Today’s guest is special needs ministry leader from Brentwood Baptist Church in Tennessee, Tiffany McCullough. She discusses the joys and challenges of special needs ministry, the importance of eduating, equipping, and allowing all friends to find community, serve, and be a visible part of the body of Christ.
June 14, 2022; Ep. 90
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If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Today’s guest is special needs ministry leader from Brentwood Baptist Church in Tennessee, Tiffany McCullough. She discusses the joys and challenges of special needs ministry, the importance of eduating, equipping, and allowing all friends to find community, serve, and be a visible part of the body of Christ.
June 14, 2022; Ep. 90
Timestamps & Key Topics:
Episode Links & Resources:
If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Sara Clime 0:00
Hi, and welcome to Take Heart. Our mission here at Take Heart is to offer encouragement, give hope and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. We have some free resources for caregivers, and we would love to share them with you. You can find them on our website at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com\resources.
Hi, it's Sara, this week and we are so glad that you're here. We are in the middle of our summer interview series, and we have some phenomenal guests. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Tiffany McCullough. Tiffany is a full-time special needs minister at Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, Tennessee. Thanks for being here, Tiffany.
Tiffany McCullough 1:46
Absolutely, happy to join.
Sara Clime 1:48
We are so happy that you're here. This is just a topic that is near and dear to our hearts. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your family and how you are apart of the disabilities special needs community.
Tiffany McCullough 2:04
I started my career in the 2000s, in the public school system, and was a special education teacher, was a behavior specialist for a little bit of time, and then an assistant principal. The first chunk, 16 years or so of my career was completely in that special education world in our public school system and working with the friends, working with parents, being a part of IEP meetings, school teams and spending the day together, teaching and looking at curriculum, IEP goals and all of that. Then about six years ago, God totally changed my path. Brentwood Baptist was taking that first step towards hiring a staff member, specifically to blaze a trail and start really putting intentional efforts into special needs ministry. I was hired in the fall of 2016 to be the special needs minister here at Brentwood Baptist.
Sara Clime 3:30
Great, what a change from special education to ministry, that's quite the leap.
Tiffany McCullough 3:38
It was a leap for sure. It was fun, my brain is constantly looking for new challenges and new things. The funny part of that story is just that I was completely fine where I was and happy. I had a couple of folks share the job description with me and they said, "I know you're fine, and you're not looking, but I couldn't help but send you this job description." It's funny when we take the one step of faith and we have no idea. We think the next 20 years are going to look a certain way with our careers, and our path, and God totally changed it. He shows up and blows us out of the water usually. It's way greater and more wonderful than what we imagined or could have ever possibly dreamed. It's a sweet reminder to me that when we are available and we trust and we take that next step God is always going to be there. He's going before us. When we trust that, rest in that, and kind of press into that, the ways he shows up are just remarkable. You look back and you think there's no way, that had nothing to do with me. That was completely the Lord. It's been a wild ride for five and a half years now.
Sara Clime 5:18
That is great. What is one of the ways that with this transition that your faith has grown as a result of that change, or the journey through what you've done? I'm sure when you first started, they were just kind of starting to step out. It's not like you walked into an established ministry that was going smoothly. I'm sure you had a lot of trials, may be able to set it up the way you wanted to also.
Tiffany McCullough 5:46
It was definitely a really interesting time. We had a handful, maybe four families. There had been a person on staff in a part-time role that had been just trying to dip the toes in, and kind of have some volunteers and some buddies working with friends. There had been efforts and movements, and the church was recognizing these families are coming to church here, or are already here. We want to take more of a proactive approach rather than a reactive way. When I stepped in, we had a real small number. It's been neat to see how so many things have gone into where we were then and where we are now. God has literally laid out things before us at each season, at each turn in the ministry, as we've grown, as we've learned, as we've had all kinds of challenges and hurdles to overcome. In the way we've done that God's been there every step of the way. I think for my faith, back to your question, the ways it has grown, I mean I feel like I could write a book on that. I think one of the biggest ways God has shown up to me personally in this professional role is just that if we will get out of the way, and trust, God shows up. Obviously, in our careers, in our jobs, there's things we must do every day. We must show up, and we must do things, accomplish tasks, have responsibilities, and rise to expectations. At the end of the day, when we trust and we get out of God's way, and say, "This ministry, these families, our volunteers, this church, this is yours." When we really take time to listen and pray that we just kind of come along with what God's already up to. It's not what Tiffany's plans were for this ministry. It's what God planned. Now a team of folks that I have working with me, we just kind of come alongside the Lord and say,"Thank you for letting us be a part." As I said, a minute ago, it's so much greater than what I could ever dream up. It's impactful for families, and it's sustainable. God keeps showing up. I think for my faith, it's been good for me. I'm very driven, very Type-A, so I've got to have my lists, my planner, and my post-it notes and everything. This job, there are days where the Lord's almost chuckling probably at me, like really Tiffany, okay. Now, the post-its go out the door, the planner doesn't matter, and the schedules are tossed. Then when we look back at that, God's just shown up in the neatest ways, so. I would say, that's probably one of the biggest things I've been grateful for, for sure.
