Vital parts of the body

As the somber-looking young man stood before me, his eyes carefully avoiding mine, I kept a polite smile on my face. Meanwhile, my brain frantically leafed through a mental manual for the proper way to greet a guy with autism: Can I shake his hand? Look him in the eye? Pat his shoulder?

For an awkward second, I felt like an ill-prepared tourist in a foreign country. Then he held out his hand first and said in a clear, high-pitched voice, “Hi, I’m Arthur.” Relieved, I grabbed his hand and introduced myself. I smiled, he didn’t. He shook my hand briefly, gently, then withdrew it and gazed with curious concentration at his fingers.

I was at the main campus of evangelical McLean Bible Church (MBC) in Vienna, Va., to visit Access Ministry, its special needs ministry for people with disabilities. That day, I was visiting the two-week summer day camp for Friendship Club, MBC’s community for older teenagers and adults with various developmental disabilities. Arthur is in the “highest functioning” group—a vague term that can mean anything from being verbal to a higher IQ.

My nervousness before Arthur’s greeting is a common reaction toward individuals with intellectual, developmental, and other disabilities who may not follow proper manners or keep unwritten protocols. Add to it fear, ignorance, and logistical concern, and it’s easy to understand why so many churches exclude people with disabilities from church life: Everything from programs to building layouts—can create barriers.

Yet people like Arthur are not rare. Disabilities affect people across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and age. According to a recent American Community Survey, about 5 percent of Americans—14.3 million persons—have a cognitive disability. The National Institute of Mental Health says one out of five children between ages 8 and 15 has or had a “seriously debilitating” mental disorder, such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and anxiety disorder. The rate of diagnosed autism is increasing each year: Today, autism affects one in 68 children, and one in 42 for boys.

In recent months I visited several ministries and churches committed to making the gospel accessible to people and families dealing with disabilities. My questions focused not only on physical and social accommodation but spiritual inclusion: How does a Christian ministry invite the whole person—body, soul, and spirit— into the church? It’s one thing to offer a friendly hello to a person who drools or dislikes human touch. It’s quite another to be lifelong spiritual brothers and sisters with that individual, to share and grow in the gospel together as the body of Christ.

Jackie Mills-Fernald, director of Access Ministry, says when churches call her with requests for advice and training, she coaches them on safety and liability issues and other technical skills, but always emphasizes, “Don’t do a program. Do a person! You don’t have to be an expert in Down syndrome or autism. You just have to be an expert in that person, and love that person.”

So I tried to get to know the individuals I met. Arthur Aicken is an apricot-cheeked 20-year-old with cropped blond hair and wire-rim glasses. He has Asperger syndrome (a mild form of autism), OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), ADHD, and an eye prosthesis due to microphthalmia, a birth condition in which the eyeball is abnormally small. He’s also exceptionally intelligent.

As we sat across from each other, waiting for class to start, Arthur unblinkingly rattled off nicknames for kangaroos and steam engines, ending each sentence with “does” and “pretty interesting, huh?” Then he moved on to the solar system: “Saturn has 62 moons, does. Jupiter has 67 moons, does. Pretty interesting, huh?”

It’s hard to imagine Arthur as an 8-year-old boy shrieking, flailing, and thumping on the floor during his first two years at Access. The Sunday school teachers often were forced to call his parents, Gary and Virginia Aicken, to help manage his frequent tantrums. At times, his mother rolled on the floor, wrestling with Arthur as he kicked and bit at her. But the Arthur I met is a self-aware, generous young man who loves chatting with people, loves sharing the gospel with classmates and teachers in school. His prayers today include missionaries and the young girl in Guatemala he sponsors through World Vision. His transformation is yet another case Mills-Fernald uses to encourage other parents: “What we see now is not where somebody will arrive. We’re all a work in progress.”

It’s the same for the parents. From the moment he was born, Arthur has been blessing his parents. Before Arthur, the world pampered his parents with the sweet life: a nice house, a good job, a happy marriage. Then, said Gary Aicken, “God gave us something that was beyond our control.” For days after Arthur’s birth with his defective eye, his mother held him and cried, “devastated” and “heartbroken.” She wasn’t a believer then, and her husband had strayed away from his faith, but Arthur’s grandmother and a pastor called the Aickens often to pray for them. At first, Arthur’s mother rolled her eyes, thinking, “Well, what’s prayer going to do?”

