In this episode of Small Town, Big God, host Mikel Collins highlights the incredible journey of Cortney Jenkins, a special needs advocate and founder of Awe and Wonder. The episode covers Cortney's return to Rutherford County, her transition from a special education teacher to a full-time mom, and eventually starting a ministry-centric business aimed at creating special education curriculums for churches and Homeschooling. They discuss the unique challenges special needs families face in church communities and the importance of inclusivity. Cortney shares how Awe and Wonder provides adapted Bible stories and lesson plans, meeting a significant need across over 160 churches and 50 families. The episode emphasizes the importance of seeing and welcoming people with disabilities, and encourages proactive community involvement.

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00:00 Introduction and Episode Goals

00:27 Meet Cortney Jenkins: Her Journey and Business

01:57 Challenges and Successes in Special Education

05:18 Starting Awe and Wonder

10:02 Impact and Growth of Awe and Wonder

14:30 Challenges in Disability Ministry

16:27 Comprehensive Curriculum for Disability Ministries

25:00 Future Goals and Community Impact

27:42 Conclusion and Call to Action

Welcome to Small Town, Big God, where we share stories of God doing amazing things

in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

My name is Michael and today I have two goals for this episode.

The first is to share the story of a small one woman business right here in

Rutherford County that in its first year already began to have a national impact.

The second goal is to bring awareness to a problem that's

occurring in most churches today.

In just a moment, you're going to hear from Cortney Jenkins.

Cortney works with me here at Element Church in Forest City,

But she's also started a business called awe and Wonder that is filling a need

for churches all across the country.

I was born and raised in Rutherford County, so I've been

here pretty much my entire life.

I went to college at Liberty University, so lived there for about five years.

And then Jeremy and I got married and we did not have plans to move

back to Rutherford County, but the Lord had different plans.

And so we ended up back here and a part of Element Church I guess

13 years now that we've been back.

When you moved back, you, you were a special needs teacher.

Is that right after you came

you came back?

Definitely an overachiever there.

Just wanted to get all the things.

but it's interesting because all of those have really helped me in,

the path that God has taken me on.

And so when we came back to Rutherford County, there was a job that, Jeremy

had lined up that fell through.

And so we were just kind of scrambling to get a job just to make ends meet.

And so I got a job as a special education teacher's assistant

at a local middle school.

And That's kind of how things began for me with special education.

So if you haven't guessed already, awe and wonder does work in the field of

special education and Cortney's journey into the world of special education

really begins out of necessity after her husband Jeremy's job fell through,

but she quickly discovers that she has a knack for it and God starts opening

doors for her to continue down this path.

I was a special education, teacher's assistant for one year, and then

the administration approached me about.

going back to school and doing some graduate work in special education

and being a self contained teacher, the following year, there was

going to be an opening come up.

And so I prayed about that, really felt the Lord lead me to do that.

And so I ended up teaching for five years and going back to school, for

special education adapted curriculum.

I got my graduate certificate.

It's a few credits short of a master's, but they don't pay you

anymore in North Carolina if you have your master's, when you're teaching.

Cortney definitely knows what she's doing after having five years of experience,

plus her graduate certificate in special needs teaching, plus her degree in just

about everything related to ministry.

But even though she loves her job and is really good at it,

she still decides to step away.

So why'd you leave?

If you went back to school and studied this, why, why leave

the special education job?

Yeah.

So I

loved what I did.

It was.

amazing.

It was fulfilling, but I also knew that I really wanted to stay home with our kids.

And so Savannah, our daughter was four at the time.

I knew that she only had a year left before she started kindergarten.

We were talking about adding to our family.

And so I decided to quit my job and stay home with her.

And then I've stayed home until Luke went to kindergarten, really.

so I've worked at the church part time.

some in that season, but really left the job that I had because I

wanted, to more focus on our family.

Cortney leaves the classroom to focus on raising her kids without knowing

what the future is going to hold.

Because she knows that there are more important things in life than our jobs.

And it's an important thing to remember.

Especially for those of us working in ministry or another

job where our work means a lot more to us than just a paycheck.

