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Special Needs Children Need Spiritual Care, TooHARWICH, MA (August 8, 2006) - Kathy O’Donoghue has worked with special needs children as a foster and adoptive parent, as well as a worker in the social services system. Now she wants to help churches care for the spiritual needs of the children and their families.“I am stunned at how few churches understand the enormity of the task of caring for children with special needs,” says O’Donoghue, a Covenant minister serving as the director of Christian education ministries at Pilgrim Congregational Church. “I think it is a matter of education for a congregation rather than a lack of desire on their part. “To minister to those with disabilities is part of our mission as Christians and as a church,” she continues, “since all children are God’s children, regardless of their cognitive, emotional or behavioral challenges.” O’Donoghue and her colleague Vici Riel-Smith have set up a new website to help family members, churches and others interested in helping people with disabilities. The site, An Tearmann, is based on the Gaelic words that mean “sacred space.” Visitors to the site will find book reviews and links to workshops and conferences, as well as encouragement. Books reviewed on the site include, The Secret Spiritual World of Children and Autism and the God Connection. O’Donoghue also wants to work as a consultant to churches that want to improve their care for those with disabilities. The former director of field education for North Park Theological Seminary hopes to promote “radical hospitality.” “Radical hospitality is opening ourselves or our homes or our churches to all those who seek to be cared for,” O’Donoghue says. “Sometimes we believe we are hospitable, but it is to our friends or those we like or understand or with whom we agree, but we know in the scriptures that Jesus did not spend time with the chosen group, and we should remember that when we are deciding with whom we will associate.” Churches, she hopes, will better understand “that all of us desire to be recognized as a special child of God with gifts and talents different from the other and that all of us— ‘abled’ or ‘disabled’—make up the full body of Christ. Without all our parts, we are less of a body.” Congregations that want to help disabled children still may not be reaching many because they focus only on disabilities that are visible, such as those that require wheelchairs. She notes that many people with autism, for example, may seem “normal” but also have special needs. O’Donoghue has worked with people having a variety of disabilities over the last 25 years. She has worked at a school for the blind and a group that helps high-functioning adults in group homes. She also has served as a service coordinator for the Massachussetts Department of Mental Retardation and she started The Home for Little Wanderers, which provides therapeutic foster care. Over the years she has cared for 12 children with special needs, adopting two. “Children with disabilities have a deep spirituality and can express this in their own way when they are nurtured in an environment that assures them they are loved by God exactly as they are,” O’Donoghue says. “This is the same need we all have.” Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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