Eventually, the Aickens drew back to church and started growing in faith. Then at age 5, Arthur was diagnosed with autism. Once again, his mother Virginia crumbled into grief. She remembers raging at God, “I know you allow things for a purpose, but nothing could be worth this. Here we go again into the deepest pit in the world!” She said she went through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but is now rejoicing. She now invites grieving mothers to Coffee & Connect, a monthly outreach group where she listens to, prays with, and counsels them. Through her group, many mothers—once nonbelievers or distanced Christians—have professed Christ and connected to the church.

I often heard parents use the word “God-orchestrated” to describe their child’s disability. Tige Nishimoto, a small-group leader and regular volunteer at Access Ministry, said he was once a “reckless and foolish” non-Christian until he became a single father of a boy with autism: “Having Josh, he saved my life. God orchestrated and shaped areas in my life through him.” It was through his son, and through ministering to other children like him, that Nishimoto discovered “God’s pure love and purpose in these children to change lives.”

‘Don’t do a program. Do a person! You don’t have to be an expert in Down syndrome or autism. You just have to be an expert in that person, and love that person.’ —Jackie Mills-Fernald

This doctrine—the bold, almost offensive, faith that God not only allowed but intentionally orchestrated the disability—is the lifeblood of a solid special needs ministry. It’s the powerful distinction between a Christian ministry and a secular program. It directs the church’s mission into developing an all-inclusive disability ministry that is rooted in the hope and faith that people with disabilities can, should, and will serve and bless the church. Ministry becomes a God-driven, two-way street, so that it doesn’t exhaust itself from compassion and love.

Such a perspective also levels the playing field, said Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of Joni and Friends, an international organization that provides awareness and resources for disability ministries: “No more is there this teaching from a position of power or influence. … No, we enter this ministry from a point of grace. We’re all weak in God’s eyes. And we need to treat these people with dignity and respect.”

But a leveled playing field also means that people with disabilities are sinners too who need to hear and receive the gospel. It produces some hard questions for parents who worry about their children’s spiritual state: How do I know if my kid with severe cognitive disabilities is saved? How do I know she understands, when she cannot communicate her thoughts? How can my boy mature spiritually, when he melts down and disrupts service, when he cannot join a fellowship because he gets panic attacks? Such concerns illuminate the uniqueness of special needs ministry. Churches then require some creativity, research, and training to break down the multiple physical, social, and learning barriers between the person’s disability and the church body.

At McLean Bible Church’s Adults with Disabilities Day Program (ADDP), an 11-months-a-year day care for adults with significant developmental delays, most of the 18 regular students have Down syndrome. Two are in wheelchairs, one’s blind, another is hearing impaired, and at least one has a cracking sense of humor. Former public-school teacher Kathleen Rose taught the first chapter of Genesis using visuals, buzzers, and quizzes to engage her students. Allie, a woman with cerebral palsy, used her communication device’s synthetic voice to announce, “When I think of God, I think of Him as a magical artist.” Each time she got a question right, she rocked back into her wheelchair like a little victory dance. The next day, they reviewed the days of creation again, this time with sign language and a video clip of The Muppets.

Like children and adults without disabilities, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities need consistent repetition and real-life applications of the gospel. To make a concept stick, they might need colorful props, skits, and activities. Since not every person is able to interact the way the ADDP students can, MBC divides some groups into smaller classrooms and makes special adjustments to the curriculum. For every new family, ministry leaders will discuss with the parents or caretaker the best way to include the individual and family into church services.

For example, at MBC’s Beautiful Blessings, a Sunday school class for children 2 to 15 with disabilities, every student gets one-to-one attention. Here, the physical setup is more playroom than classroom, the curriculum more flexible. The volunteers always display certain toys and gadgets on the table.

Twelve-year-old Ross, for example, has fierce attachment to a green interactive storybook. The moment he enters, he grabs his storybook and plays the chirpy nursery songs over and over. Because Ross is sensitive to auditory surroundings, he used to wince and cover his ears during worship. Now he knows the songs and sometimes sings along. He’ll dutifully put his storybook aside so that a volunteer can teach a Bible story using cutout paper figures, stickers, and coloring activities.

Some kids at Beautiful Blessings sit with their eyes wandering while the volunteers try to engage them. Some can do little more than grunt and point. Others run havoc, like the vivacious girl who dashed around smacking everyone on the head, or the cheeky boy who writhed on the carpeted floor while his volunteer patiently kneeled beside him. Beverly Mattson, who leads Beautiful Blessings and has over 30 years of experience with special education, said it’s sometimes impossible to know how much these kids are absorbing from the class: “You just have to trust in the Holy Spirit to do His part.”

