Victoria - Well, our final segment together. I'm so thrilled that you've gotten to  learn so many things from experts in various ministries and from my mentor  Barb and a few things from me, I hope. But today we're going to wrap up by  talking about equipping the community. 

And so we've talked about peers within your congregation, those working right  alongside people with disabilities. We've talked about volunteers and we've  talked a little bit about leaning into scripture. And so I want to just think about  how our broader community, how our churches can be places of welcome. 

And we've talked a lot about some different things, but equipping the community to be a place of belonging. So I'm going to go through a few ideas that may have been spoken, may not have been spoken yet, but are just kind of gathered into  one place to wrap things up today. So equipping the community through a few  ideas. 

First of all, I want to encourage every church and you can encourage your  church in whatever position you have, whether you are a leader or a  congregant, or if you are doing ministry in a different and creative way, pray for  people, pray for the needs of people within your congregation, pray for the  needs of families impacted by disability. And in the United States, I quote the  statistics that that's one in three households and nearby group homes. And so I  work in Kent County and we cite that there are 400 adult foster care group  homes in our County, but there are 600 churches. 

And so if each one of our churches could be praying for a neighboring group  home, then every group home would have someone praying for them. So I  encourage you to know who is in your neighborhood, who is in your area  impacted by disability so that your church can be praying for them. Even if you  simply know how many people that is, and you can be praying for those people. 

Pray for de-churched people with disabilities to feel welcome in your worship  services and congregation. So simply as a prayer point, pray for those who have left the church or been told to leave the church because the church was not  equipped to be a place of belonging for them. If you can pray that prayer, then I  think God can start to do amazing work. 

Prepare support. We've talked about this in that behavior segment. We've talked about it in terms of individualized planning or those even universal design, right? 

But provide things, prepare support to provide signs and volunteers to show  where to go when you arrive at the church. Make wheelchair accessible seating 

available. Offer an optional quiet area that's streaming the service so that people can watch it from that quiet area and listen at their own volume. 

Provide sensory tools, fidgets, and large print options. And these are just a few  of the ideas that of course we've already been over in this course, but like I said  kind of bringing them all together. Implement other ideas that are shared by  people with disabilities who are already in your congregation and listen to them. 

Now these ideas are coming from the King's Table Ministries and this is all put  together as a one pager that I give to churches, but again just kind of  summarizing some things here for you at the end of this course. So  acknowledge people, great people with disabilities looking directly at each  person. Not just at their caregiver, not just at their equipment, but look them in  the face with a greeting when they're arriving. 

Smile and let the person in the family or group know that you are glad they  came to worship with you. Do not express shock and awe and displeasure that a group home or a family with disabilities has arrived, right? Smile and greet them  warmly when they walk in the door. 

Introduce yourself and ask each person's name. Don't ignore that a person has  a name as well as everything else that comes along with them. Assume certain  things and ask certain things. 

Assume a person can understand you and can respond whether you notice a  disability or not. So if you notice a visible disability, still assume  competence. Remember we talked about that. 

Assume people can understand you and want to engage. Ask how you can help  the person, the family, or the group's experience be meaningful and then ask  them to come back with a friendly goodbye at the end of the worship  service. Often people have been de-churched because they weren't asked to  come back or they were told not to come back, so be sure that when they're  leaving, if that was their first time visiting or their third time visiting, ask them to  come back and assure them that you are glad that they have come and you  want to meet them again. 

Sponsor a home. Say happy birthday or appreciate caregivers or drop off some  goodies. Telling a family with special needs or a group home with residents and  staff that Jesus loves them.

Sending birthday cards, doing small acts of kindness that just show up once in a while to say Jesus loves you, the church sees you. These are deeply powerful  messages to send, so send them as often as possible with tangible physical  things that offer help and encouragement. You could fill stockings for a group  home or sponsor a home or sponsor a family at Christmas to ensure that a  family has Christmas gifts. 

Or whatever it is that you do to celebrate Christmas in your community, can you  ensure that families and individuals with disabilities have those opportunities as  well? Coordinate consistently meeting practical needs and spending time with a  family or group home. Maybe it's yard work, maybe it's chores or laundry or  

caring for the animals, things that you can do or like those respite opportunities. 

Find ways to sponsor them, to get to know them, to stay consistently engaged  and meeting tangible needs. Finally, invite presenters. Invite individuals,  families, or organizations to share about disability, the opportunities, the  resources, and what God is doing in the community. 

Your local community and the disability community around the world and how God is working through that. Schedule a disability training for the church staff,  the volunteers, and the congregation. As we talked about, being equipped and  being trained is a great way for people to continue to engage. 

