With one hand outstretched and the other on our hearts, we commission our team of faithful, dedicated servants spearheading the Special Abilities Ministry. We say yes and amen as Pastor Janette prays, “May we welcome, engage and listen to voices of people living with disabilities and be profoundly surprised and transformed by what we discover about them, ourselves and God as we do.”
Though Sunday marks the official date we launched and commissioned this ministry, the dream actually started five years ago in a ramen shop.
“You know,” Pastor Bryan had said to Caroline, “God has been placing children with special needs on my heart,” as they were having lunch after a conference. Immediately upon hearing this, she began to cry. God had been placing these children on her heart as well, and as they came into agreement, over the course of a few weeks, God began to open doors through relationships—including a divine appointment and connection with Matt Mooney of 99 Balloons. It was through 99 Balloons that they began to download the dream for rEcess, a program provided by the organization for families of special needs.
rEcess is a free, monthly respite program offered to serve families with children with special needs. It allows parents to experience Sabbath rest while trained volunteers watch and play with their children in a kind and safe environment.
As God began to move, He started to place this heart for families and children with special needs into the members of the church. Two years after God had planted that seed, Ekko launched our very own rEcess in August 2015 with ten volunteers and two children. Since then the ministry has grown as Ekko has been able to offer God’s rest to more and more families every month.
“Rest comes when you feel like you belong and that you are loved. That is the greatest mission of the church; it is to express God’s love to His people,” Pastor Bryan said of the ministry. Rest through unconditional love and belonging is the hope that drives and shapes us in rEcess. It is about serving the marginalized in our community by providing them with the opportunity to experience God’s Sabbath and His love for them.
This is the metric of success in rEcess.
It isn’t measured by the conversion rate of families or the number of them attending, but rather, it is in incalculable rest experienced by the parents and by the children that we freely offer.
And as we do so, month after month, we find ourselves being changed. After each child has left with lunch box in tow, shoes still untied and precious art pieces made from the day, we also come away filled with the fullness of God having been a conduit of His love and His eyes to see His children and His people.
We are reminded of how much God desires rest and joy for us as well.
We come away becoming more of who God created us to be.
“To reveal someone’s beauty is to reveal their value by giving them time, attention, and tenderness. To love is not just to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell them that they are special and worthy of attention.”
― Jean Vanier
In the Gospel of Luke, we hear a story about friends who took their paralyzed friend to see Jesus, but when they couldn’t find a way to get him into the room, they did something remarkable, and, frankly, pretty inconvenient: “When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.”
Now, imagine the sweat and exertion of lifting your paralyzed friend up a ladder (careful not to drop or break him), the heat and cuts from the tiles as you worked to remove them.
Imagine the courage and the conviction you must feel as annoyed glares and shouts come from those below as you maneuver your friend down. Â
What they do in this story was not easy, nor was it careless.
This was a profound illustration of deep love and devotion for a friend and a rooted faith and trust in Jesus.
All they knew was one thing: they just needed to get him into the room with Jesus.
And if they could just get their friend into his presence, that would be enough. Â
Caroline said during the commission, “Through our Special Abilities Ministry, we want to remove any of the barriers that hinder families and children from experiencing God’s love and serving in the body.” Through this ministry, this is our way of removing the tiles from the roof to create the space for our children with all abilities to get into the presence of Jesus. Because much like the friends in the story, “when they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd,” we are choosing to make a way.
“Only 5 to 10 percent of the world’s disabled are effectively reached with the Gospel, making the disability community one of the largest unreached — some say under-reached — hidden people groups in the world.”
— Joni Eareckson Tada
Our Special Abilities ministry is an extension of the ministries that we currently have through rEcess and Buddies. In Buddies, each child with special abilities is paired with a buddy for that particular Sunday in order to nurture a love and joy for each individual child to encounter God in their own, beautifully unique ways. This also allows newcomers and members to attend Sunday worship gatherings with the confidence knowing their child with special abilities is paired with a trained volunteer who will lead their child through an accessible and comfortable experience at church.
The beating heart behind Special Abilities Ministry is our unrelenting desire to become more like Jesus. In the Gospels, we see our Savior leading a hospitable ministry among people with disabilities. Discipleship isn’t just about what you learn—it’s about what you do. And when we do the joyful work of making space for others who have been hidden or overlooked we, in turn, are transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, the one who we were always meant to image.
Our dream is that our church would be a welcoming, non-intimidating place where families and children with varying abilities can belong and become the people God intended them to be.
“Through the Special Abilities Ministry, we are opened to the very heart of the Gospel and to new ways of being, thinking and living in God’s fullness of life,” Pastor Janette prays. And when the sons and daughters of God lean into our differences and learn to be hospitable to all the facets of humanity within Jesus’ body, that is when we begin to grow in our understanding of who God is and who we are in Him.
If you’re a member of Ekko and would like to participate in our mission to be a hospitable church to people of all abilities, you can serve as volunteers in rEcess and Buddies. You can also help us create a sensory room for our children with special needs by following this link.
To hear a podcast of the talk with Pastor Isaac, Pastor Bryan and Caroline Pae on the origins of rEcess, you can listen to that here.