More Churches Than Starbucks, Fewer Ramps Than You’d Think

We explore how to make the gospel accessible by grounding disability ministry in Scripture and simple, practical steps. We share stats, a personal story, and a roadmap any church can use to welcome, disciple, and empower people with disabilities.

• defining disability across physical, intellectual, developmental and sensory
• acknowledging whole-person impact across body, mind and spirit
• confronting the church accessibility gap with clear data
• rooting creation and purpose in Genesis 1, Psalm 139, John 9 and the Great Commission
• starting small by assessing needs already in the church
• recruiting volunteers with a learner’s heart, not rare “special” skills
• training on mission, policies, safety and disability strategies
• building Sunday structures with buddies, flexible rooms and supports
• planning inclusive events and sensory-friendly options
• using simple, concrete, multisensory teaching and clear routines
• preparing for transitions and preventing escalation with known supports
• elevating gifts so people with disabilities serve as vital members

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.

Transcript

Welcome And Stark Statistics

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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, hey, and welcome to this episode of Indispensable People. Today we're talking about getting back to the basics. Disability ministry can be incredibly complex or it can be very simple and straightforward. And we start with some basic foundational things. And then as we work in ministry and get comfortable with what we're doing, we want to build our understanding, which builds the complexity of the ministry, the things we do, why we do them, and the way that we do them. And so let's dive back into some just general basics. Let's start with what is a disability? In simple terms, a disability is a physical, intellectual, or developmental impairment that limits a person's ability to carry out their daily life activities and it restricts a participation or person's actions in their surrounding community. A disability may also be the ability of new abilities to come out. So maybe there's a lack in one area, but then there's an increase in another, such as learning to read braille. A person may not be able to see, but they're learning communication in a different way. Communicating through sign language or using senses to interact with the world in new and different ways, such as someone who might be neurodiverse. Some disabilities are apparent. We can see them. Disability can happen at birth and it can happen anytime through life. And it can happen through natural causes, it can happen through an accident, violence, or even a natural result of aging. People with disabilities are a unique minority because anyone can become disabled at any time, right? It's no protector or honorable to any specific background, culture, socioeconomic standard, any of those kinds of things. It can hit anybody at any time. Living with one or more disabilities is a multifaceted experience, right? Because it can be unique for every single person. And it depends on their environment and their living standards and their housing situation and their workability, all of those kinds of things. Because the physical, the social, the emotional all come into that and added in the things that we talk about are the spiritual aspects. And so for someone who experiences a loss of a limb, the impact of that isn't just on their physical body, right? It's on their emotional and spiritual development. Excuse me. And we can't just assume that it only has a physical experience. And so I'm gonna give it the very off-handed example. So yesterday I was in, I don't know if you would call it a car accident or or what happened. I'll explain. So I was driving down the road getting ready to get in a turning lane, and I hear a great big crash, and I I look and I very quickly see a car and a telephone pole. And the next thing I know, which was very quickly, was there's a big crash on the top of my vehicle, which happened to be the wires from the telephone pole hitting my car. And you know, I wasn't hurt. There were scratches on my car, but pretty much nothing had happened. It was okay. And thankfully the other lady was just fine. So we both walked away physically okay. She was walking, she was moving, I was doing the same thing, and I mean she likely had more physical than I was aware of than I obviously did. And so it was kind of okay, I'm good. My my son came, he kind of helped me out, checked out the vehicle, we're all good. I drove away with his truck, he drove away with my car to make sure everything was fine. And I left, I went to work, I started to drive home, and that intersection is still blocked off because obviously there are you know power lines down and all kinds of things. And I was, I'm fine, right? I'm not hurt, I'm not anything, I'm all good. And I'm sitting at the light, and the light's not turning green, but the green arrow for the center lane is on. Well, we can't, I'm in the center lane, not because I need to turn, but because the other lane is blocked because of the power lines and the accident and all that kind of stuff. And there are two police officers sitting in their cars. I'm assuming they're supposed to be in charge of directing traffic, and they're chit-chatting with each other, so they're not directing traffic, they're just in their cars doing the thing. And the guy behind me starts honking, and I'm like, I don't know what to do because it's not green. The green arrow is there, but I'm not turning, I'm going straight, and there's nobody to tell me what to do. And it was like in that moment, my brain froze, and I like immediately got upset and then started to cry. And I was like, okay, so I was I'm okay, but I'm not okay. Like I'm physically okay, but the emotional aspect hits. And that was from me not even being hurt, that was just an incident. So what I'm trying to explain is that a disability in one area or aspect of the body, in whatever way that looks like, impacts other things. It's gonna impact the emotional, it's gonna impact the behavioral, and they all go together, but also are separate. So we have to be cautious and careful of that. Understanding when you first tuned in to this podcast, we told you some statistics about it. Understanding that there are big, big, big numbers. This is uh the prevalence is huge. And when we consider the church, now here's here's this crazy statistic. Ready? So consider the ubiquity of Starbucks