But changing your life that much brings about a lot of uncertainty.

I didn't know if I would be coming back to the classroom.

I saved everything that I had because I didn't know, we didn't know if

this was something that I was going to be coming back to in a few years,

we didn't know if we were going to make it financially on one income.

So really, it was up in the air at that point.

We were just kind of walking on faith.

And when our youngest son, Luke, Was getting ready to start kindergarten.

I was really evaluating, am I going to go back to the classroom?

Am I going to teach?

And I didn't want to give up the flexibility that I had for our family.

I didn't want to give up my position at church because that

was really important to me.

And so I was looking at ways, how can I support our family and still be able

to stay home the majority of the time?

I did not automatically think of disability ministry.

I was thinking about one thing that I love to do was create

curriculum for my classroom.

And so I was looking at creating, science curriculum for middle

school self contained classrooms.

And I had been doing that, posting them online and selling those.

Cortney knows how to write curriculum, and she definitely knows

how to teach after the education and experience that she's had.

But running an online business is a totally different animal.

Just because you have the skills to make something really valuable

does not mean that you will actually be able to sell it really well.

So, Cortney did what she knows has worked very well for her in the past.

She went back and got an education.

I took a course on basically like running a business as a teacher

and they really talked about how can you provide something that is

unique to what you're gifted in.

And so I began evaluating.

You know, the Lord had really uniquely giving me two separate passions and I

had been trained in two separate things.

So, you know, I had the biblical studies background, but I also had the special

education background and that's not something that necessarily is common

for people to have both of those things.

And just really felt the Lord show me that there was a need for.

the use of special education practices to teach the Bible.

And, he just really impressed upon me, the need for reaching people with

disabilities, because I thought back to my time in the classroom and very

few, if any of my students actually got to go to church because it's so for

parents of special needs children to.

I feel comfortable going to church to feel like their child

is going to be taken care of.

there's many families who've gotten turned away from churches and there's

just a lot of discouragement there.

And so I really wanted to be a part of a solution for that.

A few weeks ago, Cortney made a post on the Awe and Wonder Instagram

account that said, I wish church was blank for kids with disabilities.

And then she asked people to go into the comments and fill in the blank.

Then, a few days later, she shared some of the things that people had said.

And I just want to take a second to read some of those responses to you, because

it really helped me to understand some of the discouragement and difficulties

that Cortney is talking about here.

Just listen to some of these.

I wish church was welcoming for kids with disabilities.

I wish church was equipped for kids with disabilities.

I wish church was prepared for kids with disabilities.

I wish church was Easy for kids with disabilities.

I wish church was community for kids with disabilities, and I wish church

was family for kids with disabilities.

Now, I'm a children's pastor, and I pray that our church is all of these things for

every special needs child that shows up.

And if it's not, I definitely don't have an excuse, because Cortney's

desk is less than a hundred feet from where I'm recording this right

now, so I have a secret weapon.

But Cortney is on a mission to give every church a secret weapon through

the form of the curriculum and the training that she's putting online.

But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.

We still need to hear about how Cortney got this business up and running.

So I was selling science resources on a website

called teachers pay teachers.

And it's like a big marketplace type website where teachers can upload their

lesson plans and resources and sell them.

So that was the platform that I was using.

And I just started to learn more about websites and.

being able to really form your own business and not depend on other

marketplace websites as much.

And so, in January of 2023, I officially started Awe and Wonder

and began the process of creating my website and developing resources

and all the things that come into, having Awe and Wonder

So it took six months from the time that I started the business officially until

I officially launched the curriculum.

I launched the website in March of 2023, and then I launched

the curriculum in July of 2023.

Cortney has been selling curriculum through Awe Wonder for just over a year,

and in that time, God has shown her just how badly churches and families in

our country needed something like this.

She now has over 160 churches and around 50 families all across the nation

and in Canada that are subscribed to her weekly curriculum, and some of

those are considered megachurches.

Yes, it's definitely grown more than I anticipated in a year

and very thankful for that and just excited to see what's ahead in this.

