Beyond the Ramp: Redesigning Church for All

In this episode Lindsay Wieland Capel, the Disability Consultant for Thrive, an agency of the CRCNA, joins us to explore the transformative work of accessible church ministry. We delve into the Accessible Church Ministry cohort, a group dedicated to rethinking church inclusivity, and share stories of how churches have worked to better welcome people of all abilities.

The following is a transcript of Season 9 Episode 1 of the Do Justice podcast.  It has been lightly edited for clarity.  Listen and subscribe on your favourite listening app.  

“Hi, my name is Emily DeBoer and I’m from Faith CRC in Sioux Center, Iowa. On behalf of the Faith Christian Reformed Church team, I want to thank the Lilly Endowment, Pastor Dan, Pastor MIssy, Lindsay, Coach Deb, numerous panelists, authors, speakers, and the fellow Northwest Iowa cohort members. Our team members have been blessed and changed through this opportunity, and I’m not sure who the Holy Spirit prompted to begin this endeavor but we just want to praise God that you listened. The cohort gatherings helped the Faith CRC team gain confidence in the pursuit of God’s calling for all people in all circumstances to fully participate in all facets of church and community. Through the education, personal stories and experiences, tough conversations, accountability, and strong and compassionate leaders our team has been inspired to continue this work within our church as long as God allows. The Faith CRC team sent out surveys last year helping us to understand the needs and desires for improving hospitality and accessibility within our church and many concerns that were raised in those surveys will be resolved with our church addition, which should be completed this summer (if not earlier). What’s cool about that is that it was already started before this cohort meeting even began. We have committed as a team to meet monthly and have been asked by our council to create an accessibility team mandate and to become an official team or committee of the church and we’re really excited about this. This is just a small picture of what is happening at Faith CRC because of the Northwest Iowa cohort and we would love to continue gathering as a large group, even if it’s just an annual meeting. And we would love to be involved in some way in continuing this work with other churches in the area or other states. We believe in this program and so we want to see it continue. This gathering, this educating and inspiring, is good and will benefit everyone. And how often can we say that about anything? So, thanks again.”

Chris: Well, hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Do Justice. My name is Chris Orme and today I am joined by Lindsay Wieland Capel. Welcome Lindsay, thanks for joining us.

Lindsay: I'm glad to be here, thanks for having me.

Chris: So we're continuing our conversation, we're talking about communities of practice and the cohorts that have accompanied them. Really important conversation today as we talk about accessible church ministry. So, Lindsay, I'm going to brag on your bio here, a little bit, if that's okay. It says here that you are the Disability Consultant for Thrive, which is an agency of the CRCNA. You've held a variety of clinical and leadership positions within nonprofits. You're a strong mental health advocate and you bring to your work a passion for identifying and improving the experiences of individuals within systems and organizations. Hey, I am really excited to get into this conversation. Thanks again for joining us. So, I want to talk about the cohort—I want to talk about what was the core question that this cohort was looking at.

Lindsay: We wanted to gather churches together to think about the experiences of people with disabilities in their church and also who is not in their church, who maybe is missing. We wanted to think about accessibility and disability pretty broadly, so that's a pretty wide open definition. It includes all types of disabilities. So we were hoping to help these churches tune into what's going on in their congregations and who is there and think about both universal and responsible design in their church context.

Chris: Maybe just so that we all get on the same page here, when you're talking—you know, you mentioned definitions and what we're talking about. What are we talking about? What are we talking about when we're talking about disability?

Lindsay: So, disability is a very diverse group of people who identify as disabled or having disabilities. It's a hugely diverse group of people who have very different lived experiences so it's very funny that we sometimes even call it a group of people because if you think of all the different types of disabilities those are very different lived experiences. Some disabilities people are born with, some are acquired along the way—in fact, the majority are acquired along the way. There are all different types of disabilities and it doesn't really matter how you organize them, different people are going to give different labels or categories, so that doesn't really matter. The idea is you just want to remember that there are a lot of different types. So, there are mental health disorders, there are intellectual and developmental disabilities, there's sensory disabilities, and then there's physical disabilities. And so each of those groups and even people with the same type of diagnosis will have different experiences in the world. And that's part of what makes the work interesting, is you're never done learning. And even if you identify as having a disability you don't inherently understand the experiences of other people with other types of disabilities.

