Share Your Stories of Inclusion
How does your church include persons with disabilities in corporate worship? The CLC Network and Calvin Institute of Christian Worship invite you to submit your story of including persons with disabilities in a corporate worship setting, so that we may learn together.
Our goal is to gather these stories and compile them as “Feature Stories” on the CICW website.
What does “corporate worship” mean?
We invite you to submit stories of individuals included in congregational singing, communion, prayer, baptism, and other such corporate events (as opposed to small groups or Sunday school classes). We desire stories of people at all ages – children, youth, and adults – in separate or intergenerational settings.
We care about confidentiality
In order to protect individuals and maintain confidentiality, we will change all names in the stories (you are also welcome to use different names). By submitting your story (1-2 pages), you are allowing us to use the information to learn and to share with other congregations.
Please consider including the following information:
Congregational information
- Location
- Denomination
- Number of members or attendees in the community
Individual information
- Age of individual(s) with disabilities
- The individual’s gifts and abilities, as well as their areas of struggle
Story content
- State the worship event (corporate singing, communion, prayer, baptism, sermon or children’s message, responsive reading, preparing to be part of the worship setting, etc)
- What did you try in the situation?
- What worked? Was it effective?
- What did not go well? Was it ineffective?
Thank-you for being willing to share your experiences so that other faith communities can learn and grow from these collective experiences.
If you have questions or comments, please e-mail Tory White, CLC Network church services coordinator at twhite@clcnetwork.org.