Sara Clime 9:35
That's great. I love when you said that sometimes we just need to get out of the way. I think that that's so true in so many aspects of our lives.
Tiffany McCullough 9:45
God doesn't need me either. I mean, I laugh about that, but I feel like he's so...I have to remind myself how desperately he wants to show us, how lavishly he loves us. We don't give him space to do that enough. I don't.
Sara Clime 10:10
No, I don't. I've actually said before that there are times where I feel like God's like, okay, when you're done...
Tiffany McCullough 10:17
Let me know,
Sara Clime 10:18
Let me get down to business because I'm gonna wait until you spin your wheels, Sara. What is one of the things about the ministry right now that gives you the biggest joy?
Tiffany McCullough 10:29
Again, there could be so many things. I think one of the biggest things that come to my mind that is life-giving and brings a ton of joy is when you have a family...We have an intake process. When families express interest, when volunteers want to be a part of the ministry, we have a very specific way that we do intake and the way we talk to them. We have meetings and the paperwork they fill out. In those meetings, we learn so much about where they've come from, where they are currently, and where they hope to be able to finally plug into the church. When you see a family walk in on that first Sunday morning, or come to a respite night on a Friday night, and you know that they haven't gone out to dinner on a date in three years. They're about to have three hours to themselves on a respite night, where the two of them can go to Target, go to Starbucks, or to dinner, take a nap do laundry. One mom says, "I go and get all my laundry done, I change the sheets, I unload the dishwasher with peace and quiet. It doesn't take much. When they come back, and they have been able to sit in a worship service, or they have been able to be in a community life group as a couple, or serve in the choir, or be in the parking lot on duty...When they are able to go press into what God has for them not as a special needs parent, but as a thriving member of a church body and a community. When they come back, their face...it's all I need. Because we have given them such a gift that. We had a family a couple of weeks ago say, "We literally have not gone out to eat as a couple and been to church where we've gone to the worship service and not had to worry for eight years." I cannot grasp or fathom what that does to a couple and the pressure and the way that weighs on them, not having that quality time. I think as a special needs minister when we're able to free up the rest of the family when we're caring for the individual, whether it's a preschooler through adult. We serve, cradle to grave. When we care for that individual well, we free up every other member of that family to be plugged in the way God has laid out for them. That has nothing to do with him being, "Well, I'm Johnny's sister, so I always have to take care of Johnny when he has a meltdown in church," or "My son, I always have to leave the service." You hear that all the time. Families have told me that they visited certain churches, and they don't even get in from the parking lot before somebody's told them, "Hey, we just can't. We don't know how to do this." To me, that is one of the biggest joys is that by doing special needs ministry well, to a community and to a church body, you not only are caring for that individual, it goes so far beyond that because their siblings and their parents and their caregivers, now they can all go do their thing. That is life-giving for sure.
Sara Clime 14:32
I love that. That's what we have found in our ministry as well as the biggest joy that I find is that these parents comment, I can actually have margin in my life, even if it's for an hour on Sunday, just to sit in that space with God. I think others just don't understand that's not a possibility for some of us. We just cannot do that. As you said too is that sometimes there are people in leadership or even regular congregation members that don't grasp that concept. There there is a phrase that you don't know what you don't know. Whenever my son was first diagnosed, he was diagnosed around the time that he was seven. There was another younger couple in our church that gave birth to their daughter, and she has cerebral palsy. Our church rallied around us. They're like, what do you need? It was like an open invitation. So as we were getting acclimated to what we needed, my son's condition is degenerative. At first, I was like, nothing's really changed, but I know he can't go up steps. That's really all I know, at this point, but I'll know more in a month. I was able to go to them. Then my friend and co-leader of this ministry, Leslie, and I looked at each other one day, and we were like, I know all churches aren't like this. I mean, not that they don't want to be like that, but again, they don't know what they don't know. Our church just happened to have two very outspoken women that were ready to say, "Oh, this is what we need." I went to leadership, my husband and I did, and we described what the diagnosis was. Nobody had ever heard of it before. It's rare. I think knowledge is power, and I think that it takes the stigma out of it because there's so much going on in our secular society of litigation, lawsuits, all of this, and I don't want to touch this because it is so important. It is so intricate that I think people who don't know what they're doing are fearful of that. I think special needs ministries, one of the biggest things is it takes that fear out of it. With all of that said, how could our listeners right now... are going to church, and they know that the church wants to help, but they don't know where to start. How can they help the leaders and the church family, in general, know more of what we need?