Chris: Can you share a story or an experience from the cohort that has been sticking with you? Something that was a "Wow," moment for you or a challenging moment for you or a paradigm shifting moment for you?

Lindsay: I think that when I think about this work I'm often just picturing a church building and I'm picturing Sunday morning, I'm picturing Wednesday night, I might be picturing, you know, Sunday afternoon or something. But there's sort of a limited slice of what we can think of when we think of church and there was this story that one of the churches shared which I thought was bringing the church to the community which I thought was really beautiful. There was an older gentleman who needed a medical intervention on a regular basis and it was, I think, over an hour away and so the church made a schedule, it was once or twice a week, and they just made the schedule for quite a long time where all different people were just driving him to his appointments. Taking a day and going to another city and going to be with him and support him through these medical appointments. The people, the nurses and doctors, said, "Do you just have a really huge family? Who are all these people? Every time you come with a new person!" And he was able to share that this is his church family and that people were signing up and just taking time to support him and help him through this situation that he was in medically. And I just thought it was such a beautiful demonstration of the church being the church quietly. They weren't doing that to try to proselytize to the doctors and nurses. But they really showed Jesus by just loving this guy and what his need was was rides and companionship at the appointments and so that's what they did and it really meant something to the people that witnessed it.

Chris: Lindsay, two words that you said the cohort focused on were "universal and responsive design." Can you tell us what those words mean and share an example?

Lindsay: So, universal design is the idea of trying to make things as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. The word "universal" maybe implies it is perfectly accessible, which is just really hard to come by given the diversity within people with disabilities and sometimes different needs. Anyway, it's hard to do perfectly. But the idea is to try to do it the best you can to make things accessible for the most number of people. And then responsive design is looking at who is there. So, who is in your congregation, who are the people, and what is it that they need so that they can participate in whatever is happening at the church.

Chris: And what do those look like, then? What are some practical examples that churches have taken and embodied those types of approaches?

Lindsay: So, the churches in the cohort did a lot of things around universal design and just trying to set the stage for a church that's welcoming so that when someone comes in they don't have to advocate for what they need, it's already been thought of. They've already anticipated that they were going to come to the church and so they feel appreciated and welcomed in that way. There's all kinds of things, like one, the church changed all their door handles to be the lever style which are easier to open. A lot of old buildings still have kind of outdated, less accessible door handles. One church added conversational seating in the coffee area. They realized people were standing thirty, forty minutes after church and that there wasn't really a great spot for someone that can't stand that long. So they just added a couple organic spots with chairs gathered to just normalize that you can sit or you can stand, whatever is fine. You know, basic things like increasing the size of the font on the powerpoint and making more white space on there. It is such a simple, free change but if you change that and you use that every week it can have a big impact for people who otherwise couldn't see the powerpoint but now can.

Chris: Those are great examples, thanks. And, you know, yes and amen to the powerpoint font. I mean, [laughs] just for everybody, truly universal.

Lindsay: Yes! So that's the thing about universal design, though, is you're hitting on exactly that—that is, the idea is like, if it's good for people with disabilities it usually ends up being great for all of us, right? How many of us have pushed a button with our elbow to open the door because our arms are full or used a stroller and been noticing all the steps and been grateful for any of the cutouts that we had on the sidewalk or those kinds of things. We all end up using this stuff. In fact, a lot of things that we use in our everyday life were designed by people with disabilities and then they just become something that we all enjoy. Like automatic garage door openers, for example.

Chris: Now one church actually partnered with the city where they're serving. Can you tell us more about that?