Thing that I didn't expect when I first started all in Wonder was

that it would attract some of the larger churches, mega churches.

And I think the reason for that is obviously they have more people,

they have more need right now.

And a lot of them had already made some proactive steps of being accessible

to students with disabilities or adults with disabilities.

Many of them have built amazing facilities that have like day programs and even

like housing programs for adults.

They have amazing ministries specifically for students with disabilities, but

they didn't have a curriculum and so they were trying to put things together.

Many of them don't have special education background, and so they

weren't really sure the best practices of how to do that effectively.

And so they were looking for something, and so we've thankfully

been able to provide that for them.

So what's the hardest thing over the last year of On Wonder?

What's been the hardest part of getting this going and keeping

it going and finding the success that you've, you have had?

think trying to balance it all has definitely been the

hardest part because it is a lot of work to do as one person.

And so there have been times where I feel like I'm constantly

in creation mode of curriculum.

And when you run a business, there's a lot more than just creating the curriculum

or creating whatever product it is.

There's marketing, there's just so much that goes into running

a business that, you know, I don't have a business background.

I'm trying to learn that.

I'm trying to, take online courses on how to run a business and how

to market and do all those things.

And so it's challenging to, Be the ones doing all of the work of product

development while also trying to do all of the other parts of the business and

while also still trying to have a life and raise a family and all the things

There are days when I'm working late into the night, to make this happen.

I'm trying to balance still working here at the church.

there have been things that I've had to let go of.

so I've been leading the women's ministry at Element Church for,

probably 11 years or so now.

And this year, my role in that has changed.

I'm still part of the women's ministry leadership team, but it's more focused

on the team and not my leadership.

and so that was a hard transition for me.

but what's interesting is a few years ago, during one of our services, it was during

an invitation after one of our services, I just broke down and felt the Lord tell

me that I needed to pray for the one to come, to take over the women's ministry.

And I was like, No, I still want to do this

But it's interesting to look back on that and

That he was preparing me that there would come a time where I'd have to release that

But I see the way that other women have ideas that are

different from what I would do.

And it's, reaching more women.

and so it's just really cool that God uses all people, to accomplish his purposes.

And so that's been cool to see.

Cortney's willingness to be obedient to God and to take on the challenge

of balancing her responsibilities, even though it means working late

nights and letting go of some things, has been met with success.

And it's a fantastic example of God using someone right here in Small Town Friendly

to make a national impact for his kingdom.

Churches all over the country are realizing that they should be

doing something for the special needs kids in their congregation.

But a lot of them are going about it the wrong way.

So I think that one of the biggest problems that I've

observed is that it sometimes just becomes babysitting.

it can feel like they do create some amazing spaces of like sensory rooms and

things like that, but it's just come in The focus is a lot on providing respite

for families and letting the parents go to church and not necessarily trying to

teach the Bible or provide access to the gospel for the students with disabilities.

And so that that has been a problem.

Ministry leaders don't have time to do all the things that they have to

do to be able to adapt curriculum.

And so they try, But they struggle with the balance of trying to reach

their families and encourage their families and be there for them,

but also at the same time, trying to take everything and adapt it.

And a lot of them don't have access to like the visual support

libraries and things like that.

They may not be aware of where to find, the visual supports

and things that they might need.

so those are some of the hurdles right now.

I think at some point, we've probably all made the mistake of thinking that we can

just make it work when we're faced with something that we really should have a

special tool or training to figure out.

A lot of churches don't think that they need special needs specific curriculum

because they don't have a lot of special needs kids in their classes.

But that is looking at the entire situation backwards.

You can't wait for special needs kids to start coming before you Accommodate them.

You have to create an environment and curriculum that's special

needs friendly first and Then they will be able to start coming.

And if you're not convinced that you need special needs curriculum for

special needs students Cortney's about to give you a rundown of everything

she includes in each lesson So listen closely and compare this to the lessons

in your current Sunday school class

So right now I am providing a comprehensive curriculum

for disability ministries.

And so what I do is I, have a scope and sequence that outlines all of the

stories that we'll be covering, each year.

