Have you ever been in a church service with your child when suddenly they begin to shout? Or how about sitting in a prayer time with your adult child who has special needs and they have an outburst? How do you feel? How do the people around you respond? If you are like most people then YES, this has happened and probably on more than one occasion!

Read More

So, without intending to add one ounce to an already heavy Sunday morning load, as both parent and pastor of the disabled, I offer to families with disabilities seven pleas from my heart.

Read More

No Christian working in children’s ministry intentionally seeks to leave out or neglect some of the children of the church. And yet, children with disabilities can present with such challenging needs that we may feel incapable or afraid to serve them. The bottom line is that to serve ALL children, a church must have a specific Special Needs Ministry as a part of its overall children’s ministry.

Read More

So, do we really want to exclude people from worship based on their distraction of others? Or, are all worshipers responsible to deal with all distractions, furthering our need for the Spirit to work in our hearts and minds? While we certainly must be considerate of others, including our pastors and worship leaders, it should not be at the expense of children who need to be welcomed into the worship of King Jesus.

Read More

So, why is there a much more robust ethnic diversity in our disability ministry than in our actual church membership? It’s certainly easy to understand the first part of that question. Disability does not impact just one ethnicity or one color of the human race. It also doesn’t just strike a certain socio-economic segment of our society and leave the others untouched. Because it moves across each and every boundary and barricade that separates us, it often becomes quite a strong unifying force. In pretty much any city, town, neighborhood in which you live, people touched by disability already have a community of their own. And the reality is that this “neighborhood” is most often a very unchurched group of people. This community not only needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, but local churches that will welcome them into the family of God.

Read More

Have you ever felt like you dropped into a dream in the middle of the story? You find yourself trying to figure out what is going on and how you got to a place where you’re in the Oval Office making the most critical decision of the 21st century…while wearing a clown nose. You’re overwhelmed and you feel like you can’t catch up to the situation in which you find yourself. Too often, we fear this dream becoming a reality as we start disability ministry (minus the OvalOffice nose and the clown nose). But life doesn’t work like that. In most cases, things start small and, if we end up in the Oval Office, we lived through quite a journey of learning and growth to get there.

Read More

Urbana, North America’s largest student missions conference, has been guiding students in discerning their place in God's mission since 1946. Over 10,000 college students and alumni from the United States, Canada and beyond descended on St. Louis, Missouri, for Urbana 18, five vibrant days of multi-lingual worship, thoughtful speakers, in-depth Scripture study and compelling conversations about God's heart for the world.  

Read More

or an in-depth look at starting a disability-inclusive ministry at your church, you’ll find purposeful information that can serve as a helpful foundation in the Key Ring Binder by Key Ministry. As your church begins to pursue disability inclusion, we pray that your church will remain trusting and open to God’s guidance and leadership.

Read More

Beckett, born to Tamara Taggart, is not cancer, but a valued human being. Yet, the news of Tamara’s cancer was wrapped up almost completely in a positive package. She was told of the possibilities and how hard the medical team would work to help her overcome it. When the news was given to her about her son Beckett having Downs Syndrome, the medical professionals focused on little other than the negative effects his Downs Syndrome would have on her and her family’s life. The stark contrast reveals a culture rooted in ableism.

Read More

The Inspire Curriculum is a Banquet Network resource for small groups that introduces the Biblical rationale for ministry to people with disabilities and provides some key principles for faithfully carrying out this ministry. We are so excited that Freedom Church in Baltimore, Maryland is walking through Inspire as an entire congregation.

Read More

The Christian Community Development Association, an organization committed to seeing holistically restored communities (2), held a conference in Chicago this year titled, “Rooted”.  One of the workshops in this year’s CCDA national conference was on “Uprooting Ableism.”

Read More

The National Association of Evangelicals, an association representing 45,000 churches across 40 denominations, recently published a resource guide for relations work titled, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility”.

Read More

“We believe God’s Word is for all, yet for many, reading it is a struggle.  It is a privilege for us to be able to share the story of the NIrV Accessible Edition – through this project we’ve learnt so much, forged new and cherished partnerships, and had our hearts opened to the importance of greater inclusion and access within the Church.” Becky Miles, Biblica

Read More

In the past fifteen years, the number of black families in the country who homeschool their children—often to protect them from being characterized as troublemakers or sent to special-education programs—has more than doubled.

Read More

As it was mentioned in this video, Jesus based His ministry on relationships. He lived among people, committed himself to them, built authentic relationships with them, and lived out who the Father intended Him to be. As we work to shed light in areas that are often dark and lacking love, we find great inspiration in WMF’s relationally-based ministry and their core values.

Read More