How Does Your Children's Ministry Support Parents With Special Needs Children?

Loretta Baughan wrote a powerful and thought provoking post on Modern Day Eugenics on her blog, STRAIGHT4ward with Loretta Baughan. Please take a moment to read this post and then consider the following . . . 

• What are you doing to communicate the value of all babies, children and adults? Are you intentional about taking every opportunity to teach and show just as God loves all of us, you also made the choice to do the same? Do you make opportunities to stand for the value of all life?
• When a parent receives the difficult news their child will be born with challenges, what do you do to come alongside these parents and walk with them through the many decisions they will need to make. How do you support, encourage and help these parents? What do you do to make sure these parents know they are not alone?
• What do you do to walk with a parent as they raise their exceptionally challenged child? Do you provide a support base for the parents? Do you make sure these valued children are welcome in your children's ministry? Do you educate and train volunteers so they know how to best engage these children as they enter and move through your children's ministry?

What is your plan? If you do not have one, you will not only be unprepared when a family in your ministry faces this "road", but you will miss out on the opportunity to show to a watching world your ministry is real and it lives what it teaches . . . this being, just as "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world", so do you!