Special needs Sunday School teachers in Alabama Baptist churches adapt and innovate curriculum to teach the Bible to children with special needs.
LifeWay Christian Resources’ approach is to write general Sunday School literature so teachers can adapt it for use with children having special needs, according to Marci Campbell, special education specialist, LifeWay Church Resources.
She said LifeWay’s goal is to avoid labeling children who have special needs and offer help to teachers by spreading throughout its literature ideas and teacher tips on to how to deal with children with short attention spans, for instance. Attention spans could be an issue brought about by certain developmental disabilities such as autism, but it could also apply to children without disabilities.
LifeWay offers a Sunday School curriculum specifically for special needs adults, but addresses to some extent special needs curriculum for children in its “Family Bible Series,” written for the whole church Sunday School, Campbell explained.
She said another reason there is more curriculum for adults with special needs is they are going through fewer changes than children and are more settled into adjusting to their disabilities.
“It would be very difficult to do an overall curriculum for children given all the developmental issues, different ages, abilities and disabilities,” she said.
“The amount of literature available [specifically] for special needs children is sparse,” said Sherron Culpepper, consultant for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
This lack in literature stems from a growing movement away from classes exclusively for the developmentally disabled to assimilation into regular classes.
This mainstreaming is why many publishers are cutting back on what they offer, Culpepper claims.
She said although there are situations where a separate curriculum for special needs children could be the best choice, often mainstreaming within regular curriculum is preferred.
Campbell and Culpepper said the best approach is for churches to offer mainstreaming and special classes. There are usually times within the same Sunday morning that a child might be best served by being in a mainstream class for a while, then moving to a special needs class. Teachers knowing as much as possible about each child with special needs is essential for providing effective Sunday School ministry to them.
Church staff members from Alabama Baptist churches say being innovative with existing curriculum and filling specific needs are the keys to effective special needs ministry.
According to Charles Uptain, minister to children at Calvary Baptist Church, Dothan, his church has offered a special needs Sunday School class for at least four years.
“As far as curriculum we use the regular Sunday School materials from LifeWay that are written for 3- to 4-year-olds. The teacher takes it and presents it in such a way that the kids can get the most out of it,” he said.
“We seem to have had an influx of kids who have come in — some with autism and with other difficulties,” Uptain said. “They have a real hard time being in a class with other 4- and 5-year-olds and getting anything out of it.”
To alleviate this problem the church is beginning a preschool special needs class with the help of church members Sam and Cathy Irvin, a couple who have a special needs teenager who benefitted from Calvary’s approach to special needs.
Kathy McCown, special needs department director at Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, said, “We use the kindergarten literature for Sunday School, find curriculum ideas on the Web, and I have some of my own resources from teaching.”
She said they always try to cover a Bible story, have a memory verse and do crafts. Teaching a memory verse often involves visual activities such as making a paper chain with each link having a different word of the verse on it.
Because many of their special needs children cannot speak or have limited speech, the teachers use puppets to tell them stories, with the idea being, “they can’t talk, so the puppets do the talking for them,” McCown said.
Church leaders, teachers and parents can find approaches to special needs ministry in LifeWay’s Special Education Today quarterly magazine, which offers a balance of features, news items, resources and the ABC’s of salvation in every issue, according to Campbell.
She would like to see the magazine have a wider audience than parents of special needs children and teachers.
“We would like for it to be displayed and distributed throughout churches so that the fear of the unknown is taken away — fear often disappears when there is knowledge,” she said.
Another general resource for Sunday School curriculum that has a section devoted to special needs is “Essentials for Excellence.”
This is a book with resources for general leaders in the church, but also has a CD-ROM in the back of the book.
The CD contains additional information, including 25 leadership articles that give help in teaching special needs children. On the CD is a step-by-step plan for a church to begin a special needs ministry, she said. Necessary forms associated with special needs ministry are included on the CD.
Attending conferences and networking can be ways to find ideas to approach special needs ministry, Culpepper said.
One group that offers conferences is the Baptist Developmental Disabilities Ministry Fellowship, based in Georgia.
Churches should be aware of needs before beginning ministries
Though often begun with the best intentions, special needs ministries don’t always live up to their mission, says one father of a developmentally disabled child.
Charlie Warren, editor of the Arkansas Baptist Newsmagazine in Little Rock, Ark., said if it weren’t for his family’s deep commitment to Christ and the church, they would have stopped attending church long ago because of the frustrations they encountered with special needs ministries in churches where they belonged.
Warren has a 20-year-old daughter, Jan, who is autistic, legally blind, hearing impaired and nonverbal. Attempts through the years to keep her involved in church life often proved frustrating and even hurtful.
When the Warrens adopted Jan at four months, their church did not have a special needs ministry. That didn’t present a problem until Jan grew past the toddler stage and was held back from promotion because she was unable to learn as quickly as the other children.
