Indispensable People
Making the Gospel Accessible to people of ALL abilities so that they may know Christ, grow in Him, and serve Him with the gifts He has given them.
Indispensable People
FAQ: Recruit, Equip, Include
We answer common questions about preparing a team for disability ministry, from recruiting through Scripture and prayer to building sustainable volunteer rhythms and clear safety policies. We share practical training steps, event-based on-ramps, and resources that grow a culture of gospel accessibility.
• the scale of disability and the church attendance gap
• recruiting through a no‑commitment Bible study
• identifying gifts and building shared language
• protecting volunteers with sustainable rotations
• event on‑ramps like respite nights and Night to Shine
• clear policies that reassure parents and teams
• training from theology to de‑escalation skills
• resources for ongoing growth and culture change
• multiplying disciples through accessible ministry
If you want to dive deeper on your own, you can check out the Indispensable-People blog or my books on Amazon called The Indispensable Kid or Gospel Accessibility and the Indispensable People.
Hey, hey, my name is Tracy Coral, and welcome to Indispensable People. I'm a pastor, a teacher, a missionary, a mom, a wife, and I believe that every person should have access to the gospel so that they can know Christ, grow in him, and serve him with the gifts that he has given. Over 65 million Americans have a disability. That's 15 to 20% of every community. And over 85% of those individuals do not attend church. 90% of pastors believe that they are a disability-friendly church, but only 20% of parents and families agree. Let's dive deep into hard topics, big questions, perceptions, stereotypes, and so much more. Hey, welcome to today's episode. We're talking about frequently asked questions when considering a disability or special needs ministry where blog readers, listeners, and supporters have shared some questions with us so that we can answer. Because if you have the question, most likely someone else does too. So today we're talking about preparing a team. How do you prepare a team to do disability ministry, special needs ministry? And there are an abundance of ways to do this. And any leader knows your first step into a team building type thing is to recruit, right? You can't train people that don't exist. You can't prepare people that aren't sold out for what you have or have a passion and a calling to do the ministry that you have. So I will tell you, one of the first things that I did in starting a disability ministry was I did a Bible study and we studied different um scriptures and ideas on the foundations of what God said about disability ministry or disabilities in general. And I invited a ton of people and I specifically prayed about who those people would be, came across them, invited them to this Bible study, and told them that listen, I would love for you to come and attend this. There's no pressure, there is no commitment. I just want you to come, see what this is about, and see if it's something that God has for you to be a part of. And so that was my first approach. And it covered a couple of things. First of all, it helped me to find people, it helped me to bring a topic of information that people otherwise might not have been aware of. It also gave me an opportunity to seek out individuals that I saw that gifting in. And again, that they may not have even recognized in or understood of themselves. And so the next part, it being a non-commitment type thing really helped people go, okay, I'm gonna come, I'll see. It's probably not my thing, or it might be my thing. And they could engage in conversations, learn more the basis of the foundation. Because here's the deal regardless of whether they are hands-on in your disability ministry, they're in your congregation. So that learning and experience, even if they choose not to commit to the ministry, they have a foundation and understanding that will benefit them as a full congregation and welcoming and engaging people with disabilities in the church. So that was number one. Recruitment was number one, building a foundation and understanding that came with that. The next thing is to be intentional, set expectations, letting those volunteers know what the different types of commitments could be, what events are available, those kind of things. So they kind of know out the gate, like this is what my commitment might look like. This so I'll give you a couple of examples of what that looks like. We have people who serve as buddies on Sundays, and I truly believe that an every Sunday buddy is not the key. And I want to always protect my volunteers and not to overwork them. So we want to avoid volunteer burnout. We want to make sure that they have breaks, they have chances to be fed, and that oftentimes a lot of those individuals want to serve in more than one place. And so giving them the opportunity to not have to serve every single week is beneficial in a multitude of ways. So my buddies in my home church serve one Sunday a month. And so that's their commitment on that. If they choose to serve in other capacities, you know, sound tech, worship, kids' church, whatever, that's their that's their choice. But so we try to protect that. The other things is we have individuals who maybe participate in other ministry things on Sundays and Wednesdays. So being a buddy on a regular rotation might not be an option, but participating in events that we hold as a church. So for example, we do respite nights. We have a lot of volunteers that volunteer at respite night that do not regularly serve as buddies. We also do once a year Tim Tebow's Night to Shine. So that's a one-time commitment each year. And so some of those of like event type things, the outreach things like Night to Shine and Respite, are great way to even recruit buddies. So they start with the the smaller commitment and then maybe build up because it allows them to see giftings that they have and allows you to see the giftings that they might have. The other things that you want to set out, and we kind of address some of these things in our previous podcast, policies and procedures, set those for your ministry because there's a settling that feels good to volunteers when they know what's expected of them and they know what will happen and how they're protected and that things are in place. I will also tell you that that is a great benefit to parents, also. Parents really appreciate knowing what is in place. For example, when I meet a new family, I can tell them our volunteers are background checked, they're never left alone. This is this, you know, the systems that we operate under, that kind of stuff. These are the steps that we have for our volunteers and for the individuals that participate in the ministry. So those things are all very important. The other things that we do trainings, we go to churches, we equip those teams, we equip the entire congregation. We go from teaching things about foundational scriptures and what the Bible says about disability. We also do some disability awareness, building compassion and not pity training, and then on to, you know, we call them like toolbelt tips and tricks of the trade, right? And de-escalating techniques, all of that kind of stuff, different things that um we can help build and equip the church to do. So participating in some type of training is absolutely incredibly important. I also have for you available, I will do a shameless plug of this podcast. I have written two books. One is The Indispensable Kid, which is a personal experience as a parent with special needs from my perspective. And also a book called Gospel Accessibility and Indispensable People. And that is basically a ministry how-to setting up your disability ministry. Here's what it looks like, here's some resources, all the other kind of stuff. And then we I also have a an indispensable people blog. So lots of availabilities, great for people on the go, people who have some extra time that they can sit, listen, do all those kinds of things, or just listen in the car on the way to work, whichever works best for them, just as long as they're growing, committed, and we are helping to grow that knowledge, wisdom, and commitment. Because when we do that, when we give good support, when we help people to learn about others and how they can serve them, then we have the opportunity to make the gospel accessible, to glorify God, and then create a cycle in which we've created disciples that create disciples that create disciples. And that's the direction in which we want to go. So a gospel accessibility not only opens it to one person, but the next person, and the domino effect keeps going. So let's do that together. We're gonna keep this conversation going. We're gonna make the accessible gospel available to individuals with disabilities in our churches and in our communities so that every person has the opportunity to know Christ, to grow in him, and to serve him with the gifts that he is given. If you want to dive deeper on your own, you can check out the Indispensable People blog or my books on Amazon called The Indispensable Kid or Gospel Accessibility and the Indispensable People.
