'Cause y'all are smart. And 'cause I'm not too proud to beg. (Please comment. Pretty please?)
/
This is actually a repost from my personal blog, written and posted originally in September before this blog came into being. We have just recently resolved our name dilemma, but I know other churches who are still trying to decide what their ministry name should be, so your thoughts are still helpful!
(And thankfully my thesis is now complete. And those plans for the future that I mentioned in this post? Well, our first respite event will be in the fall, and we have made progress in other areas too. It's encouraging to look back and see how far we've come!)
Okay, now on to that post from September...
'Cause y'all are creative. And 'cause most of you reading this love Jesus. And 'cause y'all aren't trying to juggle a kazillion things. (Oh, wait. You probably are. So scratch that and make it something like "'cause y'all aren't writing a thesis on the relationship between school poverty levels and the test performance of students with learning disabilities." I bet that one's accurate. And if it's not, email me 'cause I'd love to swap research findings.)
(And, yes, my name is Shannon, and I get twitchy if I shorten because without adding an apostrophe. I'm really living on the wild side if I *gasp* use cuz.)
The hubs and I are now coordinating special needs ministry for kids birth through high school at our church. (Which is so very, very exciting in many more ways than I can describe in this post. Praise God!)
And we're thinking about what to call it. We're not tossing around ideas because our church loves to useconfusing fresh names for everything, even though they do. (Vacation Bible School? Nah, we have Super Summer Adventure. Chidcare? Not here. It's SonStation. Adult Sunday school? Nope, LIFE class.
I could go on, but I won't.)
We may just stick with "special needs ministry," which is what we're calling it right now. Our church isn't opposed to explanatory names, like calling leadership training "leadership training." Not cutting edge, but descriptive nonetheless. I tend to prefer the bland names over ones that just add more jargon to a place that's already jargon-rich (Christianese, anyone?).
But some families are sensitive about labels. And some kids don't even have labels, if the child hasn't formally been diagnosed with a disability. And certain labels carry a lot of stigma. (See a good post about that here on one of my favorite blogs. I think the comments are as telling as the post.)
Yes, sometimes we need to change the stigma and not the label.
And, yes, sometimes we veer too far in the other direction. I used to be a part of a denomination that scrapped "disabled" and "differently abled" (which, by the way, makes me gag, but not as much as...) to use "definitely abled" at their term of choice in the 90s. Um, no. Try telling someone whose child is in a wheelchair that he's "definitely abled." Or sit across from a parents struggling with a new reality at an IEP meeting and say, "Yes, your child's IQ is significantly below the normal range. She's definitely abled." If you don't get slapped for that, you're lucky.
But, even though I prefer my newspaper to online news and detest text-speak, I'm open to considering a name that's hip and cool and fresh. Or to sticking with a descriptive one. Yep, I'm decisive like that.
One church with a solid model for special needs ministry calls it Green Light Ministry. Their explanation is this: "Children with special needs and their family members face more than their share of red lights as they travel through life. Unfortunately, for many of these families, the church has been just another one of those red lights along the road." They also call their parents' night out respite care Refuel. I like those names. And we mightsteal borrow them.
Here are some more I've seen around: Access Ministries/Access Ministry, ones that include the word "Inclusive," Special Stars (at a church where children's ministry is called "All Stars"), and Special Connections (which is out because our church already uses "Connections" for middle and high school Sunday school). And there's a church that calls their special needs buddy volunteers "shadows," and I haven't decided whether or not I like that. I know I don't care for calling those volunteers "special friends" like one local church does and like many I've found online do; that just doesn't sound right. (Particularly because "special friend" is the code phrase around here among parents of high school students for "he's not her boyfriend yet, but he's more than a friend, so he's her special friend.")
And then there are some wild and crazy churches that just call it special needs ministry, like this one. Or Disability Ministry, like this one. Or Disabilities Ministry, like this one. (Interestingly enough, that last church changed to their name from "special needs ministry" because parents felt like special needs carried a major stigma. Meanwhile, in my part of the country, it seems that disability has more stigma.)
So now I'm asking you, dear readers, for your thoughts. But first...
To help you out, let me tell you what we're doing now. We have a handful of kids who need a Sunday morning volunteer partnered with them to help them in a regular class. We have other kids who we just make sure have a fully staffed room with at least four teachers. We don't currently have a self-contained special needs class, though we might open one in the future as we evaluate needs. (There is class like that for adults with special needs at our church, and we call it the Joy class. But we haven't liked any variation on that name, because most - "Little Joy Class" - sound like we're reducing the joy. Which is probably a bad thing.) We do have plans for the future, which will all operate in submission to the godly leadership at our church and which may or may not include things like the occasional parents' night out respite care and parent workshops. We're just serving Christ with our gifts and passions and following where He leads.
Whadya think:
Should we leave it "special needs ministry" or change it?
Do you have any hip ideas?
Or ones that aren't hip?
(Is it even hip to use the word hip, or am I clinging to that like I cling to my newsprint?)
Are there any names I've listed or that you've heard that you hate/dislike/don't prefer?
