Summary

This presentation addressed practical ways congregations can have a real impact on the lives of people with disabilities and their families living in their community and to make worship more accessible to everyone.

Listen Online

Details

Across the country, churches are discovering their incredible capacity to welcome and weave people with developmental disabilities and their families into the life of their congregation. Such churches speak vividly about the ways their worship and ministry have been transformed by very simple gestures of hospitality and inclusion. This presentation addressed practical ways congregations can have a real impact on the lives of people with disabilities and their families living in their community and to make worship more accessible to everyone.

Presented at the 2009 Calvin Symposium on Worship.

Recent Media Resources

W. David O. Taylor on the Psalms and Praying the Unedited Life

Author and pastor-scholar David Taylor shares how he came to appreciate the psalms and how he encourages people to bring their full, unedited selves to God in prayer and experience a richer and more honest life of faith.

April 10, 2026 | 26 min listen
Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford on the Shape and Shaping of the Psalter

Old Testament scholar Nancy deClaissé-Walford has spent her career studying the ordering of the Psalter. Most of the psalms, she says, are not tied to a particular situation, allowing us to sing and pray them honestly in our own contexts.

April 10, 2026 | 17 min listen
Andrew Wilkes on Doing the Work of Liberation and Justice with the Psalms as Our Guide

Pastor-scholar Andrew Wilkes shares how his worshiping community, Double Love Experience Church, prayed and sang the psalms during the troubling times of 2020. The psalms gave them language and support for praise and lament, and Wilkes asserts that lament is the evidence of faith because we are bringing our troubles to God.

April 10, 2026 | 14 min listen