Sonbeams Ministry: Worship for All
By Kelly Givens and Amy L. Sherman
Six years ago, on one of John Kwasny’s first days as director of Christian Education and Children’s Ministries at Pear Orchard Presbyterian in Ridgeland, Mississippi, a couple walked through his doors. They brought a question that in many ways would not only shape his ministry, but that of the entire church. “Are you,” they asked, “really interested in ministering to all of our children here, or just most of them?”
The couple—an elder of the congregation and his wife—had a 28-year-old special needs daughter. Like many families with a special needs member, they often felt as though more could be done to minister to families like theirs. They had come to John with a purpose, hoping this new ministry leader would see the importance of ministering to the disabled.
“Of course,” John recalls, “I told them I’m here to minister to all of the children of Pear Orchard. That’s when they got me [though], because then they said, ‘Did you know, in our nursery, we have three families touched by disabilities?’” Three young families at Pear Orchard did indeed have babies with Down Syndrome. That conversation led John to put together a special needs subcommittee of the children’s ministry.
This marked the very beginning of “Sonbeams,” a disabilities ministry that would eventually grow to impact all the ministries of Pear Orchard. When John and his wife Martie approached their Session (governing elders) with the idea of starting a disabilities ministry, they posed a question similar to the one that John had been presented years earlier. The Kwasny’s looked at their brethren and asked: “Do you believe that corporate worship is for the educable and the non-educable, or just the educable?”
Martie remembers the effect of that question. “It really challenged our elders as well as our staff on what that means. Who does God choose to have in corporate worship? It didn’t take long for us to all come to the conclusion that it’s not just for the educable, it’s for the [whole] Body.”
After leadership gave the green light to start Sonbeams, John and other interested volunteers kick-started things with a “Disability Awareness Weekend.” Partnering with the Joni & Friends International Disability Center, a speaker addressed the congregation on a Friday night, then met with the special needs committee and families. That Sunday, Pear Orchard’s senior pastor Carl Kalberkamp preached a sermon specifically on special needs. On Sunday night, church members heard testimonies from families touched by disability. “We hit the ground running,” John recalls. “People were excited.” In his sermon, Rev. Kalberkamp laid the foundation for what he hoped the church was beginning to learn and experience through the disabilities ministry:
We are learning a deeper side of the Lord’s character as the champion of the ‘least of these my brethren.’…We are learning what it means to bear another’s burdens and to see through another’s eyes in fresh ways. We are seeing afresh that ministry is rarely convenient, yet always joy-producing if the heart is humbled. We are learning that gospel fruit-bearing always requires identifying with those we would reach.
We are learning that launching new ministry avenues takes great patience, endurance, giving and extending forgiveness, etc. In other words, it can only be well accomplished in the strength of Christ, not the flesh.
We are challenged deeply to see that if we give all to the poor, have all faith and knowledge, but HAVE NOT LOVE, then we are only making noise.
With the encouragement and support of Kalberkamp and the congregation, the disabilities ministry outlined a vision and mission for Sonbeams. It focused on integration and inclusion, at first specifically within children’s ministry. Sunday school teachers were trained on how to integrate special needs children into classes, and an advocacy system was created whereby each family with a disabled child had an assigned advocate in the church. Advocates meet monthly with the family to see where the child is at and how Sonbeams could better serve and support the family.
On Sundays, volunteers serve on a rotation where they sit with children and adults with special needs through the corporate worship service, taking them out into a special room if there are disruptions. This system allows the family to worship freely, without the usual distractions. “We have many families that have come and they haven’t been able to worship together for fourteen years or more,” Martie explains. She remembers one missionary family that came to Pear Orchard for a time after serving in France. Their son, Michael, had a chromosomal disorder. “In Paris, [the ministry organization] really wanted to send [Michael] abroad and institutionalize him… That’s when they came off the field,” Martie says. “They stayed with us for about eight months before the Lord redirected them. They would worship with us [while we took] Michael and the family would worship together. It was beautiful, [the mother] had tears in her eyes when she said, ‘We are in ministry and we’ve never been able to worship together as a family.’”
As much as is possible, the focus of Sonbeams is on building and developing relationships and integrating special needs kids and adults into the life of Pear Orchard. They have worked hard not to make it about building programs. “These families are inundated by professionalism,” Martie remarks. “They don’t necessarily need professionalism at the church….so often we want to prepare a better program for these families and often we miss the family by replacing them with the program. And it’s not about a program; it’s about integrating them throughout the life of the church.”
After a while, the committee started focusing on respite care for community members. The best way they felt they could serve the community was by offering temporary relief to caretakers who often attend “24/7” to the needs of handicapped family members. These bimonthly “Sonbeams Night Out” have been a huge success in the community. The first night alone, ninety people show up. They average between 80 to 100 special needs kids or siblings, and about 150 volunteers from the church. Normally, more than half of the families that come are unchurched. It’s an event that ministers to the entire family touched by disability--the adult children who never get invited to parties or events, the siblings who never quite feel accepted or comfortable, and the parents, who are worn out from life’s daily burdens.
Rev. Kalberkamp notes these family difficulties in a video promoting Mission to North America’s (MNA’s) special needs ministry. “There are many challenges that those with disabilities face at the family level. These families have a daily-ness and a lifestyle that is impacted 24/7 by that need. Part of the unique struggle of beginning to move into that ministry with Christ’s heart, is to try to own what it means never to be able to walk away from that, and be able to come alongside folks and say, ‘How can we help you at that place?’
John and Martie both agree that church leadership, especially the leadership of Rev. Kalberkamp, has been crucial to the success of the ministry. “From what we hear [from] other churches,” John says, “the most disappointing thing for them tends to be a lack of embrace by the church leadership.” This has never been the case at Pear Orchard. There, elders, deacons and ministry leaders not only embrace the ministry; most are actively involved in it. John remembers one deacon who felt a strong call to reach out to a family in the congregation who had a disabled son. The mother was a single parent. The church had hired her to work in the nursery on Sundays. Because of that, her son couldn’t come to church. The deacon realized that the boy could really benefit from a male presence in his life, and so he and his family offered to sit with him at church, take him to Sunday school, and even take him to lunch with the family after church each week. “They did that for years,” John says. “We saw the change [it made] in his life.”
Rev. Kalberkamp, along with many other officers, will often show up at Sonbeams night out, helping out in different capacities and just loving on the kids. “[Rev. Kalberkamp] just has a heart of mercy, and so from the pulpit he really exudes that heart of mercy and that heart of grace,“ Martie says. Rev. Kalberkamp often incorporates the special needs ministry into sermons, highlighting how, because of the Fall, all of humanity is broken. “Some are just more broken in the physical sense,” John observes. For Pear Orchard, this emphasis on “getting the theology right” is one of the reasons the ministry has thrived. “Sonbeams gives us the opportunity to apply that which we know,” Martie says. “What I find in this ministry, as well as any other ministry, [is that] your knowledge always precedes your ability. That’s important. Our knowledge will always precede our grace.”