So I encourage you in those things. Yes, those have little check boxes on them,  so if you could check them all off, fantastic. If there's a few things that have  inspired you in there, use that as a checklist, and I've made that available for  you through the course links. 

But I just want to encourage you, as we wrap things up here, that there are  things that you can be doing from the very moment a person comes to your  church and that you can be doing ahead of time to encourage people with  disabilities to be a part of your church. And I hope you've gotten some very  practical insights from this course as well. Now I want to give Barb about 15  minutes here to tell a story about a man named Adam and a book that's called I  Choose Adam. 

And so in the original version of this course, she hinted at this a little bit, and so I want you to just watch and listen now to the story of Adam and to think about  what are the stories that you could tell in your church, or who could you invite to  tell their own story in your church to make disability a bigger piece of the  conversation of your community and how you worship together. So listen to this  story and think about the stories that you can invite into your congregation.

Barb - So here's the story. I had talked earlier about a book called I Choose  Adam, and I would like you to meet Adam and his father David. Adam was born, and he was the one, do you remember the story? 

I sort of started it. Adam was born, and it reminds me a bit of that book from  Henry Nowen that's called Adam, God's Beloved. That's the Henry Nowen book. 

This is called I Choose Adam, Nothing Special, Please. And while these are two different Adams, that's not Henry Nowen's Adam, there are some similarities in  the story that's pretty amazing. So in any event, here is Adam's baby picture. 

Adam was born, do you remember this part? I told a piece of it to you. This is the part where the doctor said, yeah, I don't think you should take it home. 

It will ruin your life. It will never read, it will never have friends. I will find a  different place for it, but you two should go on with your lives and pretend it  never happened. 

I often think that this doctor not only didn't see a puzzle piece, didn't only just  see a pink side of a puzzle piece, I think maybe the doctor didn't even really see  a person. Adam was more of like, I don't know what, but not a puzzle piece and  not even a pink puzzle piece. Not a person, I'm not sure. 

This was about 34 years ago now that Adam was born. And again, the doctor  said some really horrible things. And then the nurses didn't help at all. 

The doctors said those things to the parents, but the nurses were very much  engaged in sort of thinking, how can we make this very sad family, who must be  sad, not be so sad? So they in this hospital usually had these dinners for new  parents and they took them off the new dinner list because they wouldn't want to be with all of the other happy parents. And so it was just this horrible thing of not only doctors but the nurses and they pulled the blinds and they tried to keep  Adam away from mom and this was this dark, bleak thing. 

It was absolutely an amazing time of life for them because they were too, this  was a surprise. They didn't know that Adam would have Down syndrome and  they certainly didn't know because this diagnosis came later that Adam would  also be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. But Adam was not celebrated  

even a little bit by the nurses.

It was a journey too as the parents went home with Adam and they were trying  to give him care. They invited several people who were going to try to  help. Some people would come in and one was suggesting almost using these  very horrible things to get Adam to keep his tongue in his mouth. 

And dad would differentiate between having caretakers and caregivers. He said  he always preferred the people who were caregivers. The caretakers took  something away from them, would take Adam away from them, would take  Adam's dignity away. 

They thought they had all the answers and what they needed was people who  could give care, not the caretakers. I thought that was an interesting  understanding of those two words. But again, they had a huge variety of people  coming into their home. 

And every time they did, they really suggested that Adam needed to go and be  with the special school. Adam needed to go and be in the special area. In fact,  they tried to go to a church and the first church they found as a Christian family  that was accepting was the Jewish synagogue. 

A friend invited them. They went because they couldn't find another church to go to. And it was then that the rabbi picked up Adam, held him up in the air, kind of  like that Simba sort of thing on The Lion King. 

This is God's blessing to us. This is God's gift to us. Look, this is Adam. And he took Adam around and they would go there. They never had a hold of  Adam once because he was passed around this congregation. And they went  there just to feel that delight that people had. 

The neighbors around their family, too, had some interesting things they did  when Adam was born, received these sympathy cards and they had  neighbors. But one neighbor came over and said, you know, I don't know much  about Down syndrome, but I would like to learn. And how do you want us to  handle this? 

Great question. And David said, I want him to be treated like all of the other  kids. We want people to celebrate that we have a baby. 

So he said, good, I'll let people know that. And then they started to get these  encouraging notes that people came celebrating your baby boy, whatever. But  sometimes it takes, again, that person to just ask the right question.

