No man, woman or child is an island, and we come to know faith through a community. It is this same community that welcomes us, by faith, through baptism.

When I approached her, she asked me what my dream was; I said, "I want to be a motivational speaker!" She replied, "So why aren’t you?" I proceeded to list off various obstacles including, lack of credentials, lack of an accessible vehicle and lack of an agent. To my surprise she did not offer me solutions. She said, "Great, you know what the problems are; now all you have to do is get a group of people together and find a way to solve them."

Does disability ministry require its own staff person or volunteers? Does it require its own room and time to meet? As a parent of two children with autism, I would just assume that any church that we attended would provide ministry even if there were no other children with special needs. It would never enter my mind that ministry would have to wait until “critical mass.” I am not criticizing churches that have organized disability ministries that have specific events for large groups of people with special needs. I am just saying that is not the only form of disability ministry.

What I am arguing is that in Western society even those of us who see ourselves as competent, mentally healthy adults who are fully in control of our rational capacities are influenced and inter-connected in many more ways that we would sometimes like to admit.

Passionate about serving God and children with special needs, Shelley and Deb began a rEcess ministry at their church, Kingsway Baptist. There, one Saturday evening a month, parents who have children with special needs are invited to drop off all of their children and go on a date to reconnect or simply have time to rest and recharge.

In January, the National Collaborative on Faith and Disability will launch the new webinar series: Honoring Spiritual Needs and Gifts: From Inertia to Collaborative Action by Providers and Congregations. The series will run monthly, from January-June (excluding May), and will be free and available for viewing via Adobe Connect. The first webinar, “Including Spirituality in Assessment, Evaluation, and Person-Centered Planning Processes” takes place on Monday, January 26.

What was done as a means of meeting one of our needs has transformed how the teenagers and adults in our church perceive those with disabilities. By looking for ways to make a place for Camille and offer community to our family, our church is discovering that Camille offers gifts back to the body.

Are you a person living with disabilities (visible or invisible), a caregiver, or an ally? What would you tell the church, over coffee, about your life with a disability? The Theologies of Disability Working Group of the United Church invites you to tell your stories about your faith life with disability

Moe and Ann are two people with disabilities supported by The Mills Community Support in Almonte, Ontario.  They were having difficulty really feeling that they belonged at the church they were attending. Few people said […]

It is my hope and dream that by bringing the two groups together our kids will learn to see autism in a new light and have empathy for these kids struggling with enormous challenges. In this we, as a youth ministry, are living out the gospel of Jesus rather than just speaking about it.