So we were planned out through summer of 2026 at this point.

We go through the big story of the Bible once a year.

We focus on the Old Testament stories in the fall.

We hit Christmas stories at Christmas time.

We do New Testament stories in the spring, hitting Easter.

And then in the summer we're doing, more like life application,

Christian living type topics.

And so we are, providing adapted books, which I take scripture, whatever

scripture relates to that story.

And then I'm reading through the scripture and I'm creating a simplified

version of the text, embedding a lot of explanations of if there's a

non vocabulary word, like embedding explanation within the actual adapted

book, providing What we call repeated storylines, which are basically the main

idea that you want students to walk away from a specific story understanding.

And we add that to each page of the adapted book, so that they are

hearing that over and over again.

we're adding in the visual supports, which are like small symbols that.

a lot of students who are nonverbal use to communicate with AAC device, which is,

like an alternative way to communicate.

There's like iPads and things that use these symbols, for them to be

able to communicate their needs and wants and have conversations.

And so we utilize some of those same symbols to be able to help

them read the Bible stories.

so they get the adapted books that comes on four different levels.

So that you have students on different cognitive abilities, they're able

to use whichever one they need or mix and match as they need it.

honestly, I have found that most people, even people without disabilities can

benefit from visual supports Like we

think about, like Ikea.

Ikea is The best official supports because they don't write anything down when the

directions, they just show you pictures and we can figure out how to put things

together just by looking at the pictures.

anybody can benefit from a lot of supports that we

And then, um, they get lesson plans for the week and that includes

usually four different activities that really help prep the students to be

able to understand the Bible story.

So a lot of times it's teaching, concepts or A vocabulary word they may

not know or helping to build background knowledge through the activities and

then they present the Bible story.

We provide a Bible story, we call multi sensory storytelling script.

for each page of the adapted book, there is an object, a sound or a

movement that the teacher can, have the student do or touch it helps

them stay engaged with the lesson.

And so what I'm doing is I'm, I'm taking special education research that we know

works for storytelling and teaching literature to students with disabilities

and applying that to teaching the Bible.

these are strategies that we know work for this population.

And we want to leverage that to teach what's most important.

Okay, you just got the three minute version of everything Cortney includes

in her curriculum, and I know that she left some things out, so make sure you

go check out the Awe and Wonder website after you're done listening to this

episode, so that you can see just how much she's packing into each week's lesson.

I know that when I first started learning about Special Needs from

Cortney, I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of how to work with

special needs kids, but I was blown away to discover how little I actually knew.

And studies are showing us that most church leaders are the

same way I was before I started learning all of this from Cortney.

, Cortney: if we look around, unless the church is being super

intentional, we see that there is really a lack of people who have a

disability within our congregations.

And there's a study going around, that I've read that talks about

how people with disabilities are becoming one of the, least reached.

People groups in the world, because there's just not many people who are

coming to church, who are being reached, who are being intentionally, Targeted

who are being, there are not people who are seeing them as a people group

that they need to be reaching out to.

And when we think about not just them, but then their family, so it doesn't

just affect that one individual.

So what kind of impact is it if we're able to.

be more welcoming to people with disabilities in our churches.

how big of an impact can that make in our communities?

So when we look at statistics, there are so many people in the United States

who, identify as having a disability.

we look at our school systems.

Usually there's around 10 percent of students are receiving

special education services.

So our 10 percent of our churches, do they have people with disabilities?

We don't see that normally.

And so that is a red flag for us as a church.

So yeah, there is sometimes a lot of fear and misunderstanding, when you

see someone who has a disability.

And I think my biggest encouragement and one thing that I hear from parents

all the time is just seek to be a friend, even if you don't, No, or

you don't understand how to interact.

You can be friendly and you can be loving and you can ask questions.

They don't mind questions.

they're very open to that because a lot of times they just get

stares and they would rather.

Be able to have an open conversation and parents if the student is nonverbal

a lot of times The parents are very happy to talk about, you know, how

can I best interact with your child?