and McDonald's in the United States. Okay, how many Starbucks and McDonald's are all over the United States? They're actually about 17,166 Starbucks and 13,658 McDonald's, okay, as of this as of 2025, so last year. With 3,144 counties across the nation, this equates to roughly five Starbucks and four McDonald's per county. Now, if you compare with the number of churches, which is 356,000 across the country, or approximately 113 per county, that's an enormous number. While the churches are seemingly more prevalent than Starbucks and McDonald's, there's a notable gap in accessibility for people with disabilities, right? You can go, you can go in a Starbucks and a McDonald's, and they have visual menus, they have braille menus, they have accessible bathrooms, they have accounted for many, many things when it comes to people with disabilities, yet there's nowhere near as many across the US. It's it's just crazy. And so saying that is that our churches are not equipped, they're not accessible, whether you're considering that physically or socially or spiritually. So here's the reality when it comes to special needs ministry or disability ministry. Despite the abundance of churches, estimates suggest that 80 to 85 percent of these family of these churches lack a ministry specifically for people with disabilities. And that means that 320,000 churches, over 320,000 churches, do not have programs, strategies, or even basic plans that include people with disabilities. For families and individuals affected by disabilities, the most helpful support is a welcoming attitude. It's not even all the bells and whistles, it doesn't require all of that. They just want to be welcomed, they just want to be valued, they just want to be included in your church. So, how do you go from there? The number one piece of foundation after understanding the statistics is having a biblical foundation of understanding disability. Looking at Genesis 127, knowing that we were created in the image of God, or Psalm 139, where we were fearfully and wonderfully made, that he knew us full well, that we were created in our mother's womb, that all the days were ordained for us. And Exodus 4.11 and James 1.17 tells us that we were purposed, right? We're not here by accident, or that where John 9 talks about the works of God, and so that he can be displayed in us. We have to believe that every person should have the opportunity to know Christ, grow in him, and serve him with the gifts that he is given. This requires an accessible gospel, not only in the physical, but the social and spiritual access. We have to make sure that every person has the opportunity to know Christ, right? The Great Commission is the call to make disciples of all peoples. There's no exceptions. To grow in him, discipling and equipping people with disabilities to use their gifts to build the body of Christ is what is what the Lord empowers us as ministers to do, to serve him. Every person is created as Christ's masterpiece, and God has a unique plan for each of us to serve him in this world. This includes spiritual gifts. They don't look the same in all of us. They shouldn't. They can't, they wouldn't accomplish his mission if they did. So what do we do? We have to start with the need. Who's already in your church? What do they need? Is it kids? Is it teens? Is it adults? Where can you start? The second, we need to recruit, right? You find people who might be interested. You look for teachers, therapists, OT, PT, speech. They don't even have to be uh professionals, they have to just have a heart for people. One of my least favorite things to hear is it takes a special person to do what you do. No, it doesn't. It takes the love of Christ to do what I do. Step three, what's the next part? What's the next thing we need to do? Train. Share the ministry's mission and vision, guidelines, policies, procedures. Invite someone to teach and train your volunteers with about different uh disabilities, about tools and strategies. We need to then move into looking at structure for our regular services. How are you going to include people? Are you going to provide support like buddies? Or are you going to have available self-contained rooms where individuals who cannot participate in the typical services would have a space to learn and be discipled? You might want to consider buddy systems or specific classes or then considering outreach events. If your church does a multitude of events, how can you provide an inclusive environment through that? Through maybe offering transportation or making sensory room, sensory bags available or a sensory room on site. You can help with a buddy system or create program add-ons that would support those who cannot participate in the typical. You can organize events that are specifically designed to serve people with disabilities, like respite nights or small groups, Bible studies, support groups for parents, or sensory-friendly worship nights. And here's some basic strategies. We said we were getting back to the basics. Use a getting to know you form. Getting to know people helps you to know how to serve them. Use a basic strategy for individuals with intellectual disabilities of keeping information simple, concrete, and repeating it. You can use the five senses. That is how the brain learns. Brain science will tell you the more ways you can experience information, the more you are likely to understand it and retain it. You can capitalize on the interests of the people that you're serving. And when it comes to behavior, we need to know that we can set expectations. You can make schedules, and you can have some basic rules for everyone to understand. Prepare people for transitions. Use terms like first this, then that, visual schedules, timers, reminders. And also when you know someone, you've taken the opportunity to get to know them, you identify their triggers before there's an escalation so that you can help them through that, help them to self-regulate or to take breaks or to move away from a situation so that you don't get to that point of escalation. And you can institute items like noise canceling headphones, sunglasses, or a break from the space when needed. All of these basic strategies are the way to make the gospel accessible. And when we make the gospel accessible, we make Jesus known. And when we make Jesus known, we go back to the scripture in John 9 that tells us that we were made for his glory. I can't claim to have all the answers. I can't claim to know all the things, but here's what we are gonna do. 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.