Please comment. Pretty please. But not with a cherry on top, because I don't like cherries.
But, if you do, I suppose I'll add the cherry back into the equation.
As long as I don't have to eat it.
(And no promises here, folks. We might stick with the name "special needs ministry." Or not. It'll definitely be one or the other, though. I can guarantee that.)
(And thankfully my thesis is now complete. And those plans for the future that I mentioned in this post? Well, our first respite event will be in the fall, and we have made progress in other areas too. It's encouraging to look back and see how far we've come!)
Okay, now on to that post from September...
'Cause y'all are creative. And 'cause most of you reading this love Jesus. And 'cause y'all aren't trying to juggle a kazillion things. (Oh, wait. You probably are. So scratch that and make it something like "'cause y'all aren't writing a thesis on the relationship between school poverty levels and the test performance of students with learning disabilities." I bet that one's accurate. And if it's not, email me 'cause I'd love to swap research findings.)
(And, yes, my name is Shannon, and I get twitchy if I shorten because without adding an apostrophe. I'm really living on the wild side if I *gasp* use cuz.)
The hubs and I are now coordinating special needs ministry for kids birth through high school at our church. (Which is so very, very exciting in many more ways than I can describe in this post. Praise God!)
And we're thinking about what to call it. We're not tossing around ideas because our church loves to use
I could go on, but I won't.)
We may just stick with "special needs ministry," which is what we're calling it right now. Our church isn't opposed to explanatory names, like calling leadership training "leadership training." Not cutting edge, but descriptive nonetheless. I tend to prefer the bland names over ones that just add more jargon to a place that's already jargon-rich (Christianese, anyone?).
But some families are sensitive about labels. And some kids don't even have labels, if the child hasn't formally been diagnosed with a disability. And certain labels carry a lot of stigma. (See a good post about that here on one of my favorite blogs. I think the comments are as telling as the post.)
Yes, sometimes we need to change the stigma and not the label.
And, yes, sometimes we veer too far in the other direction. I used to be a part of a denomination that scrapped "disabled" and "differently abled" (which, by the way, makes me gag, but not as much as...) to use "definitely abled" at their term of choice in the 90s. Um, no. Try telling someone whose child is in a wheelchair that he's "definitely abled." Or sit across from a parents struggling with a new reality at an IEP meeting and say, "Yes, your child's IQ is significantly below the normal range. She's definitely abled." If you don't get slapped for that, you're lucky.
But, even though I prefer my newspaper to online news and detest text-speak, I'm open to considering a name that's hip and cool and fresh. Or to sticking with a descriptive one. Yep, I'm decisive like that.
One church with a solid model for special needs ministry calls it Green Light Ministry. Their explanation is this: "Children with special needs and their family members face more than their share of red lights as they travel through life. Unfortunately, for many of these families, the church has been just another one of those red lights along the road." They also call their parents' night out respite care Refuel. I like those names. And we might
Here are some more I've seen around: Access Ministries/Access Ministry, ones that include the word "Inclusive," Special Stars (at a church where children's ministry is called "All Stars"), and Special Connections (which is out because our church already uses "Connections" for middle and high school Sunday school). And there's a church that calls their special needs buddy volunteers "shadows," and I haven't decided whether or not I like that. I know I don't care for calling those volunteers "special friends" like one local church does and like many I've found online do; that just doesn't sound right. (Particularly because "special friend" is the code phrase around here among parents of high school students for "he's not her boyfriend yet, but he's more than a friend, so he's her special friend.")
And then there are some wild and crazy churches that just call it special needs ministry, like this one. Or Disability Ministry, like this one. Or Disabilities Ministry, like this one. (Interestingly enough, that last church changed to their name from "special needs ministry" because parents felt like special needs carried a major stigma. Meanwhile, in my part of the country, it seems that disability has more stigma.)
So now I'm asking you, dear readers, for your thoughts. But first...
To help you out, let me tell you what we're doing now. We have a handful of kids who need a Sunday morning volunteer partnered with them to help them in a regular class. We have other kids who we just make sure have a fully staffed room with at least four teachers. We don't currently have a self-contained special needs class, though we might open one in the future as we evaluate needs. (There is class like that for adults with special needs at our church, and we call it the Joy class. But we haven't liked any variation on that name, because most - "Little Joy Class" - sound like we're reducing the joy. Which is probably a bad thing.) We do have plans for the future, which will all operate in submission to the godly leadership at our church and which may or may not include things like the occasional parents' night out respite care and parent workshops. We're just serving Christ with our gifts and passions and following where He leads.
Whadya think:
Should we leave it "special needs ministry" or change it?
Do you have any hip ideas?
Or ones that aren't hip?
(Is it even hip to use the word hip, or am I clinging to that like I cling to my newsprint?)
Are there any names I've listed or that you've heard that you hate/dislike/don't prefer?
Please comment. Pretty please. But not with a cherry on top, because I don't like cherries.
But, if you do, I suppose I'll add the cherry back into the equation.
As long as I don't have to eat it.
(And no promises here, folks. We might stick with the name "special needs ministry." Or not. It'll definitely be one or the other, though. I can guarantee that.)