CRC, RCA Join for Disability Ministries Project

One day a couple of years ago, Rev. George Grevenstuk and members of Connections Church, which was new at the time, were doing a prayer walk through their neighborhood in Wyoming, Mich., when they noticed something surprising.

Several of the homes they passed that day in 2013 had handicap ramps and handicap-accessible vans parked in the driveways.

Later, Grevenstuk visited one of those homes and learned it was a group home for persons with disabilities. “We invited the people to a block party, and many of them came,” he said. “They also started coming to our church.”

Since then, the pastor of the Reformed Church in America congregation has learned there are several other group homes in the neighborhood, as well as handicapped persons living individually in various houses.

“It has been awesome to meet and get to know these people and to share the program we have and to be able to worship and welcome people with disabilities to our church,” said Grevenstuk.

Connections RCA, which meets on Thursday nights, was one of three RCA congregations that joined with three CRC congregations in a pilot project sponsored earlier this year by the Disability Concerns offices of the two denominations.

The project, called A Local Mission Learning Community for Engaging People with Disabilities, brought the six churches together to share stories of how they include persons with disabilities in their ministries and to discuss their plans for the future.

The project grew out of the RCA’s Transformed and Transforming initiative that was adopted in 2013 and has established learning communities in a variety of areas, such as in leadership and discipleship, across the denomination, said Terry DeYoung, the RCA’s coordinator of Disability Concerns.

“One of the goals of this project was to ask churches what sorts of things we as denominations might be able to do to provide resources to help them in doing ministry,” said DeYoung.

This is the first learning community that includes RCA and CRC congregations. It also is another example of the ways in which the CRC and RCA are working together in ministry, said Mark Stephenson, the CRC’s director of Disability Concerns.

In this initial effort, the six churches met three times to give reports, share information, and discuss ways in which they can develop their outreach.

“For the project, we selected churches that were in close proximity and that we knew were already working with inclusion of persons with disabilities,” said Stephenson.

Besides Connections RCA, churches involved in the project included Plymouth Heights CRC, Trinity CRC, Trinity RCA, and Oakdale Park CRC in the West Michigan area. Also included was Faith Church, an RCA congregation in Dyer, Ind.

Plymouth Heights CRC is a congregation where Friendship Ministries, a program that works to include persons with intellectual and cognitive disabilities into the life of churches, has been active for many years.

Started in the RCA, Friendship is now an interdenominational program involved with churches around the world.

At Plymouth, members of Friendship groups sit with their mentors and are integrated into worship. The church has adopted a group home and has worked with Korean seminary students who have “a heart” to bring ministry to persons with disability into Korean churches.

The representative from Faith RCA in Dyer said the church, which has six campuses in northwest Indiana, has a ministry that began with one person “who was passionate and able to support it.”

Currently the church offers respite care for families of persons with disabilities, special worship services, a monthly parent support group, prayer partners, and a Friendship ministry. It is also working on putting together a mental health ministry.

Trinity RCA has worked at making its church more accessible and is trying to find ways to improve public transportation for people with disabilities.

Trinity CRC has undertaken an employment effort with the City of Grandville for persons with disability, includes these members in its hospitality program, and is hoping to find additional ways in which persons with disability can use its facility.

Oakdale Park CRC has a long history of working at inclusion, especially under the leadership of Bill Vanden Bosch, its pastor from the 1970s till 2009.

Its new church was constructed with persons with disabilities in mind so that all levels are easily accessible, said Julie Veeneman, a caring elder at the church.

At Oakdale, she said, “we do not have a specific ministry for persons with disability because we believe we all have disabilities. Some are just more apparent.”

Persons with disability are greeters at the church, lead ministries, and help with worship. Oakdale attracts families from all over the area, as well as from the local neighborhood, seeking this type of environment, said Veeneman.

“We don’t have disability as a focus at Oakdale. We have inclusion as the focus,” she said.

Grevenstuk at Connections said he and other members continue to go door-to-door in their neighborhood, often coming across “so much brokenness in the homes. There are so many people with so many needs.”

They have learned there are 23 group homes in the area they serve, and so far they have built a relationship with three of them. In one, they hope to hold a Bible study.

The space where they meet for worship, said the pastor, can accommodate about 60 people, and as many as 30 are persons with disabilities at any given time.

“Through the group homes, we’ve learned better to interact with persons with disabilities. It is so great to see their smiles. They are the spirit of Connections,” said Grevenstuk.