Churches
Churches
SOAR is passionate about coming alongside churches and enabling them to better care for individuals with special needs.
SOAR firmly believes that every family with an individual with special needs should be able to attend a place of faith of their choosing. Unfortunately, today, only 11% of churches, parishes, and synagogues welcome families with disabilities. That means 89% turn them away.
Luke 14 gives a biblical mandate twice for the Church to welcome individuals with disabilities into the church because the church needs those with disabilities just as much as those with disabilities need the church.
Currently, 26% of the population has a diagnosis of disability and 90% of these families do NOT attend any church, making this the largest unmet people group in the country.
If your church is passionate about outreach, then the disability community is your mission field! Allow SOAR Special Needs and Doc Hunsley to come beside you to develop a disability ministry that is unique to your church and meets your needs. Enjoy the blessing that God promises your church in Luke 14!
Doc Hunsley has created two disability ministries in his past – one at a church that was resistant to it, and one at a supportive church. At that last church, Doc started with 3 individuals with special needs and 20 volunteers, and after 8 years, they were serving over 800 families (roughly 3600 people – average family =4) and had over 2500 volunteers helping out (Roughly 5000 people as many in the same family). So doing a disability ministry is not only a biblical command, but it is also rewarding and profitable to your church thanks to the blessing that Jesus promises in Luke 14!
SOAR currently assists over 600 churches nationally and in 19 Countries. As we move forward to the future, SOAR will assist well over 1000 churches in the next 5 years to help with empowering, employing, and serving individuals with disabilities and their families.
Church Consultations
Church consulting is available to assist you in starting or strengthening your church’s disability ministry. We are happy to walk through all aspects of disability ministry with you. We would love to provide you with a FREE initial one-hour consultation. Every church is different so during the consultations, we will learn more about the dynamics of your church, any challenges you are encountering, and questions you might have, and we will work together to achieve success!
Churches Assisted
Countries Served
Church Coaching Sessions
Special Needs/Disability Ministry Coaching sessions are available with Doc Hunsley. These are available to assist you in starting or strengthening your church’s disability ministry. This 1:1 coaching will help walk you through all aspects of disability ministry including, volunteer recruitment/retainment, sensory room development, how to welcome students or adults, creating respite programs, creating a camp, student apprentice programs, and much more. Coaching sessions can be purchased one at a time or in packages to be used as you need throughout the year. Hourly rates and packages available to meet your needs.
Sensory Room or Space Design/Coaching
Sensory Room or Space Design/Coaching sessions are available with Doc Hunsley. These are available to assist you in creating a sensory space that is right for your church and budget. Doc can provide you with multiple levels of designs from budget to premium for your team to decide. No matter the size of the space you have, Doc can help you maximize it for your ministry as a sensory space. Hour rates and packages available.
Volunteer/Buddy Training
- This training is designed to teach you about disability and how to appropriately serve this population. Then utilizing real-life case scenarios you will apply this teaching so that it is better recalled at the moment later on.
- We recommend everyone complete this training, including both staff and volunteers for the special needs, children’s, students, hospitality, and security team areas.
- This training can be done in person or virtually with your church.
Church Safety Training
- This two-day in-person training will equip you to feel confident serving all individuals and how to appropriately address challenging and crisis behaviors. You will learn preventative strategies, de-escalation skills, and communication skills.
- We highly recommend this training for high-level leadership (staff and volunteer coordinators) for special needs, children, and student ministry. We also recommend this training for the security team. Special rate available for being in the SOAR Disability Ministry Network!
- This training must be completed in person
- Training is good for 2 years.
Ministry Observation and Debrief:
- If a church does an in-person training on a weekend and would like Doc to observe their ministry in action and then spend 1-hour debriefing with the team on how things could change or improve. This could be a 1 or 2 hour observation.
- In-person also charges for food, lodging, and applicable travel costs (mileage or airfare/rental car). Local churches (within 35 mile radius) are exempt from travel/lodging costs
Wonderfully Made Disability Conference
The Wonderfully Made Disability Conference provides “strength for today, hope for tomorrow” through tracks for ministry leaders and families. This will be occurring in October 2026 in Kansas City. To learn more visit WonderfullyMadeKC.org.
SOAR Summer Day Camp (Family Vacation!)
- Every July SOAR hosts the largest disability day camp in the country. This week-long Summer Day Camp is open for all individuals with special needs ages 3 y/o and older. We take all diagnoses and severities (our oldest camper so far has been 75 y/o!). We offer a full medical team and a full behavior team during camp. We offer camp in-person from 9 am – 4 pm Monday through Friday in Kansas City. This is a perfect vacation for families with disabilities, as we will care for the individual with disabilities during the day, while the family and siblings can go do events that they may not normally get to do. The family can then come together as a family again for the evenings. This year we are excited for our camp theme to be SOARLand – Game Night theme! We cannot wait to enjoy a variety of fun activities including outdoor, craft, sensory, missions, storytime, and more. You can learn more about it at https://soarspecialneeds.org/soar-summer-day-
camp/. - Youth Ministry Short-Term Missions Trip: Use a week of SOAR Summer Camp as a short-term missions trip for your youth or college ministry teams. For eight hours during the day Monday through Friday, you will have multiple areas that you can volunteer at SOAR Camp – either as a buddy for an individual with special needs, or in other areas like outdoor games, crafts, music, food, and many more! Then in the evening, you can do fun things as a team in KC and even partner up with our local KC church groups. For more information, reach out to info@SOARSpecialNeeds.org.
SOAR Respite Partnership – Hosting – Greater KC Area
- Partner with SOAR to host one of our SOAR R&R respite events. These occur on a Friday or Saturday for 2-3 hours. This is open to all ages, diagnoses, and severity. This also includes a sibling program for siblings up to age 13. SOAR brings a 24 foot trailer with all of the supplies needed for the respite night. SOAR helps recruit families and volunteers, including a full medical team and a behavioral team. SOAR will perform background checks on all volunteers over 18 y/o and ensure training is completed on all volunteers. SOAR encourages all families and volunteers to attend the host church if they don’t already have a home church (many do not!) The size of the respite will be determine by mutual agreement between SOAR and the host site based on the size on location of the facilities and potential number of volunteers available.
- Church Partner requirements:
- Offering location free of charge.
- If a dinner will be provided – the church will cover all costs associated with that.
- Host church will help promote the event to its congregation and recruit volunteers for all areas, including set up/tear down, medical and behavioral teams. We also ask that you help recruit someone to do a 5-minute worship set.
- Host church will provide someone to run AVL for the night.
- Host church will help recruit families for the event. The host church will be given a predetermined number of spots for their families to ensure that they can attend.
- Set up takes a minimum of 3-4 hours prior to the event – the host site needs to be available
- Results of Partnership
- Church learns how to possibly host their own respite in the future
- New volunteers and families will visit your church because you welcome families with special needs
- Great recruiting and training ground for current and future volunteers for your Sunday Disability Ministry. Once a volunteer realizes that they can survive 2-3 hours, they know that 1 hour on Sunday is very doable!
- Raise awareness about your Disability Ministry to your congregation and community.
- Fulfill the Luke 14 biblical mandate in welcoming families into community.