Imagine a world where your church actively embraces and uplifts everyone, regardless of their abilities. This episode is a heartfelt journey into the realm of social accessibility within churches, with personal stories like that of my son Noah, who thrives despite multiple disabilities. We shed light on the unseen struggles of individuals with both visible and invisible disabilities, and the transformative power of genuine relationships and respect. Learn why it's imperative for communities to be proactive in understanding each person's unique story and how unforeseen events can unexpectedly introduce anyone to the world of disability.
The conversation doesn't stop there. We break down the social barriers that people with physical disabilities encounter, stressing the importance of respecting their independence while offering thoughtful assistance. A poignant family story highlights the need for sensitivity in our everyday interactions. The dialogue also explores the fine balance between creating inclusive environments and catering to individual comfort and learning styles. Finally, we advocate for a compassionate, inclusive approach to disability ministry, emphasizing the necessity of assuming competence and fostering an environment where everyone can serve and grow in their faith. Join us as we commit to continuing this crucial conversation, ensuring that every person has the opportunity to know Christ and share their God-given gifts.
Imagine a world where your church actively embraces and uplifts everyone, regardless of their abilities. This episode is a heartfelt journey into the realm of social accessibility within churches, with personal stories like that of my son Noah, who thrives despite multiple disabilities. We shed light on the unseen struggles of individuals with both visible and invisible disabilities, and the transformative power of genuine relationships and respect. Learn why it's imperative for communities to be proactive in understanding each person's unique story and how unforeseen events can unexpectedly introduce anyone to the world of disability.
The conversation doesn't stop there. We break down the social barriers that people with physical disabilities encounter, stressing the importance of respecting their independence while offering thoughtful assistance. A poignant family story highlights the need for sensitivity in our everyday interactions. The dialogue also explores the fine balance between creating inclusive environments and catering to individual comfort and learning styles. Finally, we advocate for a compassionate, inclusive approach to disability ministry, emphasizing the necessity of assuming competence and fostering an environment where everyone can serve and grow in their faith. Join us as we commit to continuing this crucial conversation, ensuring that every person has the opportunity to know Christ and share their God-given gifts.
Speaker 1:
Hi, my name is Tracy Corral and welcome to Indispensable People. I'm a wife, mom, teacher, pastor and missionary and I believe that every person should have the opportunity to know Christ, grow in Him and serve Him with the gifts that he has given, no matter their ability. Over 65 million Americans have a disability. That's 25% of the population. However, over 80% of them are not inside the walls of our church. Let's dive into those hard topics biblical foundations, perceptions and world-changing ideas. Hey, hey, and welcome to this episode of Indispensable People.
Speaker 1:
Today's topic is accessibility. Yes, that's the same topic as last time, but we made it very clear that accessibility goes beyond the physical, and although we addressed physical in the last episode, we're moving on to social accessibility. Do people with disabilities really feel like they belong in our churches? Because, listen, I might be able to get into the building, but if I am not welcomed into your friendship, into the body of believers, I am looked at as less than or pitied, then I'm going to question whether or not I actually belong. In an article written by Gary Hoyt in Influence, it is called how Accessible Is your Church? It is an example of a family who disability was not a part of their life. They didn't really have to make considerations of it. But then an accident happened at a ski resort and physical disability became a part of this family's life and they said, until they returned back to church they didn't really think about the accessibility. Now we could talk about the physical accessibility, but we've already done that, so you can check out the previous episode and all that we've covered within that. But this week I really want to hit home social accessibility and that might sound just really really strange, but it's so very real to many people with disabilities and I think that this hits hardest. I really believe hits hardest for those with physical disabilities and no intellectual disabilities, or for those whose is not so severe, and at times people may not even realize that a disability exists. And this is the life that we live for my middle child, my son Noah, who is diagnosed with epilepsy, adhd, anxiety disorder, dyscalculia, dyscalculus, dyslexia, dysgraphia, all of those kinds of things. However, upon first meet you may not even realize or recognize that there might be something more to his story and you may think, oh, maybe he's a little standoffish. You might think that, depending upon how he responds to your welcome, he may seem a little rude, those kinds of things. I think this topic hits harder for those.
Speaker 1:
I think someone with Down syndrome who may have a more significant intellectual disability, from my perspective, from my experience, have been more welcomed and more understood than someone who seems to not have a disability but does have a disability. And some of those disabilities would be considered invisible disabilities. They're things that you don't see on the surface and may only pick up a little bit later. And so because in our society, the way that you would look at them, the way that you would view them, is that maybe they're weird or maybe they're rude or whatever else you want to kind of put on as a descriptor for them, that tends to make people more standoffish because there's not an explanation to their behavior. Because there's not an explanation to their behavior. And a lot of times these individuals with the mild intellectual disability, they don't necessarily want people to know that they have a disability. It's not something that they share readily or explain. And, honestly, do they really need to walk up to you and go, hi, I'm so and so with this kind of disability? No, nobody wants to do that. Not because, not because there's anything wrong with disabilities, not because there's whatever, but nobody, you know, walks up upon first, meet and lays out their whole story for you. That's awkward and strange and may come out later as you build relationship with someone.
