Messy advocacy vs. partnerships

Since I began this blog just over three months ago, I've come across a couple news reports about churches turning away families who have children with special needs. This is a tough topic to address, but it's worth discussing. Before I dive in, though, I want to make a few things clear:

• I have no first-hand knowledge of any of these instances. I don't even know any of the church leaders or families involved in any of these stories. That is why I am choosing not to link to any news articles.
• All news has some bias. No two reporters would write the same article in the same way. Bias isn't always a bad thing, but it's wise to remember that the writer's experiences and opinions and culture influence his or her writing. The concept of bias in media is usually frowned upon; meanwhile, I think it's naive to expect any writer to be bias-free.
• In almost every instance like the ones I'll be discussing, the church usually issues statements while the families sit down for interviews. This set-up lends itself easily to sympathy toward the family, because they are seen as people, and blame toward the church, because it is seen as the big, bad institution. 
• Sometimes the church has failed. Sometimes the families have perceived insults where none exist. Sometimes it's been a mix of each. And sometimes the whole situation is unclear. Unless we have first-hand knowledge, we can't know what exactly occurred.

 If this post seems more raw than many of my others, that's because I'm still working through the best way to respond. I've held my tongue (or, as a blogger, should I say "held my fingers?") until now, but I feel like it would be timid to avoid the subject altogether, given that I blog about the church's responsibility to welcome individuals with special needs.

As I'm wrestling with this, here are a few takeaways. I'd love to know what else you've taken away from news reports of this nature, so please leave a comment!

• Churches need to be mindful that families with special needs have often been judged, hurt, looked down on, ignored, mocked, and pitied. Because of that, consider how much compassion you would show any other family in a similar situation, and then dial it up five notches.
• Good parenting involves advocating for your kids. When a child has special needs, this is even more true. Parents of kids with special needs often have to advocate for health care and social opportunities and education and acceptance and a whole slew of other needs. Advocacy often become a way of life out of necessity. 
• Effective ministry leaders partner with parents so that their children may hear the gospel and treasure Christ. The best outcomes I've seen involve friendly churches partnering with parents who advocate well for their children with special needs.
• Advocacy can backfire if it becomes adversarial. In solid church + home partnerships, it's not advocacy against something. It's mutual advocacy for the child and the family and the church. If either side becomes adversarial, the outcome will be messy.
• God is for the church, and God is for the family. He created both as institutions for his glory and our good. He is an advocate for both. That's why the best scenarios are ones in which the church advocates for the family and the family advocates for the church, with both motivated by the God who created each. That's a true partnership, rather than messy advocacy from either party.

We live in a fallen world. You can find sin in churches and families and media outlets. And thank God that we can find solace from sin in Christ. In Christ, we have hope that we will have a perfect, sinless reality in heaven, one that far exceeds the world in which we live now. But the prayer "thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven" teaches us that we shouldn't just shrug and accept the fallen world as if we can do nothing but hope for the other side of eternity. As we pray "thy kingdom come," what would that look like for the church and the family when a family whose child has special needs arrives at any given church this Sunday?

As I said earlier, I'm still wrestling with what we should learn from all this, and I would love to know your thoughts. Do you agree with what I've put out here? Disagree or think I'm missing something? What have your thoughts been when you've heard news stories about churches turning away people with special needs?