Julie Keith shares ideas about connecting the church community to people with special needs.

What’s the need?

We had children with special needs who now were teenagers but had to attend a class designed for children. They needed their own place to worship and serve in.

What’s the idea?

To start a dedicated class for teens and young adults who have moderate to severe special needs. To provide aides and volunteers as well as to develop opportunities for the young people to be a part of worship service and to grow.

The great cellist Pablo Casals, in the story of his life called Joys and Sorrows, recalls the first time he went to church on Christmas Eve. He was five years old. He tells about walking to the church in a small village in Spain, hand-in-hand with his father, the church organist. As he walked, he shivered, not because the night was chilly, but because it was all so exciting and mysterious.

See that can over there? Why don’t you pick it up?

It was the third soda can Barb Reindel had walked by that morning on her prayer walk, and she recognized the insistent voice in her head as the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit. Bringing it home, she told her husband, Louie, “It seems that God wants us to pick up cans.”

Louie Reindel pastors the Church of the Nazarene in Bradford, Ohio. He and Barb have served this small congregation since January 2007. A bivocational minister, Louie also engages his community by driving the local school bus.

We live in a world inundated with fear. A sense of danger lurks in the shadows. Our comfort zones evaporate all around us. Muggings, drive-by shootings, workplace violence—we can feel our security threatened by hateful hands. And unbelievably, now we must face the reality of global terrorist threats inflicting harm on innocent citizens. Questions roll around in our heads as we attempt to negotiate daily life. Is it safe to take public transportation? Should I cancel my next airplane trip? Can I safely take my family to a sporting event at the local stadium?