In seminary, I had a professor who loved to quote the movie “The Princess Bride” in his Introduction to Greek class. Being the bold and brave person I am, I admitted that I had never seen the movie. Gasps went up through the class, and the professor was shocked that I had never seen the movie. He immediately told me that if I wanted to pass Greek, I had to watch it by the end of the semester.
He was kidding, I think. I am glad he made me watch it because it became one of my favorite movies. My favorite character is Inigo Montoya, whose deadpan humor and his quest to find his father’s killer is a key part of this classic film.
One particular scene sticks out to me. It occurs on the “Cliff of Insanity” when Montoya and his fellow bandits attempt to prevent the Man in Black from climbing to the top. When the Man in Black refuses to give up, Vizzini shouts his favorite phrase of “inconceivable.” The moment leads to Montoya expressing one of his classic lines.
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means,” Montoya says.
That line speaks to me as a pastor and parent of an autistic child, especially when it comes to a phrase we say in the church without often thinking about its meaning and implications. The phrase is “everyone is welcome.”
Admittedly, it is a phrase I have said from time to time. The phrase desires to express welcome and to extend an invitation to worship or some other event to people beyond the local church. We say it with the hopes that new people will come and be a part of our fellowship. It is a noble goal and fits within the purposes of the Great Commission’s call to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ. I do not believe we truly know what it means to say “everyone is welcome.”
When we extend an expression of welcome to someone, it comes with an expectation that we, as the host, have done everything possible to ensure that someone is included and provided for in our community. It means doing the hard work ahead of time to adapt, think through steps, and contemplate what it means to engage a community before we extend an act of welcome. While there are things to learn along the way, admittedly, extending an invitation of welcome to someone comes with the expectation that we’ve done some work along the way to get ready.
Unfortunately, my experience when it comes to how we welcome people with disabilities is quite different than this stated goal. This is true whether I speak as a pastor, a father, or as someone who deals with various invisible conditions like ADHD, anxiety, and depression. We desire to be a place of welcome, but we often do not put the extra work in to make room for people with disabilities and to include them in our communities. We presume that because we are the church and desire to love people it will come naturally to us to welcome people with various needs and challenges. It does not. As a result, we often refuse to learn or put up barriers that enable our welcome to become more realized when it comes to individuals and families who live with various invisible disabilities.
If we are to make our words of welcome mean what we intend for them to mean, then we have to do the hard work. We would never wait for someone to show up to our homes to prepare and adapt for their fellowship, so why would we wait for someone to come to our church to work through what it means to welcome people with invisible disabilities in a faith community?
We should not.
Churches should take the time to form teams that will work together to discern the best practices, learn from experts, and talk with individuals and families in their communities about what they need. Churches should not be afraid to admit what they do not know and take the time to learn. Churches should also identify safe, friendly, and calm people to serve as buddies and guides for individuals. These are individuals who will sit with individuals in worship, help to engage them in conversations, and serve as a constant companion in stressful times.
When churches put these and other acts into place, it helps to make a community more welcoming and inviting to individuals with disabilities. It is not a perfect solution, and churches must admit that they will make mistakes in extending welcome to people. I know that is true of me. As well, the church will also need to recognize that while it tries to reach all people, it needs to be willing to work with those whom it can fully include and embrace and help guide people whom they cannot welcome to communities of faith that can be a loving witness to them.
My dream is for every church to extend acts of welcome to people with invisible disabilities. If we want our desire to welcome to mean what we think it means, then we cannot avoid doing the hard work to make sure we know how to truly welcome and love people.
Shannon Blosser 