When details about Xavier Yap Jung Houn’s killing of his twin 11-year old sons with special needs recently emerged, I was heartbroken.

News reports revealed the depths of stress and strain that he went through that prompted him to make such a terrible decision.

As a father of three children myself, it shook me to my core.

While no amount of pressure can ever justify physically harming one’s children, it would be callous and coldhearted to ignore the reality of the profound struggles of parents of children with special needs.

The news reports about the case left much unsaid. Notably, the mother’s side of the story was glaringly absent. Still, I could not help but wonder whether things would have turned out for the better if the family had received greater support from others.

After all, in my ministry experience at the Koinonia Inclusion Network, which advocates for and supports disability inclusion in churches, I know how concrete support from one’s church community can lead to long-lasting positive impact for people with special needs and their families (henceforth “special families”).

I believe that churches must take the initiative to offer such support as part of God’s mandate for us to love our neighbour.

Here are four common struggles that special families face, accompanied by some practical ways churches can support them through those struggles.

1. Help families combat social isolation

Families with special needs often experience social isolation. This isolation arises due to many reasons.

A substantial amount of time and effort is often needed to care for a child with special needs. Such care requirements can deprive caregivers of opportunities to relate with others.

Parents may be forced to work extra hours to provide the necessary resources for their child, leading to even less time for social interaction.

Family members may feel shame from having a child or sibling with special needs. Those feelings of shame might pressure them to withdraw from interacting with others to avoid embarrassment.

Some families may also feel that others do not understand their unique circumstances. They might self-isolate to avoid having to deal with others’ apathy.  

Given the nature of such social isolation, it is important for churches to have a proactive mindset. Churches must not expect special families to reach out to them for help.

Instead, like the Good Samaritan, churches should take the initiative to reach out to special families within their community and neighbourhood.

One of the most important ways of doing so is through establishing disability ministries, such as an inclusive Sunday school. Such ministries not only directly provide much-needed services to persons with special needs, they also provide an opportunity for churches to reach out directly to family members who might otherwise not be present at church.

For example, 3:16 Church runs Brave Club, a sports-based ministry for children with special needs. During each session, not only do the children enjoy activities organised for them by the church, their caregivers also receive a time of respite from caregiving.

Their caregivers also have an opportunity to make friends with others and share their frustrations. This creates a precious platform for the church to exercise pastoral care to special families, including non-believers.

2. Speak hope into despair

Another common struggle that special families face is despair.

I was particularly struck by a reporter’s description of Mr Yap’s mindset: “Although he knew the killings were wrong, he felt hopeless for his sons’ futures and wanted to kill them to relieve them of what he saw as their stress and mortal suffering.”

Regrettably, Mr Yap’s view of his children’s condition is not uncommon among special families. We can understand why such a mindset develops.

Since our attention is often drawn to what is different, our tendency is to focus on the deficits in people with special needs. We fixate on what they cannot do rather than what they can do. This results in parents having an overly-negative view of their children, leading to a sense of futility.

Churches need to actively find ways to shine hope into the lives of special families. One way that we can do so is by preaching about the eternal hope that Christians have when Jesus returns again. As promised in the Gospel, at that moment, there shall be no more “mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things (will) have passed away” (Revelation 21:1).

Other than eschatological hope, it is equally important for churches to provide other kinds of hope that are more immediate and tangible to special families. For instance, the hope that their children can (i) achieve significant developmental milestones, (ii) develop meaningful friendships with others, and (iii) be accepted by the church community. 

To be ambassadors of hope, one very practical act that churches can do is to empower other special families who have already weathered the storms of life to share their stories in the church. Such sharing can take place in church services, ministry events, or even small group meetings.

When one special family hears how another family has experienced the grace of God in their lives, their hope is often renewed. They learn that God can be real, present and powerful amid their distress.

This is one major reason that led me to put together a book of stories from Christians with special needs and their families, entitled Call Me by Name.

Time and time again, I have seen how these stories of God’s grace can strengthen the faith of special families who are struggling, transforming their perspective from bleak despair to confident optimism. 

3. Journey with them through denial

A third challenge that special families face is denial. Often, when a family finds out about their child’s condition for the first time, they respond by rejecting the news.  

