Sojourner #071: Accessible Church - A Gospel-Centered Vision for Including People with Disabilities and Their Families

"On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." (1 Corinthians 12:22, ESV)

Book Review: Accessible Church by Sandra Peoples

In Accessible Church: A Gospel-Centered Vision for Including People with Disabilities and Their Families (B&H, 2025), Sandra Peoples offers the church both a challenge and a way forward. Studies show that an estimated one in five households in the United States has a child with a disability. 

Yet many of these families are missing from our churches, not because they do not hunger for the gospel, but because congregations have not yet learned how to welcome them. Too often, physical barriers, lack of trained volunteers, and unawareness of the unique challenges families face keep them from experiencing the fellowship of God’s people.

Peoples knows these challenges intimately. She serves as the disability ministry consultant for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, teaches disability ministry at Liberty University, and is pursuing doctoral work at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. 

But perhaps most importantly, she writes as someone who has lived the realities of disability ministry in her own family. 

With deep compassion and steady theological conviction, she shows pastors, volunteers, and families how to make the church not only welcoming, but also genuinely accessible for children, teens, and adults with disabilities.

The book is both practical and theologically grounded. Peoples offers creative ways that churches can adapt classrooms, teaching styles, safety policies, and discipleship practices. She writes with awareness of the wide range of needs churches may encounter: autism, Down syndrome, dyslexia, ADHD, anxiety, trauma-related challenges, and more. Importantly, she does not frame disability ministry as optional or secondary, but as central to the life of the body of Christ. Her words ring with humility and conviction:

“If you read only one book about disability ministry, I don’t want it to be this one. If you’re going to read just one book about God’s design and purpose for people with disabilities, how he expects His followers to treat people with disabilities, and the lengths He will take to ensure they are welcome in His family and His church, it shouldn’t be this one. Because all of that and more is in Scripture. If you’re going to read just one book about inclusion and accessibility, it should be the Bible.”

This perspective makes Accessible Church more than a ministry manual, it is a theological call to kingdom obedience. The gospel itself is at stake. God’s people come from every tribe, nation, and tongue, and within those nations and tribes are people with additional needs. As Sandra Peoples reminds us, they are not to be pitied or sidelined, but embraced as indispensable members of Christ’s body.

The endorsements scattered throughout the book underscore its significance. Laura Wifler calls it “theologically grounded and deeply practical,” while Jared Kennedy describes it as “biblically grounded and clinically aware… practical and scalable for congregations of different sizes and budgets.” 

Others echo the same refrain: Daniel Darling calls Peoples’s work “a gift to the church,” Michael Beates commends her for bringing “wisdom from the trenches,” and Shane Pruitt highlights how the book points us to see “God’s glory in unexpected places.” Chris Hulshof goes so far as to call it “the most complete book on disability ministry that is currently available.”

Perhaps that is what makes this book so timely and necessary. Many churches want to be welcoming to people with disabilities, but they simply don’t know where to start. Accessible Church provides the starting point, and the roadmap. It gives churches the theological foundation to understand why accessibility matters, and then walks step by step through practical ways to implement changes, no matter the size of the congregation or the budget.

Reading this book, we are confronted with pressing questions: Do we believe people with disabilities belong fully in the family of God? Will we, like Paul, be “ready to share not only the gospel of God but also our own selves” (1 Thess. 2:8) with them? And before that, will we first welcome them through our church doors as people, equal image-bearers of God and fellow heirs of grace?

Accessible Church does not let us remain comfortable with excuses. Instead, it paints a compelling vision of churches where families with disabilities are not only accommodated, but embraced; not only welcomed, but discipled; not only ministered to, but seen as ministers themselves. Sandra Peoples has given the church a gift. 

We would do well not only to read it, but to put it into practice.

We received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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