As the Spanish proverb says, “The beginning of health is to know the disease.” Likewise, ministering most effectively to someone with a disability will greatly depend on the nature and degree of the person’s disability. However, in general, I think there are three practical steps we can take in order to best meet a person’s spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical needs.
We can be assertive in reaching out toward someone. People with disabilities will often shy away from asking for particular types of less obvious need, such as nurturing and emotional support. If we fail to ask, we may never discover a person’s greatest unmet need and may instead offer them helps they’ve already received from someone else.
We can also be proactive in learning as much as we can about a specific disability. By developing our understanding with accurate knowledge, we can more readily offer a compassionate response to a person in need and may be in a better position to reach out to the person’s family.
We can support a person with a disability by raising the level of awareness and understanding of a particular disability within our congregation. In doing so, we can help well-intentioned members of our congregation overcome any relational fears they may experience in the presence of one with a disability. Since people with severe physical or mental disabilities can at times appear frightening to the unaccustomed, providing resources for the congregation can also help them interact in a life-giving way with those who are disabled.
Above all and in all things, the best way to care for any member of our congregation, disabled or not, is to learn how to love them deeply. For as members of Christ’s body, we know that “love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). We may be painfully awkward in our approach to a person with a disability, but if they know we love them they’ll usually be slow to anger and quick to forgive.