Speaker 1:
But you have to get past that initial barrier, which is the social accessibility and, honestly, I think the biggest thing that I try to live my life with is the understanding that there's a story behind every person. You've experienced it, I've experienced it. You've gone to the grocery store. You may have an encounter with a person who was just very mean and very rude and not very helpful and maybe said something terrible or gave you a look or something like that. Who knows. Whatever the experience was Like, I said you've had it, I've had it.
Speaker 1:
But you have to think, okay, there's a reason behind that behavior. I'll be perfectly honest, I've been the one on the side of that behavior. Right, whether it's just a bad day with the kids I didn't sleep at all the night before I'm not feeling well. Whatever it is, on occasion I'm the grumpy person, okay, and I want people to be understanding to me. So I want to be understanding to them and I often tell people when I'm doing trainings and I'm really trying to work on creating, dispelling the fear of the unknown, building compassion. We really want to know how to get past the I don't understand Like it's hard to know and understand where someone's coming from if you've never experienced it before. And so building that understanding, putting them in place to have some experiences of what that person with a disability may feel like, so that we can build compassion.
Speaker 1:
But I often tell them you need to realize that you are one medical event or accident away from being the person with a disability and when you consider how you should treat people with disabilities, you need to consider how you want to be treated, because it could be you. And if it were, you do you want someone to talk to you as if you're a child and you're not? Do you want someone to look down upon you? Do you want someone to ignore you? Do you want someone to speak to your caregiver and not you, because they just assume? You always have to assume competence. You always need to speak to that person on the level at which is appropriate for their age and their stage of life. That is how we create social accessibility. That is how we create social accessibility Treating people like your neighbor next door, your friend across the street, your high school best friend. You know, whatever it is that you have had regular encounters with. How you would speak to them is how you should speak to someone with a disability. How you should speak to someone with a disability.
Speaker 1:
Now, listen, we've talked about in the past how you adjust for meeting someone new, having conversation in the moment for the first time. We all adjust our conversation based on the person that we're interacting with, right? I've mentioned this before If you go up to someone and reach out to shake their hand and they step back from you, you're going to assume they need a little bit more personal space and then you adjust for that. If you ask them a question and it takes a while for them to respond, give them that time to respond. One of the things that we do with our kids and what I have talked with my husband about is often we ask them a question and if they don't immediately answer, we rephrase the question quickly. And really what we need to do is we need to slow down, give them a moment to think about it and then give them an opportunity to answer, and if something seems like it got lost in translation, then we rephrase the question, because you need to give that think tank time right. Everybody processes and takes in information in different ways and at different lengths of time, and so giving them an opportunity to respond in the way that works best for them will ease anxiety and build a better relationship, because they feel comfortable responding and conversing with you, because you have given them that time to respond or think in the way that works best for them.
Speaker 1:
Now, social accessibility. Barrier number one is an assumption. We have to break the barrier of assumption, thinking we know and understand what this person is capable of, what they can or cannot do, and that is huge, especially for people with physical disabilities, who, yes, have physical disabilities, which means there are difficulties and struggles that they go through because of their physical disability, but they have also spent a good portion of their life in therapies and trainings that have helped them independently provide for themselves. So we don't want to assume that they can't. We want to assume that they can and then offer assistance by asking if they need something from us. A social barrier is assuming that they can't do it and then stepping in and doing it without asking. We want to help them to maintain as much of their independence as possible and we don't want to take that away from them by just stepping in and doing we want to offer help. Listen, if I were walking through a door and there was an elderly person and they had their hands full, I would offer to open the door for them, because that's just what a kind person does. This is how you're going to treat others with disabilities.
Speaker 1:
I find I always say that if you really want to see a true relationship between an individual with a disability and an individual without a disability, you can check out some siblings. So I will tell you just a week ago I actually had this conversation with my daughter. We were on a camping trip and we were having a conversation around the campfire and my son, who has a disability, commented about something and she was like Noah, are you, is your brain? But like she said something. It really was kind of rude, but she didn't mean it, the way that it was taking, like is your brain working? Are you, are you with it? What's going on? Like something like that, which was not a dig on his disability, it wasn't a whatever. He just said something offhanded that she was like what? And he walked.
