30 Ways You Can Be Hospitable to People with Disabilities

1. When talking to someone with a disability, look at the person not at the interpreter or companion.
2. When hosting someone for a meal, ask if there are any food allergies or diet restrictions.
3. Use person-first language such as “a person with schizophrenia” or “Mary uses a wheelchair.”
4. Avoid using words/phrases such as “retarded,” “wheelchair-bound,” “suffers from,” “handicapped,” “able-bodied,” “victim,” “defect.”
5. Don’t lean or hang on someone’s wheelchair.
6. When talking to someone in a wheelchair, position yourself at the wheelchair user’s eye level.
7. Don’t pet or distract a guide dog.
8. When interacting with someone who has a visual disability, say who you are when you approach and announce when you leave.
9. Be flexible when people in the congregation make additional noise (clapping off beat, shouting, or the sound of a medical device).
10. Label foods at potlucks, especially when they contain nuts or gluten.
11. Ask before you assist a person and listen carefully to instructions.
12. If anyone in your congregation has a disability or a child with a disability that requires costly accommodations, consider how your church might offer to assist in paying for such costs.
13. Offer respite care to a spouse or parent of someone with a disability or long-term illness.
14. When talking to someone with an intellectual disability, speak in your normal tone.
15. If you have difficulty understanding someone’s speech, ask him to repeat rather than pretend that you understand.
16. Don’t refer to people with disabilities as “kids” or use childlike terms; address them as you would anyone else.
17. Invite an adult or child with disabilities to your home or on an outing and find out in advance about the person’s preferences and needs.
18. As a way to provide relief to parents, offer to sit with a child with a disability during worship one time each month.
19. Explore websites dealing with disability issues such as www.crcna.org/disability, www.rca.org/disabilities, and www.clcnetwork.org/church_services.
20. Buy and read a book such as Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality by Thomas Reynolds or Helping Kids Include Kids with Disabilities by Barbara J. Newman. Then donate it to your church library.
21. Sit near people with disabilities during worship.
22. Offer transportation (to church, medical appointments, etc.) to someone with a disability.
23. Just say hi.
24. Consider starting a Friendship ministry at your church (www.friendship.org).
25. Educate your children about ways to interact with people in their lives who have a disability.
26. When leading a person with visual impairments, allow her to hold onto you rather than you holding onto her.
27. Do not gossip about someone who is socially awkward or different.
28. Encourage your kids to befriend kids with disabilities.
29. Remember that if someone has challenges with one of his senses, his other senses are usually heightened.
30. Offer to pick up supplies or prescriptions for someone with a disability or her family.

These ideas were gathered by Lindsay Wieland Capel from what ordinary people are already doing at their Christian Reformed or Reformed Church in America congregations. The RCA and CRC Disability Concerns offices collaborated to produce this list.