Book Review: Leading a Special Needs Ministry

Book Cover

"No one has ever seen the wind. We've only experienced the effects and the results of the wind. And none of us have ever seen God. Just like the movement of a pinwheel makes us sure that the wind exists, we have ways to be sure that God exists."

Welcome to 2018 and to start it off for this blog, we have a new book review!

But first a story.

I had been thinking about this topic for quite a bit, ever since I had just written on teaching your child about God.  In fact, what prompted that post was a meeting I was involved in a few weeks before I wrote that particular article.

I'm involved in our church's children's ministry, and we had recently asked a new pastor to start working with us around the middle of last year.  But this pastor was no stranger to us.   In fact, my husband and I have had the chance to work with him earlier in the year when we were involved as part of the team of organizers for our church's children's camp.

It was during the aforementioned meeting that the pastor mentioned R, and that he wanted us to start considering how to craft our lessons to accommodate children with special needs.  This book, having been put in my Goodreads wishlist some time before, popped into my mind.  I offered to order it, and the team agreed.

Amy Fenton Lee, author of Leading a Special Needs Ministry: A Practical Guide to Including Children and Loving Families, is also the blogger behind The Inclusive Church Blog.  According to her About Amy Fenton Lee page, she "has written extensively on the subject of special needs inclusion in the church".  She was also, for three years, the "Director of Special Needs Initiatives for The reThink Group (Orange). During her time with Orange Amy created a conference track for special needs ministry leaders, piloted a modified curriculum for students with special needs, and produced two new resources to equip church leaders. In 2012 Amy served as the Special Needs Columnist for Children’s Ministry Magazine".

Lee does not claim to be an expert on special needs and inclusion programs, but what she does have is a huge network of experts, contacts and resource persons that she taps into for her talks, interviews, and articles.  She even interviewed families of children with special needs, to allow them to give an insider's perspective on life with or as an individual with special needs and/or disabilities.

The book itself is split into two sections, spanning 10 chapters and a rather large section for the appendices.  Despite its length, Leading a Special Needs Ministry is still an easy read.  The terminologies are not so technical that even an ordinary lay person can pick it up and follow easily, and that's just what the book sets out to do.

Lee wrote this book with the intention of equipping churches to include individuals with special needs wholly into their specific church community.  For her, accessibility is more than just "adding a ramp between the sidewalk and the front door of a building. It includes the ease in which a product, service, or environment can be utilized across 'diverse human populations, their abilities and their needs'."

What I found really important, and I was glad she addressed this in her writing, is how she repeated over and over that the primary goal of a special needs ministry is like any other ministry, and that is to point people of differing ages, abilities, and stations in life to Jesus Christ.  What I also love is that she not only lays out in section one how to approach families who have either received a diagnosis for their child at the time of birth, or later on in life, Lee also goes on to list practical ways to starting a special needs ministry in section two.  There are chapters dedicated to the process of choosing the ministry leader, to screening, selecting, and supporting the volunteers, behavior issues, sensory issues, terms, laws, and even a section on including teens with special needs.

She also gives samples on how certain documents are written out, especially intake forms (we tend to call them enrollment forms on this side of the globe), medical forms, ministry mission and vision, the works.  It's incredibly practical and realistic, as Lee also considers that not all churches are big enough, in terms of location, congregation size, even resources.  She encourages to start small, as small doesn't necessarily mean insignificant.

I give this book a 4.75 out of 5 stars.  There's some grammar and spelling errors here and there, but they don't detract from the message of the book, which is, and I quote, that "[i]t's the church's responsibility to thoughtfully, intentionally, and respectfully engage everyone - because God loves them all. That's the gospel being lived out for all to see and experience".

To purchase a physical copy, Leading a Special Needs Ministry is sold for US $16.99 (PHP846.88) and can be bought from Book Depository, Amazon, ChristianBook.com, and B & H Publishing Group.  An electronic copy can be purchased from Google Books for US $6.96 (PHP346.76) or from ChristianBook.com for US $9.99 (PHP497.87).