Leading a Special Needs Ministry: A Special Guide to Including Children and Loving Families, Amy Fenton Lee.

Guest Post/Book Review by Donna Reagan*

Everyone,
it seems, loves babies, especially fresh, new ones that can be held,
comforted, cuddled and
nurtured into good health: mind, body and
spirit. Ideally, all babies would start life on an equal basis but the
fact is, statistics from Cornell University show that at
least 12% of all births will produce a special needs child and with all
that can happen to affect the outcome of a pregnancy, it is amazing that
the stats are that much in favor of a neuro-typical and physically
“normal” child. Often, those 12%, can cause great discomfort in the
greater community, especially the faith community. It is as though the
evidence of God’s great blessing (that of a perfect life with a perfect
family full of children who are perfect in every way) has been marred.
And so a community of faith must decide how to respond. Amy Fenton Lee
addresses the issues of faith, theology, opportunities and blessing
available to a faith community in her book Leading a Special Needs
Ministry: a Practical Guide to Including Children and Loving Families.

Lee directly addresses the issue of etiquette; specifically, what to
say and what not to say and how to act and how not to act in every
situation involving a special needs child and his/her family.
Furthermore, the author details how caring individuals can respond in
loving, supportive care when learning of a special needs diagnosis. She
also explains what the parents are experiencing and how and why. The
most important thing Lee does is educate the faith community about
what they should be doing to include special needs children and their
families as well as why and how to make it happen. Lee makes such a
good case for a special needs ministry for all ages, that no community
of faith which believes that the call to faith is a call to all, cannot
allow one more day to go by without making this ministry a priority.

It
may be easier for very large communities of faith, such as mega
churches, to find the resources to set up a special needs ministry but
the author shows that even a small church can do small things that can
make a huge difference to all of God’s children. And what to do to
start and how—Lee provides information and tools in straightforward
lay terms; it’s all laid out.

Too many families and
their special needs children have dropped out of participation in
churches because they do not feel welcome; they do not feel included and
the spiritual and social needs of they and their children go unmet. It
is time that faith communities met those needs; they have no excuse not
to do so.

*Donna Reagan is a children’s librarian at the
Nashville Public Library, Bellevue Branch, with a professional
background in education and Christian education. She is also a former
pastor’s wife and mother of a special needs son with autism.