Maybe you have adults and/or children who struggle to stay seated or to cope with the sights, sounds and duration of a full church service. Adapt to their sensory and emotional needs. Consider streaming worship services into a quieter, sensory-friendly room. This can also be a space where people can move around if needed.
We’ve seen success with having loving, prepared “seat buddies” to sit with people who struggle to sit through or participate in the service. They have an emotional and physical anchor that helps them feel secure, heard and known.
You might also feel the most urgent need around educating your congregation more broadly on the needs and special gifts of people with disabilities. Make inclusivity part of the message they hear during sermons. Build up a volunteer ministry to serve those with special needs or disabilities in the community.
Your first step, wherever you start, will be to work with your existing ministry staff. Inclusion can only truly become part of church culture if the leadership believes in and invests in it.
A good next step is to empower parents. Parents are often the best and most well-informed advocates a child with a disability has. Learn from them. Give them the platform and authority they need to help inform and uplift others around them.
Third, build a ministry team specific to your programming. Train them up, lift them up and empower them to lift others up along with them as they work.
We’ve created a free guide for any church starting or building their own inclusive ministry. Our spiritual resource ministry has five main components, all of which could be used as needed—or wanted—by other churches with a desire to build an inclusive culture. No matter the size of your church or availability of resources, be encouraged that you can start somewhere.
Over time, you will see these component parts come together as part of a profound and humbling spiritual work. Ministry leaders, participants and events themselves will all help build a culture of radical love, radical service and profound humility. And in the end, your church will look more like how God intended it to look.
