While reading the Religion news online today I ran across this story about curriculum designed for autistic children and their parents. One of the ongoing challenges of living faithfully as a community is how we communicate and share our core beliefs, values and practices with new generations.
This news is an interesting balance to the report of a Minneapolis pastor who sought a restraining order against an autistic boy who had certain physical challenges in the context of the service, was disruptive and allegedly assaulted another child.
I’m not saying that being inclusive and dealing with such issues is going to be without problems or risk but it does seem to me that the imperative of Jesus in the the Gospel of Matthew, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ (Mt. 19:14).
If any of you have expereience and strategies for dealing with issues of inclusion with special needs kids (either physical or developmental). I’d love to hear them
No special ideas from me, only the experience early in my ministry with an autistic teen who fairly often would laugh out loud during my sermons. He never got too disruptive, as I recall, and his Dad was good at managing him (as was his sister, who would just whack him sometimes!). It requires a higher tolerance on the part of worship leaders to press ahead, but it’s an important thing to do. A little disorder in worship is okay in service to the gospel. What to do with more disorder, I don’t know. There’s probably a line somewhere, but each congregation is different.