Provide a Buddy
The email that I get most often on a Monday morning is from a children’s minister who has had a certain experience at church on a Sunday morning. Their message usually starts by saying, “We have this one kid, and we don’t know how to help him or her feel more comfortable in our ministry spaces.”
I love that children’s ministers are thinking about this. They want to do evangelism and discipleship with all kids, but they just don’t feel equipped. They have questions about what that could look like in their ministries.
One of the best places to start is to train an additional volunteer to help meet those needs. We call that a buddy, and we have buddies in our children’s ministry. Sometimes they work one-on-one with the child. Sometimes they’re there in our children’s ministry classroom to meet the needs of any of the kids in that classroom, whether that is a social need or whether they help with the things that they’re learning. That may mean that they build a bridge between that kid and the kids who are playing a game as soon as everybody gets there so that it’s easier for that kid to fit in with the other kids.
Sharing years of expertise and personal experience as a caregiver, ministry consultant and professor Sandra Peoples shows churches how to remove physical and social barriers to create a welcoming, inclusive space for disability families.
It could be that they help during the academic part of Sunday school. When all the kids are at the tables and they’re doing activity sheets, maybe the kid doesn’t read at the same level as their peers or can’t spell all the words that he or she needs to spell, so the buddy comes in and is able to help do that.
The buddy is there to support with sensory needs. If the kid is feeling overwhelmed by the environment and needs noise-reducing headphones or a fidget, the buddy has those things available and gives them to the kid.
And so the buddy is there to be a friend and to meet those needs so that the kid can feel successful and safe in that children’s ministry environment.
Sandra Peoples is the author of Accessible Church: A Gospel-Centered Vision for Including People with Disabilities and Their Families.
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