They would love to tell you that

alright, I know most of you listening to this are not gonna be working in a church,

but there's still things that you can do to help small town friendly, be more

welcoming to people with disabilities.

And a lot of it is just in the way that we think.

a Mindset shift that really needs to happen is this idea of being open

Presuming competence, and that's a really important concept in special education.

So just because a person is nonverbal or minimally verbal does not mean that

they do not understand or comprehend.

It just means that they have trouble, verbally communicating.

And so we can change our mindset of just because I can't communicate

in a typical manner with this person doesn't mean that they.

are not able to learn.

They are not able to understand that they're not even able to communicate

because there's obviously ways that you can communicate non verbally.

And so we just have to have a mindset shift of, I want to intentionally

figure out the best way to, be a friend.

I want to figure out a way that I can be support to this person and this

family and our church environment.

I want them to feel like they are a part of our community and a part of,

our congregation and not a project.

they don't want to be a project.

They want to just be a part of what you're doing and who you are.

Okay.

Pause.

Rewind.

This is our teaching moment for the day.

Let's hear that one more time.

they don't want to be a project.

They want to just be a part of what you're doing and who you are.

And,

Special needs families will often feel alone and feel like they don't

have any connection to the people that are outside of their family.

And when someone does make an effort to connect and build a relationship, it

can feel like that person is treating them as a community service project.

And nobody likes to be seen as a project for someone else to work on.

I know that it can be Initially, it's harder to connect with someone

that has special needs over somebody who doesn't, but everyone needs

to feel connected to a community.

That's why it's so important for Christians to be part of a church.

Everyone, regardless of race, wealth, ability, or special

needs, needs to be connected.

I think the fact that Awe and Wonder keeps growing at such an incredible rate

shows just how big the need for connection is among special needs families, and

Cortney is not slowing down anytime soon.

Yeah, so I definitely want to continue to bring on more churches

and, I see awe and Wonder being the go to resource for disability ministries.

Long term, I would say one of my big goals is to be able to

provide a more customizable subscription option for churches.

So right now, because it's still in the beginning stages and I'm still

constantly creating new curriculum, I can't offer to align with whatever

their children's ministry is already doing, because I just don't have

all of the stories ready to go yet.

but at the end of our first three year cycle, I hope to be able to offer, a

customizable subscription to where, churches could pick and choose the

four or five lessons for the month they need to align with their curriculum,

because that's something that churches really desire is to either use the

resources in their regular children's ministry environment to support the

students who are in inclusion, or just keep everybody On the same story.

like if, they have an older sibling or something in the regular children's

ministry, they want the parents to see that everybody's doing the same lesson.

so that's a long term goal for us is to be able to provide that flexibility.

but it will take some time to get those stories and everything created.

I think that one thing that I kind of see in the future as well is, you know,

I'm providing all of this for other churches and other communities, and I

have a vision to see more people with disabilities in our church, and Other

churches in our area more intentionally reaching people with disabilities.

And so that's another long term goal of All in Wonder is to be able to be a

resource, not only to other churches, but to our church and see our community,

our special needs community reached with the gospel.

there.

it would be to open your eyes to the people around you who are

impacted by disabilities and to be welcoming into your churches, not just

when they May possibly walk into your door, but if it's a neighbor, if it's

someone at your kid's school, wherever it may be intentionally reaching out

to them, being very proactive in, Hey, we want you to be a part of our church.

We want you to be a part of our community.

We see you, you're not alone.

and just that

the

families and the individuals impacted by in our community

would feel the love of Christ.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Small Town Big God.

Before you go, I just want to encourage you to follow Aw Wonder on Instagram,

where you can keep track of everything that Cortney's doing over there.

Also, you can follow Small Town Big God on Facebook if you want to

connect with me, or ask questions, or participate in the polls that I will

occasionally put out there to try and get feedback from you guys about what

you like and dislike about the show.

But thank you for listening.

Remember next time you encounter someone with a disability

here in Small Town Friendly.

To be intentional about making that connection, not about treating them

like a community service project, but about making a real connection,

letting them be a part of your life.

And thank you for being a part of Small Town Friendly.