“Soon, she grew too big and her strange behaviors began to scare other children,” said Warren. So the church’s children’s minister began to develop a special needs program.
The program provided excellent training for potential volunteers, and for a while volunteers worked with Jan one on one. But each time a volunteer quit, it was “like pulling eye teeth” to find someone else willing to take up the mantle, recalled Warren.
Finally, the church began to hire special education majors from a local university to work with Jan. The Warrens were grateful the church was willing to pay for care of their daughter, but they were also disappointed that volunteers didn’t “step up to the plate.”
“It was a large church,” said Warren. “We were disappointed that no one was willing to make the effort to work with our daughter.”
Making matters worse, the room assigned for Jan was a closet at the end of a long hall that got little traffic. At first they cleaned out the closet and put a small table and chairs in it.
But soon people began to store other things in the tiny room, leaving less and less space for Jan and the university student.
Two things became obvious to the Warrens — the church was trying to keep Jan out of sight and she was a low priority. Finally the Warrens became so frustrated they changed churches.
Harpeth Heights Baptist Church in Nashville — where the family lived at the time — was just beginning a special needs ministry and had about 10 trained workers. Church leaders seemed more than willing to allocate resources to the new ministry.
“On the Sunday we walked the aisle to join,” said Warren, “church leaders were disappointed we didn’t get Jan out of the special needs department first so the whole church could see her.”
“Harpeth Heights made special needs a priority and Jan was never hidden away somewhere,” he said. And there was always someone to work with Jan any time they attended — Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday nights.
The family knows how exceptional this is, because the three churches they have joined since have provided care only on Sunday mornings.
“There have been many times when we have arrived at one of these churches only to discover there was no one to work with Jan,” said Warren. “We’ve had to get back in the car and drive home, which frustrates us, but also frustrates Jan, who likes to go to church.”
But probably more damaging than the lack of resources are the attitudes of some church members toward the developmentally disabled.
“I still recall the anger I felt at a church one night when Jan was about 6,” said Warren.
Arriving a few minutes early with Jan one Wednesday night, he found that Jan’s worker had not yet arrived. “In the room were two teachers and one child. Both teachers looked up with the kind of smiles teachers are supposed to have as they greet children. But when they saw it was Jan, their expressions changed drastically.”
When neither teacher was willing to care for Jan until her teacher could get there, Warren said, the family left confused and angry. “Incidents like that are why many parents of special needs children drop out of church,” he said.
Today the family attends a church that pays two deaf-education students to work with Jan. But the church is making an effort to develop a special needs ministry.
“When it works well, we can know that Jan will be well cared for and we can depend on someone being there for her,” said Warren. “We also know that Jan is loved despite her uniqueness and occasional bad behavior.” (ABP)
Alabama Baptists open arms, hearts to those with different needs for church
Finding ways to minister to special needs children and adults within Alabama Baptist churches may seem like an ordinary task, but it is an extraordinary effort of education, inspiration and acceptance.
“Our task in ministry is to provide a place where they are loved and accepted rather than pushed away or rejected,” said Sherron Culpepper, consultant for the office of Sunday School with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
She made her comments while addressing a special needs conference in Shelby Baptist Association where special needs Sunday School teachers, ministers of education and ministers to children were attending.
Special needs can mean Down syndrome, autism, muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or other developmental disabilities. Some children may have hearing or vision impairments. These are only a handful of hundreds of physical, emotional or mental problems a child or adult coming to Sunday School may have.
Depending on the severity of the need, individualized attention may help them have a meaningful experience at church.
Culpepper said the special needs person may be in a class where everyone has a special need of one kind or another or they may be “mainstreamed” in a regular class — the choice depends on each person’s specific condition and how their behavior is on a given Sunday morning.
But even in a mainstream class an adult Sunday School worker usually shadows the child to assist when necessary.
“The prevailing method in the church is to mainstream them,” she said.
But special needs don’t end when these children grow up.
“There is no cutoff as far as adults — children grow up and we need to provide for them. Right now we are focusing on children just because they are who we have here with special needs,” said Lucretia Mobbs, minister of education and adults, First Baptist Church, Helena, where the conference was held.
At First Baptist Church, Huntsville, where Culpepper leads special needs Sunday School, the ages of special needs adults ranges from 19 to 78, Culpepper noted.
Culpepper, a professional educator, said a distinction should be drawn between teaching special needs children and youth in public school and in the church.
“It’s very tempting when you visit a child’s school or home and learn a child’s Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) to recreate that at church,” she said. “At its best church is a place where everyone is loved and accepted,” she said.
“What we really want to do is communicate God’s love to that child. So your time and effort doesn’t need to be spent teaching ABCs and colors, unless that’s a means to an end for you in the focus of that day. Keep in mind that church is a different environment — we want them to learn, but it’s a place to know they are accepted and loved.”
