how to approach.

20:44

What would your suggestion be for somebody who says, OK, I know that we have some family members or a family in our church who we would identify as special needs.

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I would like to talk to them. I would like to interact. I would like to welcome them and show them that kind of love.

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But I don't want to come across as patronizing. I don't want to be offensive. What sort of suggestions from your personal and professional experience would you give to somebody who's looking for that right balance?

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How do they go about getting involved without coming across like they're insensitive? I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about people's experiences, because we all bring different levels of experience.

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But I think for most people, if they would just remember that.

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How would you treat anybody that you were going to meet for the first time? That's really.

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The best way, the simplest way to go about this, if you would walk past people on a

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Sunday morning and let's just say you looked at them and you thought, oh, they're wearing something very odd today, you wouldn't stop and turn to the person next to you and like look at them and turn and you just that's just bad manners.

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I guess the special needs families and individuals would not want to be treated that same way.

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They don't want to be as being odd or different. So you walk by, you smile and you now if your personality is such that you want to go over and talk because you feel comfortable, by all means do that.

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If that's not your personality and you wouldn't do it with anybody necessarily, you don't feel like you have to do that.

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But I guess I guess what I'm saying is just being kind. And in our society today, that's a that's a real buzz term.

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Just be if you're going to be anything, be kind. Right. I guess we could use the same terminology here.

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If you're going to be anything, just be kind, you know, go by, smile. And if you want to engage in a conversation, by all means, engage.

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If you are going to engage, you don't want to go up and go, what's wrong with them? Right. You be sensitive.

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Like I said, treat them like you'd treat anybody else. And just I think as God's people, for me, like I said initially, just seeing every individual as a gift from the

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Lord, every individual being made in the image of God gives you a really basic perspective on how to treat other people, regardless of whether they're what we call typical or normal or whether they have some type of a special need.

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They deserve the same love and respect and treatment that we would give to anybody that we would meet in the hallways as we pass in church or, you know, and and for our church communities, we want to be loving to anybody that comes in to our buildings.

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We want to be accepting of anyone because isn't that what Jesus was? He was loving, accepting.

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And we as his disciples are supposed to do the same thing. And so really maybe just more of a lesson in our society today of how we need to treat anybody who walks in our in our doors.

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Yeah, I think that's that's well said. I know that one of the things that we often struggle with is wanting to be accepting and not knowing exactly the right way how

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I like that you focused on the idea of try to follow the same personality that you would use with other persons.

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Don't feel like you have to go engage in conversation if if that's not something that you would normally do.

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I've also heard it said that one of the things that you can do sometimes is embrace the awkward.

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You know, you just accept the fact that you're right. I have not had a conversation with a family who's has a member in their family who has this particular struggle.

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And I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I do want to go say hello. I'm going to go over and say hello.

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And I'm I'm just going to understand that it may take me a moment or two to to feel out exactly the right ways to speak.

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And I think you would agree from having experience that most families who have members with special needs are relatively understanding of that.

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They understand that other people don't fully grasp and that if they're not expecting a person to walk over right away and know, for example, the person that you're trying to talk to really only answers yes or no questions or they don't really understand what you're saying or anything else like that.

25:38

It's OK to just give yourself the grace to know I'm not going to be perfect at this, but as long as I'm being careful and I'm being loving about it, then it really is possible.

25:52

That's a great point, Jeff. That's exactly right. And I think just the fact that you are welcoming to them, you know, we're glad you're here because for so many special needs families,

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I can tell you it was a real chore for them to get there that day. Yeah, there's a whole lot of prep and a whole lot of stuff that had to go on for them to actually get out the door, get in a car and get there.

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And so the fact that they they put enough value in wanting to be with God's people and worship, you know,

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I think just letting them know, boy, we're glad you're here. And, you know, just that kind of thing goes a long, long way.

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I think to sum up, I think what we're looking at getting churches and church members to understand is that the special needs community, as diverse as it is, that diversity itself is a reason that we need to be ready to be accepting, willing to cooperate, welcoming with families who have different needs.

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And we need to understand as believers that those needs are very much outside the control of those families, but they're still a burden.

