Thank you to everyone who responded to my previous blogpost “Autism and The Church”. As a result of that article, I have been offered the opportunity to attend the Orange Conference Special Needs Track in Atlanta next week. This conference will have workshops designed to educate and assist churches in starting inclusion programs for special needs kids.
I am excited to attend and pass on the information I will learn with my church leaders. I will also be sharing my experience with you here the following week.
Thank you to Amy Fenton Lee from The Inclusive Church who extended this amazing opportunity to me. I am so excited and can’t wait to share with you all about my experience! Please keep me, and this conference, in your prayers.
“What I am realizing is this: As long as we parents keep our children at home, our church and our community are allowed to remain blissfully unaware of the autism epidemic. Families who have not been affected by autism have no real idea of how autism affects families and children, and if we don’t expose them to our children we will not make any progress with them.” – excerpt from Autism and The Church
~ B.K.
Have fun! What a great way to move forward!
What a gift for this to have happened so quickly for you!
Wonderful!
I’d like to leave a shout out to Greater Gresham Baptist Church. I called them to see the feasibility of our family attending and Melody, the childhood services coordinator there, was ecstatic to hear we had a child with autism.
The church does full inclusion of all disabled children. NOT JUST BABYSITTING! They MINISTER to the disabled individual–teach them and include them in everything. They not only make it possible for the children to attend church during services, but also other events such as vacation bible school. This church even has a separate vacation bible school just for special needs while also facilitating full inclusion in the regular one. That means two weeks of fabulous church-related activities for my autistic little one!
I’m just so impressed with them. SO IMPRESSED!
Been attending for two months now and I couldn’t be happier!
That is fantastic. I love that. I hope more and more churches will implement this kind of program. 🙂
I feel like I hit jackpot. God has really blessed us–and He blesed this church quite a bit too!