Such denial may lead a family to ignore professional advice to seek early intervention for their child or a recommendation to put their child in a special education school rather than a mainstream school. Thus, denial can have very negative consequences for a child with special needs.

In such a situation, the first practical step that concerned churches need to do is to empathise with these parents. Any would-be counsellor within the church must understand that the process of reaching acceptance is very challenging. This is because coming to terms with a child with special needs often means relinquishing many deeply-held assumptions that the parents have about the child.

For example, parents whom I have spoken to have told me that the experience of finding out their child has special needs feels like their child has died. After all, their expectations for their child must be radically reconfigured. Life will never be the same again for the family.

Without empathy, we are likely to treat the parents as a problem to be solved, rather than persons to be loved. It is therefore critical that churches come alongside them with a deep commitment to patience and to listening. Pastoral care for such families is a long-term marathon of discipleship, not a quick sprint to so-called “acceptance”.

Another practical thing that churches can do to support the process is to normalise the participation of people with special needs in church life. One reason why families struggle with accepting their child with special needs is because they know that other people with special needs are often marginalised by society.

However, if a church is willing to allow people with special needs to be a regular part of church life, this goes a long way in modelling acceptance for special families. This means developing worship services and ministries that are inclusive of people with special needs, rather than only ministering to them in segregated contexts that separate people with special needs from the rest of the congregation.

Following this line of thought, one of the most powerful acts of normalisation that we can do is to invite people with special needs to serve in our churches. We must not forget that Jesus gives everyone a spiritual gift to build up the Church (Ephesians 4:7). People with special needs can also be disciples and disciple-makers. 

For example, among the churches that I am familiar with, I know one that regularly allows a person with Down Syndrome to serve as their drummer during worship services, another that involves autistic persons in Scripture reading, and yet another that encourages artists with special needs to use their skills to raise funds for missionary work.

4. Help them address their worries about the future

There is one more issue that parents of children with special needs often tell me about. That is, they worry about their child’s long-term future, especially about what will happen when they themselves have passed away.

Some questions keep on nagging at them: How can they ensure that their child is taken care of, especially if the child is not capable of independent living? To whom will they entrust to take care of their child’s daily needs? And on top of that, who will love their child as they did?  

Scripture teaches us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27). Hence, the Bible calls upon churches to share the burden of long-term care for special families, especially in the situation where the caregivers have passed away.

One way that churches can start to do so is by helping special families develop a network of relationships with others in the church. For while it might be beyond the means of a single individual to help a special family with their long-term needs, it is much easier for a larger group of brothers and sisters to do so.

Pastors and church leaders, being well-connected within their churches, are ideally placed to help special families build up such relational networks. One way that leaders can do so is by encouraging small groups in their church to “adopt” a special family. By doing so, each small group can become an effective nucleus of love and advocacy for the special family embraced by them.

When the care needs of a person with special needs becomes more intense, churches can partner with local adult disability homes – especially Christian-operated centres such as St Andrew’s Adult Home – to jointly care for a person with special needs. Such homes provide both professional care services and spiritual support. They are ideal partners for churches.

These homes would also benefit from churches volunteering with them to provide additional love and care for their residents.

Small things with great love

Many years ago, I remember the testimony of a missionary who said that, when his wife gave birth to his daughter with Down Syndrome, he went through an intense struggle. He honestly shared with me that he felt ashamed of his daughter’s condition.

In fact, he said to me: “I wish she had never been born.” I remember those words very vividly because I could never imagine wishing the same thing of my children. What a mighty struggle he must have had to feel that way!

Fortunately, due to the love and care of his Christian community, he testified that he gradually came to accept his daughter’s condition. And even more, he came to see his daughter as a precious gift of God. Later, he said to me that he would not exchange her for anything. What a remarkable 180-degree change of mind!

It is testimonies like these that convince me that churches, equipped with the Gospel of Jesus, can make a transformational difference in the lives of special families. When churches take their responsibility to “love thy neighbour” seriously, God works through them.

The truth is: We do not have to do great things for special families. We are simply called to walk alongside them in simple ways.

As the great humanitarian Mother Teresa reminds us” “We can do no great things – only small things with great love.”

For when we love special families within the Church, we love them with God’s love.  

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