On Sunday mornings, children, teens and young adults with developmental and physical disabilities gather to worship at the Rowen Glenn Center at Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Named in honor of Brentwood Pastor Mike Glenn’s granddaughter Rowen, who has disabilities, the center is a $6 million, 15,000 square-foot facility that serves 88 families in the Middle Tennessee area. The center, which opened its doors in January 2022, features classrooms, sensory rooms, interactive whiteboards, a kitchen and even an indoor playground.
Jill Hartsfield, the center’s programming director, says the facility offers caregivers a much-needed respite.
“We have parents who drop off their kiddos and go to a weekday Bible study and care for themselves, not only physically and emotionally, but spiritually, too,” she says.
The church built the center to accommodate its ever-growing special needs ministry, Hartsfield says. “The ministry grew from one classroom, one sensory room and a buddy system to a full hallway. So, then we had about four or five classrooms in the main part of the building.”
In 2019, a benefactor made a donation toward expanding the special-needs ministry space. Other donations to build the center followed.
Besides Sunday services, the center also provides a weekday program for young adults featuring recreational and leisure classes.
In one case, a mother approached the center to ask if her adult son, who still wore diapers, could enroll. While other similar day programs rejected him, the Rowen Glenn Center welcomed him.
“It has been wonderful to see him blossom and have a place to go that’s his own, apart from mom,” Hartsfield says.
While not all day program students are Brentwood Baptist members, she adds, a few of them have started going.
“It goes back to the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14 when the man goes out into the streets and invites the poor, the blind, the lame, and the cripple,” Hartsfield says. “Obviously those aren’t words we use anymore, but it’s welcoming people with special needs into the church. Our church.”