Well, they looked and looked and looked for a long time. They didn't want a  special thing for Adam. And that's what everybody kept saying. Well, you've got to go here. You've got to go to the, even in the church, you've  got to go on a special wing. And said, but we just want Adam to be with  everybody else. 

We want him to learn from everybody and we want people to learn from  Adam. At one point, Dad even bought a school in order to facilitate that. And  that whole thing fell through. 

They said, look, we're moving. We're going to Colorado or somewhere. Yeah, I  think it was Colorado. 

Dad flew out there and said, we need to find a different community because this  is not working for us. They ended up, Dad went out, he found a realtor who  showed them a great piece of land for a house. He was offered a job in a facility  there. 

And he found a school for Adam that was just perfect. He came home and was  telling his wife, we're moving. You know, all of these great things have  happened. 

Within the space of a week, they couldn't get a hold of the realtor, found out that  she had died. The place where he was supposed to work took the offer back  and the school burned down. It's like, seriously, if that's God not closing a door, I don't know what is. 

And at this point, and Dad's pretty honest, he said, I didn't talk to God a lot, but  we had a conversation this day. Dad got in this car and started just driving  around. And he ended up, after driving, talking to God, realized he was parked. 

And he looked up and he saw this school. Although he didn't live in this  community, the school was called Zeeland Christian School. He walked in the  door and was met by the administrator. 

And he started to share the story, took an hour, was telling about things. The  administrator listened and he said, sure, we'd love to have Adam here. You  know, I'll hook you up with Barb and Jan and they can help figure out the details. 

So Adam became part of our student body. And that launched one of these  amazing connections with Adam. They also found a great church in their own  hometown.

Zeeland Christian was about a half hour's drive, but in their hometown they  found a church, a Christian church, where they, as a family, could worship. While they had options for Adam, he was also welcome to be part of the sanctuary. At  one point, when the pastor was giving a blessing, Adam thought that looked like  a cool idea. 

And before his father or mother could catch him, he was up there giving a  blessing. It went over so well that he did it frequently. It was just this wonderful  gift to the community. 

Adam was just a part of everybody. Adam had tons of friends at Zeeland  Christian. He went on to a high school after that. 

Tons of friends there as well. It was interesting to me, too, that as Adam was at  Zeeland Christian, it wasn't as though every day was easy or perfect. I'll never  forget the day that Adam had a room full of grandparents in his classroom. 

And it was Grandparents Day, and crowds and all of those things really made  him upset. And sometimes Adam knew words that some of the children at the  Christian school shouldn't know or didn't know at that point in time. All those  people in there, it was hot. 

Adam just lets it fly with the F word, right? Out it goes. And the grandparents are shocked in horror. 

This calm comes over the room, this quiet. And the peers just knew Adam so  well at that point. We'd done a lot of prepping of peers, and they just calmly  turned to their grandparents and said, you know what? 

That word really doesn't mean anything bad. It's just Adam's way of saying that  he's upset. There's too many people in here. 

One of the kids just took him for a little walk, and when he came back, he was  fine. So again, it's this way of creating this community and culture. They loved  Adam. 

Adam loved them. And when Adam went on to high school, he also went to  youth group in his church. There were just all of these great connections that  Adam had.

Adam built tons of friends. But given Adam's size, one of the things that he was  part of was the football team at Holland Christian High School. And I don't know, but they had a really great football team that year. 

And I to pay close attention to the gentleman in the back with the glasses on his  head, as he's a significant part of this story. Adam worked out with the team. He  coached the team. 

He hung out with them. They were very protective of Adam. He was one of their  teammates. 

And so on the day they practiced for the summer, on the day that the kids came  back to school, and they had the others join in, Adam got the hallways there at  the school, and he was getting very upset. And of course, one of those words  came flying out of his mouth. There were some kids that were laughing at him. So the kids from Zeeland Christian that knew him went to come alongside of  Adam to get him calmed down. The kids from the football team, apparently from  what I heard, sort of pushed those kids who were laughing up against the wall  and let them know that Adam is one of us and you don't mess with him. That  continued for a long time. 

Even after high school, Adam would get these invitations to go to people's  homes. He would be part of so many different communities. Adam loved to go  out. 

He had fun. He was a great friend. He had your cell phone number. 

He loved to call you. And he would find out how you're doing, what's for  supper. One of the friends on the team, his name is Brett, when he was dating,  he went on a lot of dates together with Brett and Darlene. 

They were just, you know, Adam would call, where are you going? Okay, pick  me up at 5:30. And they did. 

