Fantastic video about special needs ministry
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Everyone in the church needs to watch the first minute and fifteen seconds of this video. And anyone interested even a little bit in special needs ministry should watch the rest too. I'm a North Carolina girl now, but I was involved in ministry at First Baptist Church in Rio Grande City, Texas, for my two years living on the border so I do love my Texas Baptists!
(No worries if you're serving in another denomination, though. This message is about faithfulness to God's word, specific to special needs ministry but not exclusively applied to any one group of churches!)
A few highlights that I don't want you to miss:
(By the way, I've filled in the "contact me" link - found at the top of this page - and the others should be coming later this week. Thanks for your patience as I get the site up and running!)
(No worries if you're serving in another denomination, though. This message is about faithfulness to God's word, specific to special needs ministry but not exclusively applied to any one group of churches!)
A few highlights that I don't want you to miss:
- In the first 1:15, the message that each of these individuals has a disability and can say "STILL Jesus loves me."
- At about 1:15, the challenge:
"Families with special needs
Jesus loves them
Will you?" - At about 5:20ish, "the Bible teaches that every human being is loved by God."
- "As a church, it’s our responsibility to love these kids and present truth to them." (She then points out that it may be in a different sort of multisensory way for those with special needs.)
- At about 6:19, “The Holy Spirit does His work with these kids.”
- Followed shortly after with these words: “There is an entire segment of our community that needs to hear the message that God loves them, that God has a plan and a prupose … to do something amazing in their lives”
- And then this: “Families… choose churches that include their special needs family member.”
- They also point out that churches need to approach special needs ministry in a two-pronged way - to the individual with special needs and to the family (and I would add that this is true for both adults and children). You can't be effective in either without the other.
Two pronged – the individual and the family; not one or the other - Finally, I love the point at about 8:00 that parents can educate churches about what they can do to practically help the family. I would add that this is *huge* because each child is different. As it is often said in autism advocacy circles: if you've meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. And thisis true for any other disability as well.
(By the way, I've filled in the "contact me" link - found at the top of this page - and the others should be coming later this week. Thanks for your patience as I get the site up and running!)