I was called to ministry with persons who are mentally challenged while reading Corrie Ten Boon’s book, Common Sense Not Needed.  I was 25 years old, a wife and mother of two children and soon to be pregnant with my third child.  I was reading with interest Dante Corrie’s essay.  When I came to a certain spot, I began to weep.  I didn’t feel sad but I couldn’t stop crying.  I asked the Lord, ”What is wrong with me?”

Immediately, the Lord spoke to my heart.  “This is what I’ve called you to do.”  I thought, of course, that I was to begin immediately.  I tried but I couldn’t seem to find an inroad into this cloistered sub-culture.  I knew no one who did this and there were only two or three people (over two decades)  who were mentally challenged in the churches we attended.

It was 20 years later that I discovered The Special Gathering which is a ministry within the developmentally disabled community.  The minute I walked into a Special Gathering chapel service, I knew I’d come home. 

Several things had stuck with me from Dante Corrie’s book.  This little booklet discribed her ministry before World War II.  She used The Special Gathering model. (That is, we use her model.)  Each Sunday afternoon, she would gather all the mentally challenged people in her community for a church service and Bible study.  

One of the things she described made sense to me.  She said that often she would have a guest speaker who would come and speak to her members.  It would be a preacher or a Bible teacher.  She had come to realize that she preferred having a kindergarten teacher teach her members rather than a theologically trained preacher.  Her logic made sense to me.   

Preachers often become wordsmiths, needing eloquence to woe and to maintain their audiences.  Kindergarten teachers are forced to break down every day, complicated principles to simple ideas in order to teach their students.  She believed this was the reason that a kindergarten teacher seemed better equipped to teach her members the scriptures.  

Our members are adults who need to be taught with the same dignity of any other adult but they do learn on a third or fourth grade level.  Jan has no formal training but her love for mentally challenged people makes her a natural asset to our ministry.  She is a gifted teacher who strains to make the principles of the gospel clear to her students.  Her students are learning.

Do you find that one teacher is effective and the other does not seem to connect with their students?  Do you know why this happens?  Do you sometimes feel as though you are not able to reach your students effectively?  Do you know why?