Church Spotlight
Buffalo Covenant Church
Location: Buffalo, Minnesota
Attendees: 914
Joined the Covenant: 1885
Each day, when Tonya Sands drove her daughter to and from school, she passed a vocational services agency for adults with disabilities. As she watched participants being picked up and dropped off for work, she wondered, “Lord, who is reaching this population with the gospel?”
As the mother of a daughter with special needs herself, Sands knows the difficulty people with special needs and their families can face getting involved in a congregation. “Individuals with special needs and their families are one of the least reached people groups in the world,” she observes. She adds, “In Luke 14, the story of the great banquet says we are compelled to go out and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame. Jesus doesn’t tell us to wait for people with disabilities to come to us. He tells us to go to them.”
Rooted in this conviction, Sands began a Bible study for her daughter and three of her friends who also have special needs. As she partnered with her congregation at Buffalo (Minnesota) Covenant Church, that Bible study transformed into Access, a vibrant ministry for individuals with special needs and disabilities.
Access offers a weekly Sunday school and a twice monthly youth group-style event, along with opportunities, such as serving as a greeter/usher and singing in the intergenerational choir. A connect group for parents of children with special needs and a moms’ prayer group are also available.
Borrowing from the Special Olympics’ “Unified Sports” program, Access focuses on reverse inclusion—events designed to serve individuals with special needs, with general education peers invited to serve as partners and student leaders.
“The ministry of Access has been such a blessing to Buffalo Covenant Church and to me personally as a parent of a special needs son,” says interim pastor and former Northwest Conference superintendent Mark Stromberg. “To see both participants and families able to connect and share life together has blessed not only those with unique needs but also the many who volunteer at gatherings that take place regularly at the church.”
Access was initially created for junior and senior high school students, but Sands quickly realized that many adults with special needs also wanted to participate. So they expanded to include participants from middle school into adulthood. Additionally, Buffalo Covenant completed the construction of an all-abilities accessible playground last summer, through which they are looking forward to serving families with younger children in their community.
Churches can look for ways to better serve individuals with special needs and other disabilities by being proactively mindful, Sands says. For example, consider what someone who uses a wheelchair would see in the church from their vantage point. How might the sights, sounds, and smells of worship affect someone with a sensory processing disorder? What if congregations invested time and effort into developing personal relationships and understanding each person’s unique needs?
Sands says she hopes to see both individuals and churches intentionally take the next step, wherever they currently are, in terms of ministering to those with special needs and their families. “If you can include someone with disabilities in your church family, in your community, in your life, you are going to be richly blessed.”