Tiffany McCullough 17:20
I think that. I know this is kind of what happened here and how it kind of got the ball rolling. I'm sure it does in many churches. A few prominent families had been in the church for a long time, and as those kids were getting older, I think it was just becoming more and more apparent. They really leaned on, especially in those early days, and still do those people in your church that are special ed teachers that are OTs, that are PTs, and that are classroom, early childhood teachers, or folks that work at a pediatric hospital. If they touch somehow the disability world, in their job, those are the people that the church can lean on first, because they have the knowledge. They can bring awareness. I think the biggest thing that I still do to this day, is we never stop educating, equipping and bringing awareness. That has to be a top priority for churches. It must be a top priority for leaders that want to step into this and that want to lead a ministry, whether you are paid or you're not paid because churches are in all different spots. I think one of the reasons our ministry, God has blessed it so immensely I know is because we spent that first year, year, and a half. I had to educate the staff. We had to start there. That was ground zero. You can't just spout knowledge and expect people to listen, you've got to explain the why. For me, the opportunity is you get to articulate why this need exists and how these folks you're talking to are able to meet that need. If I stand up in front of a group of people and say, "Well, you don't have a master's degree in this. You don't have classroom experience." No, that doesn't matter." If you educate them here's what disability is. Here's how to talk to a family when they walk up to you at Guest Services. Here's what it looks like to bring a buddy with a friend into the student ministry so that he can be successful in an eighth-grade life group. Here's what it looks like to help an adult find a life group that gives him community. All those things. When a new staff member comes along. I mean, you are constantly educating all the volunteers that are in a church, your ushers, your deacons, your parking lot guys, your facilities crew. They've all got to know the why. I think the other thing is making our friends who are a part of this ministry visible throughout the church. Removing that fear. Your friends with special needs should not be down in back hallway, in the corner next to the janitor, by the closet where all the extra furniture goes. Those friends need to be greeting and welcoming. The friends that can I mean, I have some friends who are never going to be greeters because that would be really hard for them and super overwhelming, and they wouldn't be successful. If we have friends that we can put, we can find places where they feel valued, and they belong in this body, and in this community at our church, then we are educating the rest of the church when they see that friend by saying, "Hey, this is our friend Susie, and she is welcoming you to the service today. Suzy may be nonverbal, but Susie has a AAC device, and can communicate and hit a button and say welcome to Brentwood Baptist." There are just all kinds of ways that we can remove fear. As you said, people don't know what they don't know. When we remove the fear by putting those friends in spots where they feel, they actually matter here. They're not being babysat. We don't do that. When they come here, they know I'm a part. I matter. When I show up, I'm needed. I have a job to do. I have a place with peers that is fun and safe for me and supportive. Whatever that looks like because anybody listening that knows anything about people with disabilities. When you met one person with disabilities, you've met one person. When you've met one with autism, you've met one on one, there's not one blanket way that we meet the needs of our friends. We meet them where they are.
Sara Clime 22:52
What is one of the biggest obstacles you have now? How big is your ministry? Now? I know you said originally you started with about four families.
Tiffany McCullough 22:59
We are serving over 80 families.
Sara Clime 23:08
That's been what, five and a half years, you said? That's great.
Tiffany McCullough 23:13
Say it one more time? What's one of the biggest obstacles? Right?
Sara Clime 23:18
Yeah, what's one of the biggest obstacles that you see when leading a special needs ministry?
Tiffany McCullough 23:24
Something that can discourage us at times is we can't ever do enough, right? There are always going to be ways we can help. Ministry can definitely become all-consuming, and you feel like we have to do this, and we have to be on 24/7. We have to solve every single problem., and every family's got to be perfectly happy. I think at the end of the day, we do our very, very best to meet the needs God has put before us, but we have to then set that down at the feet of the Lord and go home to our families and what our lives look like outside of this place, and outside of this ministry and trust that God continues working.