Lindsay: Yes! So, Maria Magdalena is a RCA (Reformed Church in America) church plant and our ministry works—the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church together, we work together. So this was a building that they rented from the city and it wasn't their space, so when you think about changing a space at first they felt like, "There's not a lot we can do because it's our rented space and it's not ours," but as we had the conversation and they got curious, they were able to then advocate with the city to make changes that then impacted others coming to the building for what the city was doing during other times. So, one of the things that they realized was they didn't know that there was actually a ramp. They were unaware of the ramp. And so they investigated and found, "Woah! There's a ramp none of us knew about." But as ramps sometimes are, they're kind of back entrances, not a very pretty entrance, and so sometimes these things are designed in a way that aren't very welcoming. And so they realized there's a ramp but the door to get into that entrance is always locked. So it's not very functional. In theory, they met legal requirements, right? But in reality it wasn't accessible. And so they worked with the city to change that out. They changed the door, changed the locking system, so that it could be unlocked during the hours that the building was open. And they also talked about things like—they didn't want it to be a second-rate experience to come to church and have to enter through the ramp, so they did things to try to make it one of the main entrances that others would use as well so it wouldn't be sort of this thing for people with disabilities.

“Hello, I'm Glenda Bos from First CRC in Sioux Center. To others, Barb Top and Ron Rynders and I made up the team from First CRC. We've learned from this Northwest Iowa cohort, to be more alert and hospitable to the accessibility needs of our church as a whole. That's all ages and to those who come to visit. We've been working on signage for a parking issue that is of having too many handicapped accessible parking places, which were made available some years ago. The number of members able to use them now is quite low. We hoped we could add on senior parking signs so more seniors could park closer to church. A building committee member spoke about this at our congregational meeting back in early November and then later on council announced that if someone needed to park closer to church just to do it so no one would fall due to the ice and snow this winter. And I'm happy to report that about a week and a half ago our building committee attached some new "Reserved for Seniors" signs to some of those accessible parking poles, so now they have dual purposes. Also, valet parking was suspended when Covid hit back in 2020. The committee in charge of this recently gave it more thought and announced that it would resume this winter. So, some of our members are making good use of this valet parking again. More names are being gathered to help in this service. We have hearing devices available for our congregation and because of this cohort we make reference to these aids in our weekly bulletin. We have work to do yet on getting a survey out to our congregation to see if there are more areas that need to be addressed. We are also looking at some improvements to be made that just came up with our community friendship class that meets at our church. We would like to thank Dan and Missy from Hope Haven and Bethel CRC and Lindsay from the CRC Disability Concerns for being such good hosts and providing so many resources for our church through this cohort. Thank you.”

Chris: I find it encouraging and also frustrating at the same time that oftentimes in our justice journeys there are people who are focusing and talking about the same things that we're focusing on or talking about and trying to find solutions to, i.e. like the church and the city working together. But sometimes those connections don't get made. Sometimes those connections don't happen. How did a connection between the city and the church happen? How did that practically come about?

Lindsay: You know, I don't know all of the details but it was the building that they were renting, so it was kind of a landlord situation where they needed to educate up and say, "This is what we need for Sunday mornings and what can we do?" And then advocating for that change, which sometimes advocacy is hard, right? Sometimes you have to push people or systems to do something that might be different than what they—what's the easiest thing or different than what they already were doing. So they advocated with the city and had to just let me know the need and highlight that this just isn't okay that people can't get to the ramp.

Chris: Yeah, and again it comes back to that point or, you know, sometimes we might feel alone in some of these journeys but we aren't. And a key part of learning in cohort is that you're not alone on this journey and it can be especially helpful in a justice setting. I'm wondering, Lindsay, from your experiences leading this cohort, what value or impact did you observe of people joining together and focusing on this conversation?

