I felt like I was the only one with additional needs in the whole church and everything there was for people without learning disabilities. It tried to be inclusive but the language was too complicated for me, there was too much detail – I couldn’t understand the main point. (Jess)
Most churches seek to be places of welcome and acceptance for all. However, there is often anxiety around if and how to include individuals with learning disabilities and their families in regular services and activities.
In 2009, at St James Muswell Hill, there were several families with a young person with learning disabilities. Many of these young people (like Jess) were in, or had gone through, mainstream education and they enjoyed the church’s youth programmes. However, as they neared adulthood, they and their families felt increasingly isolated. A group of mothers met to talk about these struggles and, based on their belief that in God’s eyes everyone is valued equally, WAVE (We’re All Valued Equally) was born. They gathered a small team of people from across different denominations, most of whom had some personal or professional connection with learning disability (as parents, friends, teachers or therapists). None of the team had experience of church leadership but they all saw a need for this ministry.
Taking a leap of faith, the first WAVE Church service took place in 2010. A small number of people from several local churches came along. The services were short and straightforward and, as one of the leaders says: “we learnt on the hoof, observing how people responded, talking to them about the activities they enjoyed and noting attention spans”. It was a slow burn and several months before the first new person arrived.
Today WAVE Church Muswell Hill is a vibrant community of over 50 members with and without learning disability (30+ attend regularly each month). Our meetings are informal with art and drama, singing with Makaton signing and creative prayer. The talks are a key element, and we work hard to get to the core of an issue and present it simply. We love when John Beauchamp comes to teach and lead us for communion. It’s always important to remember that we’re not creating child-like Sunday School – irrespective of intellectual age, those coming have a life-time of lived experience. The popular ending to each meeting is tea and homemade cake. One member describes WAVE Church as feeling “like being wrapped in a warm blanket. I leave knowing that God really loves me”.
The original intention was for WAVE Church to be for people with learning disabilities. The approach is no longer for but rather with – we do WAVE Church with each other. Members with learning disabilities play an active part – on the planning team, co-leading the service, taking part in drama, serving the tea.
Various Christian media have covered our story over the years. We’ve featured on BBC’s Songs of Praise. Wave’s co-founders Bernice and Celia have been honoured with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Langton award for community service. And yet it is the small transformations that we’ve seen amongst our Wave Church community that mean the most. The non-verbal member who arrives confidently with a huge smile, seemingly because he recognises Wave Church as a place that’s warm and caring. The woman who humbles many of us with her prayers showing great care for others in the group and the wider world.
Media attention has however helped to spread the word about WAVE – both WAVE Church and WAVE Café (a social enterprise in Muswell Hill). Four new WAVE groups have been established as a result of connections made (two in London; two further afield) and our prayer is for many more. The fact that one of our members travels across London because there is no inclusive church service in his area, shows just how great is the need.
We know it’s daunting getting started and so we’ve developed WAVE in a Box, offering resources and mentoring to save others having to reinvent the wheel as they create mixed-ability worship and social initiatives in their communities.
If you’re interested in creating or supporting more genuinely inclusive social or worship places in your community, we’d love to hear your ideas and explore how we could work together. Get in touch at hello@waveforchange.org.uk
You can find out more about the WAVE movement for change on our website.