Apr. 29—Tom Jones, formerly executive director of SHARE, is now helming the Faith Inclusion Network.
It carries on some of the same work as SHARE, which stands for Sharing Hands A Respite Experience, by encouraging churches to include people with disabilities and their families.
The nonprofit Faith Inclusion Network is headquartered in Midland. It was in Norfolk, Va., previously.
“When I retired from SHARE, I wanted to get involved in some faith inclusion, inclusion in churches for people with disabilities. We never addressed that issue at SHARE,” Jones said in a phone interview.
He found the Faith Inclusion Network. They help churches and other faith communities include people with disabilities.
Faith Inclusion Network provides resources, training and consultations and holds conferences and seminars for different churches.
“The one thing that they did that was really cool is that they had a listing of all the churches that included people with disabilities and had programs. When I saw that, I thought … I’d say 90% of our SHARE families do not go to church … One of the reasons, I think, is because they don’t know where they’re going to be welcomed, and they don’t know if they’re going to be told to leave or we can’t work with your kid.
“I thought something like that would really be helpful to special needs families here in Midland and Odessa … the same area that SHARE covers. I talked to them about starting an affiliate out here. That’s what started my involvement,” Jones said.
What also contributed was that he couldn’t find funding for a faith-based organization in Virginia and he didn’t have the connections and the ones he did have turned them down because they were faith-based.
Jones told the board he could find funding in West Texas and the decision was made to relocate Faith Inclusion Network to Midland.
It is now housed at First Christian Church in Midland.
“Our mission, kind of similar to SHARE, includes Midland-Odessa … We want to make an effort to contact those towns like Monahans and Andrews and some of those smaller West Texas towns, because we are just so isolated out here from resources. There are so many things going in disability ministries nowadays, and we just don’t know about it.
“We’re not connected. We’re not in the big city where a lot of these things happen. That’s one of the goals that I have for the Faith Inclusion Network, is to bring some of those resources, make them available, out here, to our people here in Midland, Odessa and West Texas,” Jones said.
Faith Inclusion Network offers training and connections that they need to be successful in including people with disabilities.
They hold an institute on theology and disability and this year it will be in Denver.
One of the first churches Faith Inclusion Network worked with locally was Grace Christian in Odessa. One of the parents who attends there was in SHARE so she reached out.
“I was able to go in and do some training with the Children’s Minister, minister and volunteers, and got them started” on how to start a special needs ministry and what’s important to include, Jones said.
He added that the Grace Christian ministry has taken off.
“They have a wonderful special needs program, and just very proud of them and the way they’ve taken off and help families in a lot of different ways,” Jones said.
Catholic churches have also started special needs masses.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton has one quarterly just for people and their families that have people with special needs.
The priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe has one once a month.
Father Bala Anthony Govindu at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church just started one last month, and will do one on the second Sunday of the month, Jones said.
“There’s a special needs mass on the first and the second Sunday of the month in the Catholic Church, and there’s about 100 people that attend,” he added.
Jones noted that he will work with any religion, faith or denomination.
“It really does offer a place, and it’s interesting, because you go into that mass and people are making noises. They might blurt out in the middle of a sermon and just all kinds of different things. But nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes the people with special needs are part of the service. They might bring the elements up in front. They might do a reading. In that respect, they’re providing a place for people who are raised Catholic to have a place to go,” Jones said.
He added that his job is to talk to churches, see who’s doing disability ministry, and get that information and get the information to special needs families.
“So many of those families have been asked to leave churches, but some of the research shows that 84% of people with disabilities tell us that faith is important to them and so they want to have that spiritual aspect and meet those needs, but … only 20% have supports for people with disabilities. Some of it is churches just don’t know how or they don’t have the resources,” Jones said.
“That’s where the Faith Inclusion Network (can) come in and let them know that all these families are wanting relationships, and any size church can provide those relationships. They’re not looking for programs. You don’t have to have specialized people … What they’re looking for is acceptance and welcome and a church that’s hospitable, and a church where they can belong,” Jones said.
He added that there’s a little bit of education that he has to do to let churches know they can provide a place of belonging for families.
At SHARE, Jones said he learned it’s not just that one person with a disability, “it’s the whole family that’s excluded from worship and from having their spiritual needs met,” Jones said.
He added that Faith Inclusion Network is one of the few organizations that are faith-disability focused.
Learn more about Faith Inclusion Network at faithinclusionnetwork.org