Culpepper said special education ministry will broaden a person’s horizons and offer opportunities to communicate the love of God, even though it requires a different approach to delivering the message.
Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, begins its Sunday School with special needs children by exercising in the gym.
Then they move on to refreshments, according to Kathy McCown, special needs department director at Whitesburg.
Once the more traditional Sunday School classtime begins leaders employ marching to emphasize to children they are moving into another segment or facet of the day’s activities. Repetitiveness and singing the same songs week after week are important ways to help special needs children feel more comfortable, McCown said.
Interpersonal activity among children, especially those with autism, is not widely common, yet it does happen.
“You don’t normally see a lot of interaction among the children,” McCown said. “But one day one little boy tugged on another’s shirt, encouraging him to march — that was a big thing.”
According to JoAnn Collier, preschool ministry director at Whitesburg, they have had special needs Sunday School for four years and part of that time have conducted a special needs Vacation Bible School.
She said a key to effectiveness in this kind of ministry is having as much as a one-to-one teacher-student ratio. “There are so few churches that are willing to do this because it takes a lot of teachers to maintain the small teacher-to-student ratio required for this ministry to work,” Collier said.
Those who lead the children say the rewards of this ministry can be great.
“One little boy memorized a Scripture verse and said it to his dad — another little boy read aloud,” McCown said. “A little girl who cannot speak learned to sign ‘Jesus’ — all major things in the lives of these families,” McCown said.
Culpepper said, “It’s not your intellectual ability that helps you relate to God but its God’s Spirit talking to your spirit. I don’t think we can say that because a person is bright, gifted or normal means that they are able to relate to God any more than a person who may not communicate well or who may not to us be able to relate in a way that we are familiar with,” she said. “God can communicate with people in ways we don’t fully understand.”
Parents of special needs children face fears of rejection at church
Parents of special needs children say they routinely face cold stares, head shakes and head turns as they go about their daily tasks of school, shopping and play with their children. Some say they even find rejection from the medical and religious communities.
“By the time parents decide to select a church, they have given up,” said Sherron Culpepper, consultant for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “They’ve given up because they’ve already fought a battle with the pediatrician — trying to find someone who is interested in serving the health care needs of their child.”
She said parents claim some doctors are unwilling to put up with the behaviors associated with the disability of the child. Not every doctor is willing or able to help,” she explained. “So by the time it’s Sunday and you’ve tried to do all these things you are just too tired to worry about a battle when you go to church,” she said.
She said parents may worry over questions like: “Are they are going to start frowning if I walk in with my child who has autism, cerebral palsy or mental retardation? Will I have to carry my child up steps to get to the Sunday School classroom; Is the bathroom [equipped for the disabled]?”
Autism of family members has in some cases been the impetus to establish a special needs ministry. “I had a grandson with autism and he had been turned away from a couple of churches because they didn’t have the means to provide for children with autism,” said Kathy McCown, special needs department director at Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville.
So for two years McCown’s daughter left work and church and stayed home with him. Then McCown decided she would take a year off and stay with her grandson so her daughter could attend church for a year.
It was from this great need that a special needs class was established at Whitesburg four years ago, according to JoAnn Collier, director of preschool ministry.
In recent years other churches dotted around Alabama have begun climbing aboard to provide for special needs children. Jenny Funderburke, minister to children, Westwood Baptist Church, Alabaster, said they began addressing special needs children through a specific program of ministry about four years ago. Yet, the ministry is ever changing as it seeks to minister the best way possible.
“Our goal is twofold. To provide a place for the parents of special needs children. We want them to come and feel secure. And we want to minister to the special needs children — to reach them with Jesus on their level — that’s what we are about,” she said.
Melissa Calton, preschool and children’s minister of First Baptist Church, Helena, said the numbers of special needs individuals have the potential to grow at their church and other churches in Shelby County, the fastest growing county in Alabama. But it means understanding where they are in their lives and finding ways to communicate with them.
“We can reach their world,” said Claton, whose son, Jeremy, is paranoid schizophrenic.
She said as a parent and church leader she puts before special needs children what God gives and the rest is up to the Holy Spirit, as is the case with anyone. The result in her family has been that Jeremy accepted Jesus.
First, Helena, member Charlotte Graham is the mother of Josh, an autistic son. “We have appreciated this church and the acceptance here,” she said. “I know we tend to think of all the things we can do for special needs children, but we need to realize what they can show us.”
Graham said integrating special needs children with other children is important because the other children learn so much from them. Her family stayed out of church for awhile because it was so hard to find acceptance and willingness to help a family with a special needs child.
Debby Blackmon teaches specials needs children at Westwood. She said the greatest challenge is ministering to the parents. “To me it’s as much about them as it is the children,” she said.
When all is said and done, showing the love of Jesus is the key, Culpepper explained.
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