The gospel for all

Sandra Peoples’ Accessible Church (Crossway, 200 pp.) is a slim, practical, open-hearted read. I devoured it quickly because I’m the mom of a kid with a disability, but this book is really for everyone who loves the church—everyone ready to look around their own congregation and ask, “Who’s missing?”

For many families with disabled members, church can pose formidable barriers to entry. Peoples, a professor, ministry consultant, and mom to an autistic son, points out that children with autism are 84% less likely to attend church than their typical peers. She notes that, like the friends of the paralytic in the Gospels, the church can band together to carry disabled people to Jesus.

This book isn’t only about autism ministry. It’s about welcoming people with all kinds of disabilities. “Churches aren’t academic settings,” Peoples writes, but they often have academic expectations in Sunday school or small group settings where kids with dis­abilities may struggle—whether their disabilities are visible (obvious physical impairments) or invisible (dyslexia, dysgraphia, nonverbal learning disabilities, ADHD, difficulty with executive function, etc.). Peoples urges readers to remember that “children with disabilities reflect the image of God.”

It’s a trend in Christian publishing to sprinkle book chapters with mini application sections and recaps—additions thoughtful readers may find condescending—but in this book, these segments offer real help for launching disability ministries. Peoples covers everything from “how to communicate the Word to children who don’t communicate with words” to how to train volunteers; stock unique “buddy bags” with assistive, person-specific items; and craft ISPs—individualized spiritual plans—for disabled church members.

Peoples grounds her practical advice in a thoroughly Scriptural vision in which the last shall be first and in which we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. “Appearing weak isn’t rewarded in our society,” Peoples writes. “Answering with anything other than ‘I’m fine!’ on a Sunday morning takes humility and trust. Those with disabilities often can’t hide their dependence on others.”

She writes that after she received her son’s diagnosis she had to “tear down the idol of control” she had been serving. On the other side of the idolatry was fruitfulness. She writes, “Including all types of people is at the very heart of God.”