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That's something that to that family has made church and church life difficult.

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And we don't want to be people who add to that burden. We want people to feel like there's a place for them that does not have to happen through some sort of forced or artificial system.

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I like that in the conversation we've had today, we've been able to see how a lot of these things can just grow naturally.

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It's you start with a single step, one family, one thing that they need. Do what you can to meet that need.

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And then you start to see how, hey, you know, we could apply this same thing here. And then it just takes on a life of its own and becomes a ministry in and of itself.

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So I think I would like to make sure we're encouraging church leaders, especially not to think that they need to sit down and spend hours coming up with some sort of detailed battle plan for how they're going to immediately solve this concern.

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It's just something where you can find the people who have the heart, have the interest, pick something that you can do and do it.

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The last thing I would like to do with the time we have left is to give you a second just to expound a little bit on something that we had talked about that resonated with me is there's a tendency sometimes in churches for us to look at people who have a particular need.

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Sometimes it's addiction, sometimes it's special needs, sometimes it's something else. And we tell that person, I know exactly where you can get what you're looking for.

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And it's over there. It's at that other church, that other place.

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And you and I discussed how that's a mindset that we really want to avoid. I'd like to hear just a little bit of your thoughts on that before we wrap up today.

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Yeah. Again, I think it goes back to the fact that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of us.

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And he has a place where he wants us to to fulfill that plan and purpose.

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And so for us to take on the fact that, sure, if you're a bigger church, you're going to probably be able to provide all these big, elaborate programs.

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Right. God has you at a church and you feel that's where he's called you to be.

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And those people with special needs feel the same way, then that's where they need to be.

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And to tell them, no, no, no, no, no. You would do much better. You would be served much better over at that other place where God's telling them, no, you're right where I want you to be.

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And, you know, God might have them there to grow the individuals at the church.

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I mean, there's many plans and purposes that the Lord has for this, but I think what

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I would hope that people would gather from our conversation is that God will prepare you.

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He will bring people forward to help with this. If they are there, it's kind of like if you build it, they will come.

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Right. If you're willing and you're saying, Lord, we're going to meet the needs, we're going to love on whoever you bring here, then there's no need to tell anybody to go any place else that they're there for a purpose and God's plan.

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And it might be in their lives. It might be in your life to step forward and to help.

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So I would say we need to be ready to just love on whoever.

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You know, comes in our doors and not see the special needs community as being any different from, like you said, possibly an addict, a homeless person.

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It really doesn't matter, you know, or the person that comes in looking like they have it all together and they really don't.

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Right. All kind of people that walk through the doors. And so our attitude has to be the same in that we just need to meet them where they're at, love them where they're at, serve them where they're at, and then take them where they can then turn around and they can give back what they bring to the table.

31:13

And then that's really what the body of Christ is all about. So well said. I appreciate that.

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I'm glad that we've had the opportunity to talk about this. This is this is definitely an issue that nobody's going to fully understand in just a few minutes.

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I'm very transparent about the idea that I'm trying to make sure that I'm navigating this in the right way, learning about it.

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And I appreciate that we've had a chance to focus on the idea of experiences that different people have, different experiences, and it's good for us to focus on those things.

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So as a recap, we've been talking today about the idea of the special needs community in church.

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We're looking to make sure that people understand that there's going to be a little awkwardness and that's okay as long as what we're doing is we're acting in love and service.

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We're not pawning off our responsibilities as believers on other churches or other people, but we're recognizing that this is a real need and we need to be sensitive to those little details that we may not necessarily think of.

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So we find people who have had those experiences, who do have that knowledge and who can help us understand those.

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And that's who we've been talking to today. Again, my guest has been Linda Garber, a friend of mine who's had tremendous personal and professional and ministry experience in this way.

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I hope this conversation has been edifying, has been helpful to everybody. As always, there's more resources available in many different places for people to look up more information on this topic.

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We may very likely be doing additional podcasts on related topics on this in the future.

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And as always, we will let people know how that happens. Hopefully this has been helpful. This has been the Got Questions podcast.