07/10/2025
There exists a curious temptation within the modern church—a longing for order so strong that it occasionally eclipses love. We say “all are welcome,” but often what we mean is, “all who can behave in a certain way, dress to a certain standard, or suffer quietly in the back row.”
Permit me, then, a word on behalf of those who do not fit easily into such categories—children with disabilities and the families who accompany them.
You see, the Holy Spirit is not so fussy as we are. He does not require coordinated outfits or calm demeanours. He is not alarmed by medical devices, loud vocalizations, or anxious glances. His presence is not deterred by exhaustion, nor offended by imperfection. Quite the opposite—He seems irresistibly drawn to it.
Christ Himself never avoided the messy or the misunderstood. He did not ignore the man crying out by the roadside, nor ask the paralytic to wait until the service was over. He touched the untouchable, dignified the disregarded, and made holy those places others called unclean.
This is the pattern. This is the posture. This is the Gospel.
The families who arrive with wheelchairs, feeding pumps, behaviour plans, or silent tears are not interruptions to the worship of God. They are part of it. In fact, I dare say their presence is often the truest form of worship among us—a faith held together not by ease, but by endurance.
We are not asking for perfection from our churches—only presence. Not mastery, but mercy.
Do not be silent. Do not shift uncomfortably and avert your eyes. Instead, step nearer. Learn our names. Ask about our children. Ask how they communicate, how they worship, how they love. For though they may never sing in your choir or read aloud in your Bible study, they are members of Christ’s body all the same—and indispensable ones at that.
Remember, the command was never to “organize the saints” but to “welcome the stranger.” And sometimes, the stranger is a five-year-old who hums during communion, or a teenager who flaps his hands when the music rises.
You need not fix us. We are perfectly imperfect. Your calling is simpler, but in some ways more complex: to love us.
So, if your church proclaims that “all are welcome,” then let that be more than a slogan. Make room in your pews—for the wheelchairs and the wandering. Make room in your liturgy—for the unexpected pause or the sound no one anticipated. Make room in your hearts—for the parents who are weary and the children who are wondrously complex.
And when you do, you may just find that the place you once considered disruptive has become, in fact, the most sacred space of all.
For Christ is often found at the margins. And to welcome the least of these, He said, is to welcome Him.