Speaker 1:
He very much defended himself and was hurt by her statement and when he walked away, I explained to her how he knows that he has a disability and he feels as though he has to protect himself from the stigma of that disability and part of that is protecting his intelligence. And when she questioned his intelligence, he feels attacked because of his disability and she was like mom, I didn't even mean it that way. I don't think of Noah like that, I don't. She went on this whole explanation of I don't even really consider his disability, I just talk to him like I talk to my brother, and that's fantastic because that is knocking down barriers.
Speaker 1:
However, in the same tone, we can say understand where he's coming from and be a little bit more protective of the words that come out of your mouth, because they do hurt other people, even if you didn't mean it, and so there is a balance to that. But we've been having those conversations lately about understanding one another, having compassion for one another, but she keeps going back to the same thing of going he's my brother, I just talk to him like my brother and I appreciate that, because I also don't want her to treat him as less than or assume his lack of intelligence, because he doesn't. He may not think exactly the same way as we do. He may process a little bit different, but he has a lot to offer this world and we all know that. But it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:
If my daughter said something wacky or offhand or something like that, I would question her and be like what are you thinking? Like, where's that coming from? How did you come to that understanding? And if she's going, I'm doing the same thing with him that I would do with anybody else. I don't even know why this is a problem. So there's a great balance to.
Speaker 1:
I don't see a human just for their disability. I see the person as a person and I'm going to have similar conversations with you that I would with anybody else. But also, in general, we all need to be kind, we all need to be aware and make sure the filters are on our mouths for anybody that we speak to, our mouths for anybody that we speak to, and we do need to see people for people. That's how God sees them. He has a plan and a purpose for their life and he is going to utilize them in the best ways that glorify him, just as he does me, and you and the next person and my daughter and my other son and my husband, and so finding our way in the world, being a part of the body of Christ, being a part of the believers, being a part of families, building friendships, creating opportunities to be a part of things. Now, listen, we can take the next step into talking about social accessibility in the inclusion and self-contained topics.
Speaker 1:
Right, some people are completely against separation. Some people are all for inclusion. Some people want a little bit of both. Here's the thing I don't operate on the. We should never separate someone. We should only have inclusion. I don't land there. If at all possible, we want people to be a part of the whole body of Christ, to be a part of the total life of the church. However, that doesn't always work for everyone. That isn't always someone's comfort zone, it isn't always their needs. We need to minister to people in ways that work best for them, and that might mean that you have a sensory room or a quiet room or that some of those individuals are learning in a different space on their level, because that's what works for them. It's not about being inclusive or exclusive. It's about giving everybody what they need.
Speaker 1:
I used to use the term when I was teaching first grade, because I did things very different in my classroom because I really believed that, in all honesty, all students would operate best with an IEP, with an explanation of the ways that they learn best and the ways that they they don't, and that grades on an overall is great for the school to know where they are. But really what we want to see as a teacher is we want to see progression over a year. It doesn't matter where you progress from and where you progress to, it's that you're progressing. And so I always used to tell my students that they needed, because you would get questions of well, why are they doing that and I don't get to do that? And why is this, that and I'm not having that? And it's because fair is not equal and equal isn't fair. So we need to operate in ways that work best for other people, but also in ways that work best for other people, but also we need to not be stringent on what we think should be for everyone. So creating spaces that give opportunities to participate, to build relationships, to become co-labors so that they can serve in the body of Christ, not to be separated but to be included, but also provided those provisions if they need the separation because it works better for them. They need the separation because it works better for them.
Speaker 1:
I absolutely love, love, love. Being home in my own safe space, in my quiet. I love it, I thrive in it. This is my space. I can people all day long if I need to. I can be a part of things. I can have fun with other people.
Speaker 1:
I do have preferences, but what we're considering are not just preferences. We're considering the needs of the people that we serve. Okay, I know that there are people who are introverts, there are people that are extroverts and there are people that thrive in different types of situations. We're not necessarily saying everybody gets everything they want. We're saying let's give people what they need, and that can look different across the board, with social accessibility, with social accessibility.
Speaker 1:
But we want to make sure, first of all, when I'm approaching these people, when I meet new people, that I am not assuming who they are, that I am assuming competence over incompetence and that I am open and intentional about building a relationship with them so that they can be a part of the body of Christ, participate in the full life of the church and become co-laborers with a place to serve, because God has a plan and a purpose for their life. Do I know everything about disability ministry? Do I have all the answers? Have I done everything perfectly? I have absolutely not, but we are going to continue this conversation so that people of all abilities can have the opportunity to know Christ, grow in Him and serve Him with the gifts that he has given them. Thank you,
