St. Mary Immaculate Parish in Plainfield, IL, located about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, had a problem that many congregations are all too familiar with: The church and campus buildings had roofs that leaked and needed replacing. In the face of tough economic times, the congregation came up with a unique way to raise the funds. Their “Raise the Roof” campaign helped put a new roof over their heads and also got parishioners personally involved. St. Mary Immaculate Parish is a congregation of some 27,000 members in Plainfield, part of the Catholic Diocese of Joliet, IL. The church building opened in 1993 following a devastating tornado that hit the area in 1990, and other buildings followed as the church has grown during the past 20 years.

I remember meeting a single mom and her two sons after a church service one weekend. The eldest did not have a disability but the younger son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder with Psychomotor Retardation at the age of three. As I grew to know this mom, she shared that they had been asked to leave many churches because of her youngest son. The churches didn’t know how to care for him and instead of learning how to serve these families, they excluded them. In 2008 the UPI Health News published that 14 percent of children in the U.S. had special needs. The article stated that one in five families have a special needs child. The extra care needed to meet the demands of special needs children can be overwhelming for a family, and to be excluded from a place of worship can be disheartening to say the least.