Emma Major on disability, isolation, and how to include all people in churches

On this week’s podcast, Emma Major, a licensed lay pioneer minister at St Nicolas’s, Earley, in Oxford diocese, offers advice on how the Church can better include disabled people. She reads from an article that she wrote, which is published on our website: Isolation and the Church: online and offline. She says: “Of course, in a few weeks’ time, the first phase of lockdown may be eased and most church buildings open up again. I wonder what will happen, if so. Will online church provisions stop? How will this affect those who have to continue shielding themselves? Will churches stream the services from their buildings? How will those at home be included in worship and leadership and encouraged in their calling? “Will churches realise the importance of including everyone who has been excluded from physical churches until now? How will that look? Perhaps hearing my experience will help you to understand what I mean.”