Resources for “Making God More Accessible”
This week’s Alban Weekly, “Making God More Accessible,” explores the barriers that people with disabilities face when trying to participate in congregational life. Some of these barriers—tight doorways, unnavigable steps, and lack of assistance devices—are architectural or technological.
Other barriers are financial, especially when churches and synagogues cannot or will not allocate cash to address accessibility issues.
But perhaps the biggest barriers are attitudinal—what Ginny Thorburgh (director of the American Association of People with Disabilities’ Interfaith Initiative) calls “unexamined attitudes.”
Author Mark Pinsky points out, however, that there are congregations who do recognize the benefits of becoming more accessible. Particularly since the disabled population is growing, a major benefit would be increased attendance at worship and participation in congregational life from a more diverse group. Another benefit would be the joy of living into the commandment of most religious traditions, that we love others as ourselves.
What resources might help your congregation open its doors more fully to people with disabilities? In addition to the items listed at the end of the article, please consider the resources in the “Disabilities” and “Accessibility” sections of the Congregational Resource Guide.
Particularly helpful for cash-strapped congregations is the booklet, “Money and Ideas: Creative Approaches to Congregational Access,” featuring creative stories of low-cost accessibility efforts. Also helpful is the recently published Including People with Disabilities in Faith Communities: A Guide for Service Providers, Families, and Congregations and the comprehensive bibliography, Dimensions of Faith and Congregational Ministries with Persons with Developmental Disabilities and Their Families.
What stories would you like to share about how your congregation is responding to persons with disabilities?
As a new pastor and former special education teacher, I found much hope in this article. I want to work to make churches accessible in all ways and the way to do this is to educate the people, not just in an intellectual, book-learning format, but through hands-on experience. Ironically, this is the way people with disabilities learn best, but all of us benefit from this approach. I have been involved in the planning for worship services that not only include people with disabilities in the pews, but also in the leadership positions. These services are always incredible! Without ALL people, the Body of Christ is not complete, and those of us who are “typical” have a great deal to learn from those of us who have disabilities.
Mark, Thank you for focusing on this important issue. Recently I attended a healing service at a worship community that prides itself on its inclusiveness. All were invited as they wished to come forward to receive the laying on of hands, or, for those who wished, they could remain where they were and request an usher to have one of the “healing ministers” come to them to lay on hands. I left that worship experience saddened after watching a young woman go forward in her powered chair only to get to the front and realize that to get to those who were laying on hands required going down an 8 inch step. She returned to her original place without a blessing. Although I could not hear the interchange, I could easily see and interpret the non-verbal communication that followed. One of the ushers approached her and obviously offered to have a healing team member come to her to lay on hands. The usher actually made the situation worse by not respecting the young woman’s refusal and kept trying unsuccessfully to convince her to allow this to happen. Having to argue about why this is not how she wanted to participate in the healing service, only upset this young woman even more. Accessibility means more than getting in the door, it means participating as much as possible in the same manner as all other participants.
This is a subject that is dear to me. I am a pastor for SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors, a ministry that takes worship and pastoral care to frail elders who live in long-term care communities. We have lively, heartfelt worship, but I can tell you that there are many elders who never get over the longing to return and worship with their faith communities. Granted, some of these elders are not healthy enough to attend no matter how accommodating a community might be. However, the more accessible a building and the hearts of the worshipers are, the longer these elders can attend their own church. It is indeed a connection that is life sustaining for all in the community.
Sharon, Thanks for your comments and insight. Pastor Livingston, That is a heart-breaking story — and totally avoidable. We’re hoping that this book will be a kind of “best practices” example to congregations around the country. Mark
Thanks for this article!
One great challenge now is that the nature of the accessibility issue is shifting. Most new buildings now meet basic accessibility standards. The big wave of making old buildings more accessible has passed.
Now things are tougher. What do we do about mental disabilities? What do we do when these mental disabilities include issues with anger management, personal boundaries, or substance abuse? The same combination of empathy and accomodation work less well. Indeed, it can really tie us in knots when the “accomodation” needed for a disability is learning to become better at setting limits and clarifying congregational norms.
If you have a minister with a major untreated depression accomodation does not work if by “accomodation” we mean the congregation learning to work around and compensate for the disability without the subject being discussed directly. Indeed this kind of accomodation is dangerous for the minister and can leave long-standing problems in the congregation. A major depression is a disability just as much as a serious hearing loss. Yet, dealing well with the depression requires very different skills from the congregation–including a very great ability to be direct and to set limits.