Sara Clime 24:22
I think a good takeaway for our families that are listening, caregivers, and moms, especially that who are listening, I think a good takeaway from that is to understand that those in leadership positions at churches have the best intentions. They want to serve you. They want to do more. Again, they might not know what they don't know. Everyone has limited resources and that's why as a body of Christ, we are unified and pulled together. I know when you are fighting for your child, day in, day out, day in day out, it can be hard to say, okay, yeah, I'm gonna get up early on Sunday and fight to get in the parking lot to get in the church. It's hard to rationalize that in your head, but everything that you have talked about today, I just love. I think it just gives a really good perspective of how important this "optional" attendance is. A lot of people say that church is optional. I think everything that we've talked about today really kind of proves that it's not. I know not everybody has special needs ministry, I live in a smaller town. There was not anything. It was a 45-minute drive to the closest special needs ministry, so we started it, and we started small. Going back to something you said, and anybody who's listening to that is sitting there thinking, we have no special needs ministry. I don't live in a big town, the nearest one is 45 minutes away, we can't do that on the weekend, I get you. I understand. But you can start it. We have a special needs ministry by two special needs moms, and we say the best thing and the worst thing about that is that it's two special needs moms running a special needs ministry. It's good and bad. We didn't start with the sensory room. We didn't start with all of that. That has been a process. We started with a need, and we started with leadership and saying we need you. We started with vulnerability, and we started with knowing that we are called to be the body of Christ. Those are the two most important things that you need to start that ministry.
Tiffany McCullough 26:40
They should start with the need, and then with education, and awareness. If we don't create the awareness, we then are just a reactive church, reacting to a problem, problem, problem. I think when we look at it and say, "Wow, what an opportunity instead of, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?" We have an opportunity here to educate, equip, bring awareness, and respond to something that God has put before us. I would say one thing I would absolutely want moms to hear because I've been on the other side in the public school world, where I also see them fight so hard. I'm sure with all of the moms listening, they have all had such a magnitude and a wide array of experiences - good and bad. I would say, I love when moms, and I say moms because it's typically the mom, let's be honest. When the mom or dad's defenses are so heightened in the intake meeting, and their dukes are up. You know they have had to fight tooth and nail and advocate for all the things. Then they come in here and it's just, ah. We don't have an IEP. We're gonna love your friend, your kiddo, or your adult. We're going to meet them where they're at, and we're going to learn a little bit about Jesus, and let's have fun. When families can let go of some of that and trust us, we know what we're doing. We're not perfect, but we actually want to care for and love their kiddo. It's like they don't know what to do with that. If we can keep letting churches know that this is possible, and what a difference it can make when families and parents can just exhale, one day a week or two days a week, or whatever it is. It can just literally change the path for a family.
Sara Clime 29:07
That is such a great point. With that, I want to close by telling our listeners right now. I know we have had people come to us that have said, "I was asked to leave my church because my child couldn't handle it. My child was acting out or was too verbal in church or whatever." I know a lot of you listening have church hurt. A lot of you have that. You find someone like Tiffany in a church that is willing to just walk beside you. You are able to remove yourself from that posture of defensiveness. It is possible. If there's ever a time to be persistent, in finding the church home that not only wants your child there and wants you there but needs you there. They need that wholeness in their community. It will be so worth it. With that, Tiffany,. I so appreciate you coming on and just telling us, that we don't get to talk to ministers very often. As we said, there's something that you hear more and more. I think that it's wonderful, and what you're doing is wonderful. We really appreciate that. I'll have a link to your church's website. I know that you have some things. If you guys want to see what they're up to. Sometimes it's easy to Google's special needs ministry, and then you can get some ideas, reach out to me here. We will point you in the right direction. If nothing else, we will pray for you over that. Tiffany, if you would close this out in prayer, thanks again for being here. It was such an honor.
Tiffany McCullough 30:56
Absolutely. Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity today to talk with Sara and to be so reminded of who you are, and who you desire to be in our lives. Thank you for the ways that you show up day after day, and are so faithful in the ways that you love us, the way you seek out a relationship with us. in the way you provide for us. I asked specifically today, God, that for each listener, for each mom, for each caregiver, for each parent who is tired and weary, and exhausted and worn out, I pray that they will feel you today in a new way. Be so real and so evident to them and to their heart that they are blessed, that they are encouraged, that they are reminded of the truth. It's so easy to believe lies and things that Satan would love to just capitalize on in our lives, in our minds, and in our hearts. God, conquer all of that, and give us the courage, to believe the truth and to believe your word, and to believe who you are, in each of our lives, in our families, and for our kids. Thank you again for this opportunity. May each person listening that has questions, that needs answers, that needs help, that needs guidance, point them to Sara and her team, to me and my team, to anyone, who is on this path that can be a resource and help. Would you point them exactly where you need them to be so that they are supported and loved on this journey of caring for an individual with a disability. Thank you again, for the ways you've blessed us, and may we be more like you as a result of our time together today. In your name, amen.
Sara Clime 33:30
Thank you for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you're walking on this journey with us. If you have any questions or comments, follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from you.