Disability and the Church
The Posture Question
When a child with a disability walks into your church, what do they experience? Accommodation? Tolerance? Or the sense that the body of Christ has been waiting for them?
There's a difference between a church that makes room for people with disabilities and a church that is reshaped by them. One asks people to fit in. The other recognizes it was never complete without them.
"Power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Most of us believe that verse. How many of our churches are built around it?
We've Been Chasing the Wrong Goal
Our church family at Williamsburg Christian Church has been walking through a sermon series on the theology of disability, and one idea has stayed with us: the difference between assimilation and enculturation.
Assimilation welcomes people and asks them to adapt to how things are already done. We hear its voice all around us in culture right now:
"Assimilate or leave."
“Learn English or get out."
Underneath it all is fear. It's the fear of the other: if they don't become like us, they'll build something of their own, it will grow, and one day we'll be the ones forced to fit in. In our modern American context, it’s called Replacement Theory. It’s not a Kingdom posture.
It’s a fear that is ancient. Recall Pharaoh looking at the Hebrew people and saying, in effect, there are too many of them; if we don't control them, they'll turn against us (Exodus 1:9–10).
Assimilation, at its root, is an imperial instinct. It demands sameness because it can't imagine sharing power.
And if we're honest, that instinct doesn't stay outside the church walls. It shows up in how we receive the child who can't sit still, the adult who communicates differently, the family whose needs interrupt our routines.
Enculturation is the Kingdom's counter-posture.
It receives people in a way that lets their presence change how things are done. It doesn't fear being changed by the people it welcomes. It expects to be.
That posture flows straight from Paul's upside-down claim. Our vulnerabilities aren't something the church has to work around. They're the very places where God's strength shows up. When we only know how to welcome strength, we miss some of the best of what God wants to do among us.
The Foster Care Connection
For children who have experienced foster care, this question isn't abstract. Many carry disabilities. Some are developmental or physical. Some show up as diagnoses like ADHD, anxiety, or learning differences. And many are the marks trauma leaves on a growing brain and body.
A recent federal brief found that children involved in child welfare are more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than other children on Medicaid. That isn't a judgment on medication or the families who rely on it. It's a picture of how much these kids are carrying. The same research found that children placed in family settings, especially with relatives, were less likely to be on these medications than children in group care. Belonging matters. Belonging is healing.
And yet these are the very families the church most often loses. Surveys suggest that as many as 1 in 3 families of children with disabilities have left a church because their child wasn't welcomed or included.
Most of us would say our church is welcoming, and we’d certainly mean it. But many barriers aren't easy to spot at first. It's the child who covers her ears at the edge of a loud, crowded space. It's the foster mom pacing the hallway with a dysregulated little boy while the sermon goes on without her. It's the family that slips out before the last song because they can feel the stares.
Welcome is something we offer at the door. Anticipation prepares for them before they arrive. A church can be warm and still not be ready.
These families didn't leave because they stopped believing. They left because no one made room.
Here is where a church's posture gets tested. Assimilation sounds like "Maybe kids' church isn't the right fit for him," or "We're just not equipped for that." Quietly, the family stops coming.
Enculturation sounds different: "Tell us what helps her feel safe." "Let's find a volunteer who can sit with him." "What would make Sunday mornings work for your family?" It means the church adjusts its routines, learns trauma-responsive competencies, and treats the child's presence as a gift rather than a disruption.
These children and the families who love them don't need us to fix them. They need us to make room, and to let them reshape us in the process. When we do, we find what Paul found: our weakness, and theirs, becomes the place where God's strength is most clearly seen.
A Kingdom Posture
Paul tells the church in Corinth that the parts of the body that seem weaker are actually indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22). Not tolerated, not accommodated. Indispensable. The body doesn't do them a favor by including them. It cannot be whole without them.
That is the posture the Kingdom invites us into. People with disabilities are not a ministry project or a program. They are members of the body who carry gifts, insight, and a witness to God's strength that the rest of us need. The same is true of the children and families walking through foster care.
So let's say it plainly: the Church can never fully be the Church without the presence, influence, and giftedness of the disability community.
Shifting a church's posture doesn't happen in a single Sunday. It starts with honest conversation, small changes, and people willing to learn together.
If you're wondering what that first step could look like in your congregation, we'd love to explore it with you.
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