Everybody belongs. Everybody serves.
Disability
Staci
Becky
lynn
Eric
Susie Angel talks about the rejection and the welcome she experienced in churches as a person with cerebral palsy. She says, "God needed me for a purpose to be the way I am, that purpose was to teach able-bodied people that it was okay to be different."
Learn how to communicate with people with disabilities. These one- or two-minute videos show how to improve and ease communication.
Are you planning a Disability Worship Service? Wondering what to do? Perhaps setting up a panel discussion as part of the message will work for you and your church!
A responsive reading
A responsive prayer
To offer at a Disability Awareness Sunday
To offer at a Disability Awareness Sunday
A sermon by Rev. Dr. James Vanderlaan based on Luke 14:1-24.
A sermon by Curt Gesch based on 1 Peter 2: 9-10; 4: 7-11.
Here's a one-page newsletter insert or poster to hang to give people simple, practical ideas for inclusion.
Here's a “wish list”, created by mothers of what they would find helpful for local churches to offer families who have children with special needs.
How do you recognize each other's gifts and support each other's needs while avoiding a "you're not like us" attitude? A feature story explores ways to be inclusive in worship and make room for those with or without special needs.
As congregational members who do not have intellectual disabilities engage week in and week out with those who do, everyone learns and grows. People have to learn how to talk with others who are much different from them. That requires everyone to take risks, to reach out to one another, to have awkward conversations that will, over time, become less awkward.
As a church becomes an active and visible place for inclusion of everybody within their midst, that church will become attractive and welcoming for any neighbor seeking a place to name and take pleasure in the “good news expressed in my church.”
What makes a human life worth living? Productivity – how much someone is accomplishing in life? The value of every single human comes from what she/he is: a creature made in God's image.
As an organization in a community, churches do the best job of knowing who currently has special needs within their congregations and often within their community.
The urgency and even panic in the host's voice show how desperate he was to be accepted. He cannot bear the disgrace of having prepared food ready for so many and having no guests.
For a long time this man has lived with disability. For a long time he’s had no one to help him—no wife, no family, no friends. No one.
The author of this article, Carol Levine, had been caring for her disabled husband for 17 years when she wrote this article. She polled fellow caregivers and condensed the results to these 10 items not to say to someone who provides long-term care to a loved one.
The "National Behavioral Health Barometer" (Barometer) provides data about key indicators of behavioral health problems including rates of serious mental illness, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, underage drinking, and the percentages of those who seek treatment for these disorders.
If it is true that people are excluded from church for social- skill reasons, what changes might be instituted within the social environment that would benefit not only persons with disabilities but the larger population as well? What “social ramp” would cause more people to have access and find social acceptance?
I thank God for people who are willing to tell their stories, especially when those stories could be turned against them. This danger looms especially for people whose story includes mental illness.
This article by Beccy Adams touches on a variety of practical and loving ways to connect to people dealing with mental health issues including the importance of gentle curiosity and ideas like, "Relate, but don’t over-relate: Get in touch with your own mental health short comings."
Many people loathe December and January. Holiday parties can bring pain along with joy. People renew old tensions, unbury hatchets, and pronounce judgments on others. Perhaps even worse, some people sit home alone, uninvited to gatherings with loneliness blowing cold like a winter draft.
Here are some great ideas from Barbara Newman to help you and/or your loved ones make your celebrations of our Lord's birth positive and enjoyable.