Disability and Accessibility Survey

Every church has people with disabilities in it. The question is not if they are there. The question is whether or not people with disabilities are experiencing belonging. It is common for churches to be unaware of people with disabilities in their church family. This leads to unawareness about how their decisions, worship, attitude, communications, and architecture may be affecting individuals with disabilities in their congregation. 

We want to support your congregation in being a place of belonging and have created a tool to help you understand how your church is doing. Church leaders can invite your congregation to complete a disability and accessibility survey created by Thrive of the Christian Reformed Church in North America and Disability Concerns of the Reformed Church in America. There is an online form and a print format (PDF) found at the end of this post.

This tool emerged from cohorts in Northwest Iowa and British Columbia where groups of churches worked together over a year to make their churches more welcoming and accessible for people with disabilities. Many of the churches created tools to hear from their own congregation about their priorities and needs related to disability and accessibility. We combined the best of the surveys that were created and worked with the professionals at Datawise Consulting to create a survey that would make it easy for any church to get feedback from their congregation. The survey questions are in the pdf below.

So, how does it work? 

When a church council or consistory decides that they want to survey their congregation, they choose a point person to be the facilitator and complete an agreement form. Then, the facilitator will receive a church-specific QR code and link to the survey. The facilitator and church leaders will promote the survey to the congregation. When the church is ready to close the survey, they contact the CRC or RCA and then the church will receive a report with the survey results. The church council or consistory will then be tasked with determining next steps and priorities. 

We hope that the results of this online survey lead to new awareness and tangible changes that improve the experiences of people with disabilities in the congregations that participate! 

Questions? Contact Thrive in the Christian Reformed Church in North America ([email protected]) or the Reformed Church in America ([email protected]).