Adam was the best man at their wedding. He did not go along in their  honeymoon, although I'm sure he asked. But Adam was just part of their life, so  much so that Brett and Darlene, when they built their house, said, we're getting  a home with an apartment in the basement because we want to make sure that  Adam always has a great place to live. 

Adam was just part of their community. As he grew through those years, Adam  also joined men's Bible study at church. He was very much a servant.

He loved to vacuum. And so he would go and do the vacuuming at his church,  very much a part of that. The men's Bible study, he was a great timekeeper. 

He liked to keep things organized and start on time. And he made tons of notes,  journaling what to pray for, for people. Adam was a prayer warrior. 

And so if you made his notebook, you were going to get prayed for. Adam was  this amazing friend and magnet. Like I said, not every day was easy, but he was  surrounded and he fed the lives of his friends, and they fed him. 

It was so great. Well, it just so happened that Adam, at the age of 30, developed cancer. And one of the things that happened is they just didn't have a lot of  treatments available to him. 

And his father called me towards Adam's last days, and he said, you know,  Barb, I'm really wondering if you might be willing to lead the memorial  service. And I said, absolutely not. I'm not a pastor. 

I get way too emotional. This is just not happening. He said, no, that's not why  I'm asking you. 

I'm asking you because I know that Adam had friends of all differing  abilities. And we're going to have a regular church one. They'll do that. 

But could we just have one for his friends, a place where they could go to  celebrate his life, to mourn his death, and in a way that allows everybody to do  that. So I prayed about it, and I said, all right, I don't think this is going to go well, but I will. And that's where we pulled in those vertical habits. 

We had a service that was filled with people talking. We had a service that was  filled with using thank you to God, to asking God for help, to asking God why,  why did this happen? We had a service with a lot of participation. 

We were thinking that there would only be, you know, maybe 100 people, but we wisely put it in a church because there were over 500 people who gathered for  that funeral, 500 people who were there at this sort of secondary funeral that  they were having, memorial service. And it was this amazing testimony. In fact, I  was thinking of some of the words from Henry Nowlin's book about the Adam, God's beloved.

And this is what Henry Nowlin wrote. And I thought this was an amazing  testimony to this Adam as well. I thought, here is the man who more than  anyone connected me with my inner self, my community and my God. 

Here is the man I was asked to care for, but who took me into his life and into  his heart in such an incredibly deep way. He is dead now. His life is over. 

His task is accomplished. He has returned to the heart of God from which he  came. I will tell you, as I looked at those 500 people at that memorial service, I  thought, really? 

The doctor, could you be here? Could you stand beside me, doctor? Mr. It, could you come here and could you look and notice the number of people who are  gathered, the number of fingerprints that Adam had on each of these lives? 

Would you listen to the comments that people made? Because as many times  as I invited people to take a microphone, not one person mentioned that Adam  happened to have Down syndrome or autism. Not one. 

Not one mentioned that, but they all mentioned the way that Adam touched his  or her life. How Adam changed his or her heart about being in community with  one another had changed who they were as a person. It was amazing to me. I went out to the car and I thanked God for not making me just break down in  front of everybody. But I started to weep. I started to weep. 

I think I missed Adam. That was part of it. He was part of my life as well. But I started to weep because God allowed me to see something that I have  worked for for many, many years. God allowed me to see the fullness of  something that happens every day that I give a child an instruction or an adult or a church a message about inclusion and why it's good to be together, about how we need each other within the body of Christ, how the eye can't say to the hand, I don't need you. It's about how we build community. 

And here in front of me was this vision of what happens when we do that in  life. We could celebrate Adam's life together and oh how we missed him. We  ended with a time of worship because we knew that's something we could still  do with Adam. 

Adam, holy, holy, holy, right? In that place, a different place of worship. Adam  who loved to sing, who would often be known to turn around in church and at  school wherever he was and say, come on guys, louder.

He was one of these people who was so passionate about worship. We did  that. But I'll tell you what, that picture has stayed etched in my brain. 

And this story has stayed etched in my brain. Because I think this isn't about the  person with a disability. Are you hearing this? 

Yes, this was partly about Adam. But it's also about all the other lives that Adam  touched where he lived, where he went to church, where he went to school. It's  about those communities that grew and knew Adam. 

In fact, one of the people who came and shared the microphone that day is a  very popular quarterback here at the NFL in the United States. His name is Kirk  Cousins. Kirk Cousins was one of Adam's friends. 

He was a quarterback of the Holland Christian School team. He went on to  Michigan State. At the end of the game, he would text and call Adam at the end  of it. 

At the end of the NFL games, he would text and call Adam. He invited Adam to  his NFL draft party where they stood around the piano and sang hymns because that's what Kirk Cousins does. That's who he is. 