Because many individuals will never show visible comprehension of the gospel, it’s too easy to resign and think they’ll never “get it.” But Joni Eareckson Tada said Christians tend to have a “knowledge fixation” and forget what is truly important: It’s not about reciting Bible verses, but about “the experience of the body of Christ.” Even if worship is complete cacophony, even if someone mistakes communion for snack and grabs a fistful of unleavened wafers, “what they will grasp is that this place is all about Jesus, all about love. And that’s life-changing.”

A ministry can be something low-key and organic like the Sunday Brunch Fellowship for adults with disabilities at Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, Calif. It started with one couple offering a man with brain damage a ride to church every Sunday. That man, John, invited his sister Debbie, who also has brain damage, and his mother Arlene, who wasn’t a Christian. The group grew to a hodgepodge family of about 15, sitting together near the front every Sunday service and then communing over an open-to-all brunch of home-cooked pulled pork and brownies. Grant, a once-reticent man with brain injury, told me his favorite thing about church is volunteering as the greeter, stage assistant manager, and parking attendant. Calvary now has a full-time pastor leading a growing special needs ministry that includes a medical team.

Ministry can also take shape as a huge social outreach like the Great Pumpkin Party by Valley Church in West Des Moines, Iowa, where about 800 families of all ethnicities and religions— Catholics, Hindus, Muslims—came bringing their kids with special needs. Ruth Stieff, whose son has autism and whose husband is lead pastor, said she believes the special needs ministry allows the church to “plant seeds” in unreached communities hungering for relief and support: “We’re using special needs, because nobody except Christians do special needs ministry. Other religions hide that stuff.”

One of the most creative classes I observed was at EvFree Fullerton Church in Fullerton, Calif., whose special needs ministry evolved from ushering every person with a disability into one room, to a well-facilitated community with options tailored to age and abilities. Connie Hutchinson, the special needs ministry director at EvFree Fullerton, started the ministry in 1992 in part because she wanted her now 39-year-old daughter Julie, who has Down syndrome, to be spiritually fed and included into the church. The ministry has grown to more than 80 regular families, some who drive more than an hour to church, some who have been asked to leave by previous churches.

The Sunday I visited EvFree Fullerton, Kathy Vincent, a spunky redhead also known as The Scripture Lady, stood before a circle of about 30 adult students and reviewed the fruits of the Spirit. Somehow, using an animated slide show, a “lemon bopper,” a paddle ball, and a hair dryer, Vincent demonstrated the difference between “happiness” dependent on circumstances and “joy” rooted in the Holy Spirit. She turned Bible verses into simple, jaunty songs and got her audience to hop and bop along.

Most students interacted eagerly, gasping and laughing along, raising hands to answer questions. But I spotted one young man sitting with a glum expression and refusing to participate. Later during one of the songs, a volunteer walked over and took his hand. “Come on, Matt,” the volunteer said cheerily, swaying Matt’s hands in the air. Matt got up reluctantly, but by the end of the song, a smile had spread across his face.

Besides the staff, one of the most important facets of a special needs ministry is committed volunteers. Because some members need acute care, many churches like MBC, Calvary, and EvFree Fullerton will assign a “buddy” for one-on-one companionship. But a child who can transition into regular service will do so, either with a buddy or family member.

‘What they will grasp is that this place is all about Jesus, all about love. And that’s life-changing.’ —Joni Eareckson Tada

It was a moving sight to see the swarm of young volunteers at EvFree Fullerton’s Rainbow Express, a weeklong VBS for kids with disabilities from ages 5 to 12. Each participant was matched to a “buddy” of similar age and an older teenage counselor. Many volunteers were rising 8th-graders participating in a junior-high–level discipleship program—and many more were returning volunteers.

As I watched kids and teenagers in bright yellow shirts hug and high-five each other, I couldn’t differentiate volunteer from participant. Amidst occasional chaos, I saw a 9-year-old volunteer help her giggling buddy say hello to a boy on whom she seemed to have a crush, and a nonverbal 5-year-old boy entertaining an audience of junior-high-school-age volunteers by tapping a joke through his communication device. And in my mind I saw golden crowns of eternal inheritance on top of each individual’s head and thought, This must be how Christ views his church: lovable and glorifying in all its curves and edges.

The disability ministry is messy and tough because it deals with blatant physical, emotional, and financial suffering and all its hard questions. But even in the crescendo of grief and pain, God keeps His promises to work in all things for the good of those who love Him.

“God’s putting everything together like a puzzle, to have everybody unite as the body of the church,” said Hutchinson’s daughter Julie, who was also volunteering at Rainbow Express. She called it “awesome” to see how much her church’s ministry has grown over the decades. “And all because I was born with this disability called Down syndrome.”