As ministry leaders and volunteers, we can be aware of the limitations people with disabilities have, while also making our church environments feel like more than just babysitting people with disabilities during the time their families are being discipled. We can disciple them as well! Doing this well includes creating accessible ministry environments and making accommodations so each person can be discipled.

The Gospel Is for Everyone: Discipleship in Disability Ministry

In the late 1990s, my big sister walked the aisle at First Baptist Church in Duncan, Oklahoma, and told Brother Brad she had accepted Jesus as her Savior and wanted to be baptized. Even though she was the oldest sibling in our family, she was the last one to make this decision, and we all rejoiced with her. She could not answer every question Brother Brad usually asked teenagers when they committed their lives to following Jesus, but she understood that Jesus loved her and forgave her sins. My sister had Down syndrome, an intellectual, developmental disability that affected her motor skills and her cognitive abilities, but it did not stop her from putting her faith in Jesus and following him. When she passed away a few years ago, she left behind dozens of journals full of prayer requests and sermon notes. God worked in her life to bring her to salvation, to grow her in Christlikeness, and to call her home to him.

Growing up with a sister with Down syndrome is the catalyst for my current ministry calling—helping churches take steps of accessibility so people with disabilities and their families can attend. We grew up in a church that modeled that well, which is why we were all able to attend each week, hear the gospel, and be baptized. If the church had not accepted Syble and made accommodations, then Mom, Dad, my younger sister Sarah, and I wouldn’t have been able to attend and participate. It would have changed my family for generations.

My advocacy continues because I have a son with level three autism and intellectual disabilities. James is functionally non-verbal, so even though he is the same age as my sister when she was saved and baptized, he is not able to articulate his faith and understanding, even at the level she could. But that does not stop our current church from speaking the gospel over him, teaching him the Bible, giving him opportunities to be in community with friends, and praying for his salvation and sanctification.

The Potential for Evangelism and Discipleship Exists in Every Community

According to the 2000 census, nearly 1 in 5 families in the US has a member with a disability.1 But most of us aren’t seeing this 20 percent of the population represented in our worship centers. They are missing from our children’s ministry classrooms, our youth group activities, and our adult small groups. When we got James’s autism diagnosis in 2010, we looked around our small church in Pennsylvania and didn’t see that percentage represented. We realized the accessibility my family had when I was growing up didn’t happen without attention and effort.

And at the core of those accessibility steps is the understanding that special-needs ministry isn’t just babysitting. Because each person is made in the image of God, they have the potential to have a relationship with God. As John Hammet writes, “The image of God is the capacity of human beings to have a relationship with God.”2

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