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istry Quick Reference guide to equip our volunteers.
We hadn’t planned to use it as a family-equipping tool,
but it became one when parents began asking for their
own copies and using the tips while discipling their own
children and leading their families in worship.
At Providence, we have chosen to invest in welcoming
people with disabilities and their families in
the church because we believe, in the words of 1 Corinthians
12:22, that the parts that the world calls weak
are actually indispensable to the body of Christ. As we
consider the Great Commission, we recognize that one
people group is absent from many churches—the group
of people with disabilities and their families. We follow
the Lord who taught the parable of the lost sheep (Luke
15:3-7, Matt 18:12-14) in which the shepherd leaves
ninety-nine others to pursue one lost sheep. If we modeled
our ministry after that parable, one family would
be enough to make special needs ministry worthwhile.
However, the prevalence is much greater than that: a
study published in the journal Pediatrics in May 2011
indicates that one in six children in the United States
has a developmental disability. 1
If it is worthwhile to pursue the one missing sheep
out of a flock of a hundred, how about the one family in
every six who is affected by disability?
ENDNOTES
1 C.A. Boyle, S. Boulet, L.A. Schieve, R.A. Cohen, S.J.
Blumberg, M. Yeargin-Allsopp, S. Visser, and, M.D.
Kogan (2011), “Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental
Disabilities in US Children, 1997–2008,”
Pediatrics 127:1034-1042.
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