Creating Access and Inclusion in Worship

BULLETIN ARTICLES

Following is a short bulletin article announcing a congregation’s participation in Inclusion Awareness Day. Add a description of your faith community’s efforts to make your parish more accessible.

Inclusion Awareness Day, September 24, 2006

Inclusion Awareness Day focuses on issues of awareness, acceptance and inclusion of worshippers of varying abilities at our parish. Our participation in Inclusion Awareness Day affirms our commitment to making our parish accessible to all members of our faith community.

Sunday, September 24, 2006 is Inclusion Awareness Day. That weekend we will focus on access and inclusion through prayer, preaching, and reflection. Participating in Inclusion Awareness Day is just one step toward making our parish more accessible. To have a real and lasting impact, we must extend our efforts beyond this special day. Together we can open our community to people of all abilities so that everyone can participate in worship, ministries and fellowship every day of the year.

For more information about the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors movement, Inclusion Awareness Day, and becoming an Inclusion Representative for your parish, visit www.inclusioninworship.org or call Pathways Awareness Foundation, 1-800-955-2445.

Inclusion Awareness Day, September 24, 2006

The following bulletin article can be used on Inclusion Awareness Day.

Today is Inclusion Awareness Day. It is a day to reflect on how well we, as a congregation and as individuals, include people of all abilities in our worship, ministry and fellowship. It is a day to create an awareness of the gifts each person brings to the community.

Inclusion Awareness Day is a day for us to reject the “culture of exclusion”; to reject the “culture of value based on function”. Today we adopt and support a “culture of life”; a “culture of inclusion”. Let us pray that we always remember that each person is created in God’s image, that each person is entitled to respect and that we will have the courage and grace to include all people, enhancing the unity of the Body of Christ.

Contributed by Deacon George Brooks, Infant Jesus of Prague Parish, Flossmoor, IL