Lindsay: It was so interesting, the energy. This was a cohort in-person. Everyone was from within an hour of each other and so we always met in person. The very first meeting was just so awkward, no one knew each other. I mean, maybe they sort of knew somebody or whatever, but no one knew what this thing was. A cohort—they were all committing to this, but they weren't really sure what they were committing to. I had never really led a cohort so I wasn't even totally sure what I was doing. So, there was just kind of this nervous energy and kind of awkward and by the end people just felt so comfortable with each other and felt so supported by each other and it was just like a completely different experience by the end. You could tell that they had really listened to each other and learned from each other. There were times where we would do things as church groups, like at tables, but then a lot of the time we would mix up so that we would be with people from other churches and that's kind of the beauty of it, right? That you're learning that if you say, "Okay, we've discovered this problem," then someone else can say, "Oh! We updated your signs already, this is what we did to make sure people could find the bathroom" or whatever it is, right. So they could learn from each other. One thing that stands out is at the very end we were talking about, well, what do they want to do next? Were they going to stay in touch with each other? It was a year-long process but it took a long time to get to the point where they knew what they wanted to do or what they needed to do within their congregation. So they were still very much kind of in that action space of, okay, they've assessed the need, they've figured out what needs to happen, and now they're trying to make that happen. And so there was this conversation of, like, "Okay, the formal cohort is going to be done, but what does everyone want? Do they want to keep meeting? Do they want to just email each other? What would be helpful?" And one of the cohort leads—a lead from one of the churches—got up and she has a daughter with a disability and she got really emotional and she just sort of gave this speech about, "There are mamas in every congregation, in every church, who need this. And I needed this. And there are mamas in every church and we need to go and connect with them and tell them about this and help them figure it out and that it's possible." She even said, "I need you!" to everyone else there. "We need to do this together!" And I remember her saying something like, "let's go to the Baptists and the Methodists! Let's go to all the churches in our communities and help them figure this out because now we've figured it out a little bit and we can keep learning together." They kind of caught the spirit of it and the energy of why it's so important. It was just really cool to see.

Chris: That's beautiful. I love that so much. And I want to ask, you know, sure there's a mom or a dad or a sibling or a caregiver or, you know, someone who cares about and has someone who they love very much who might be able to fully participate in their church as it is right now. What do you say to those folks? What do you say to the ones who are sort of asking, "Well, where do we start with this?" How can they start this conversation?

Lindsay: I think the "where to begin?" question can be overwhelming. Sometimes a good place to begin is asking the question of: who is in your church? The thing is we don't always know that someone has a disability because a lot of disabilities are non-apparent. So we want to remember that but if there are people that we know who have a disability we can talk to them about their experience, we can find out from them, you know, how's it going for you? Where the seating area is for someone who uses a wheelchair. Are you still able to see when everyone stands up? You know, we can get curious about their experiences of church. We can notice that a kid isn't going to Sunday school. And, "Oh, yeah, I remember they have autism. Okay, what's going on there? Is that a choice? Is that a bad experience? Do teachers not feel equipped?" So thinking about who's there is a good place to start. The other thing to think about is just doing something like reading a book together to learn more. So, just, general education/awareness. So, My Body is Not a Prayer Request by Amy Kenny is a book that we've encouraged churches to read. And actually they still can sign up to get free books if they'd like to do a book club. So reading that with a group of people gives more people in the church empathy for people's experiences and gives more people a vision for what can be. So those are a couple of ideas.

Chris: Lindsay, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to be with us and talk about what happened through this cohort. Our guest today has been Lindsay Wieland Capel and we'll be sure to link resources and places where you can find more information about this important work in the show notes. Lindsay, thanks again for joining us.

Lindsay: Thank you for having me.

Helpful Links

• Thriving Practices Cohorts: ⁠https://www.crcna.org/essentials/thriving-practices⁠
• Thrive Disability Access Resources: ⁠https://www.crcna.org/disability⁠
• Transcript: ⁠https://dojustice.crcna.org/article/beyond-ramp-redesigning-church-all