That's his personality. And they keep doing interviews with Kirk Cousins. And I  keep thinking, oh, do you know? 

Do you know about Adam? Because Adam helped to form Kirk Cousins'  heart. Kirk Cousins gave him that honor, both in the book where his words are  included, but also at the memorial service that night. 

Adam touched me. Sometimes he was the only encouraging voice I heard after  a game saying, you got it next time. Head up. 

Our communities of people impact one another. This is the story from Holland  and this is my story about Adam and the people who were part of his life,  including Kirk Cousins. 

Victoria - Well, I'm so glad you got to hear that story from Barb who knew Adam  well and was good friends with him and his family. But she also knew that  football player that she mentioned, the American football player, Kirk  Cousins. And I just want to show you that Kirk Cousins has had a few things  going on since that happened.

And so Kirk Cousins is now a famous football player and he and his wife have a  foundation called the Julie and Kirk Cousins Foundation. And I'm just showing  you a little screenshot from his website there of the foundation that is supporting a ministry actually very near to where I am called Compassionate Heart  Ministries because a lot of friends of Adam Winstrom attend this place. And Kirk  and Adam hung out with a lot of these individuals. 

And it is now an organization that is simply a fun place for individuals with  disabilities to hang out, to make friends, to play basketball, to play video games,  to eat food together, to be silly. And it's a wonderful place. And so Kirk Cousins  supports this and he encourages others to support it through his foundation. 

And so that's just one example of how God used the pieces of the puzzle that he put together with Adam and Kirk to do incredible things that have long-lasting  impact. There is another American football player that you may have heard  of. His name is Tim Tebow. 

He also has a foundation. And I'm just showing you a little screenshot of his  website because he has a few things going that are all under the heading of  Special Needs Ministry and His Foundation. So the Tim Tebow Foundation has  something they call the Night to Shine. 

So it's kind of like a prom experience. And then they also have Shine On  Ministries that encourages those churches who have put on the Night to Shine  as a one-time event designed to draw people toward Jesus and to celebrate  people with disabilities being the king or queen of the night. But also then to  shine on and to encourage churches to be places of belonging after that one  Night to Shine event and to encourage and to lift up the disability community  who is right with them. 

And they also have some worldwide efforts happening as well. So I just wanted  you to be aware that those football players that Barb mentioned have actually  had quite a few things going and that that's just a really encouraging piece. So  the disability community is shaping our churches and is shaping ministries  around the world. 

I am so delighted that now you can start to explore how people with disabilities  can be shaping your community in extremely positive ways that draw us towards the Lord. So I want to wrap up my words and allow you to hear from Barb a  blessing that's from the previous version of this course and then read her prayer  for you in the little excerpt from her book Accessible Gospel Inclusive  Worship. And so I'm going to say thank you so much for going on this journey 

with me, for thinking about people of all abilities belonging in our congregations,  and I'm going to let Barb end with this blessing. 

So I look forward to looking into your cumulative projects and responding to  those and I'm so grateful for the time you've invested in this course. Be blessed. 

Barb - May the God of hope from Romans 15:13, may the God of hope fill you  with all joy and peace. And I think it's a beautiful thing that God doesn't do things in short supply, but God wants to fill you with those things. May the God of hope  fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him. 

So please, while we hope we have been helpful to you, do not trust in Tori and  Barb. Don't trust in the people you've read. Trust in the one who knit that  individual together, who designed that puzzle piece, who knows that individual  and knows your community puzzle as well. 

Trust in God to give you those answers. May the God of hope fill you with all joy  and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope. Stop. 

Because that is a beautiful gift. It's a calling that we have to spread God's hope  in our community and I will tell you it will happen soon. If you approach that  family or you get to greet someone who has been sent away from  congregations, who has been looking for that place, and you look at that  individual and say, we need you here. 

You have gifts to share in this community. I see those green parts of your  life. You will watch God's hope dawn on that person's face. 

And it is a beautiful thing to see God's hope fill that individual. Be leaky. Go out  there and leak God's hope. 

Share that hope with people around you. And how are you going to do that? Are you going to do it because you're going to drink a lot more caffeine? 

Are you going to start a new exercise program because it's all about you anyway to pull this off? Absolutely not. The rest of this verse also tells us that how we  get to do this is also a gift from God. 

So here's the blessing. Romans 15:13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy  and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power  of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Have a wonderful, wonderful year and may God give  you many chances to use this material in His service.



Last modified: Monday, May 18, 2026, 9:49 AM