The horn sounded through the trees. It was not music. It was a cry for help.
Boromir was alone beneath the trees of Amon Hen, surrounded by enemies and fighting a battle he could not win. Merry and Pippin were behind him. Orcs were closing in. Arrows had already found him, but still he stood. And somewhere in the distance, Aragorn heard the horn. He knew that sound. He ran toward it.
I have always loved that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe because Tolkien understood something ancient about a horn. You don't sound one because you have something interesting to say. You sound it because someone needs to hear. A horn is a summons. A cry across the distance that says: Come.
C.S. Lewis understood that kind of call too. In The Last Battle, when Narnia has grown dark and the faithful few are scattered and hiding, Aslan calls his own. His call is not merely an invitation to change locations. It is a summons toward himself, and ultimately beyond the crumbling world they have known into something larger and more real than they imagined.
Perhaps that is why these stories have stayed with me. There is something buried deep within us that understands the idea of being called. Someone speaks our name. A horn sounds in the distance. A voice comes from somewhere beyond where we are standing, and somehow, we know it is meant for us. Come. Follow. This way.
I've been thinking a lot about calling lately. Maybe it is because I am in a season of life when I find myself looking backward and forward at the same time. I can look back across more than three decades of ministry and see places where I was certain God was calling me, places where I thought I understood what He was doing, and a few places where I clearly didn't.
But I'm looking forward too. I'm increasingly spending time with younger men and women who are just beginning to ask the questions I have been asking most of my life. Am I called? Called to what? How do I know? And perhaps the hardest question of all: What exactly does it mean to be called?
That question became much more personal recently when I found myself sitting across from a young man I've come to know. There are almost three decades between us, but grief has a strange way of collapsing distance. His father is gone. So is mine.
His father was a pastor and a friend of mine. He died far too young. I conducted his funeral, and it remains one of the hardest funerals I have ever done. I knew the man. I had spent hours talking with him. I knew his faith. I knew his love for Christ. I knew something of his heart. And I also saw something of myself in him.
His death forced me to think about my own mortality in ways I would rather not. Then, sitting with his son years later, we found ourselves talking about fathers, loss, life and eventually calling. Grief is strange. My father has been gone for nearly ten years now, and I suppose I once imagined that grief eventually disappears. It doesn't.
For me, it has become something like a scab over an old wound. Most days I leave it alone. Sometimes I pick gently around the edges and find clean pink skin underneath. Healing. Sometimes I pick too much. And it bleeds again. I think that young man and I were both picking at the edges that day.
Then he said something I haven't been able to shake. "I never heard Dad say how he was called to ministry." His father had pastored for years. He was a good preacher. He loved the Lord; I knew this without any doubt. But his son had never heard the story of his father's call. I encouraged him to ask his mother and his siblings. Maybe his father had told them. Maybe somewhere in the family there was a story he had simply never heard.
But the conversation followed me home as it raised a larger question. What do we mean when we say someone is called? I grew up in a church world where that word carried considerable weight. Someone was "called to preach," or "called to missions." A pastor was "called to a church."
I believe God does call people into particular ministries and places of service. I can look backward across my own life and see moments when I knew, sometimes with remarkable clarity and sometimes only in retrospect, that God was leading me somewhere. But I wonder whether we have occasionally made the call too small.
We have treated calling almost like a divine job offer: pastor, missionary, teacher, church planter. And without intending to, we may have created two categories of Christians: those who are called and everybody else.
Scripture seems to tell a different story. Jesus walked along the Sea of Galilee and called, "Follow me." That was the call. They didn't receive a career plan. Peter wasn't handed a job description. Jesus didn't explain Pentecost, Jerusalem, persecution, church leadership or how Peter would eventually die.
There was a Person. There was a voice. There was a call. Follow me. Everything else came later. The Christian call is not first a call to something. It is a call to Someone.
Before God calls us to something or somewhere, He calls us to Himself. Before occupation, geography, ministry or assignment, it is about relationship. Allegiance. Obedience. Jesus did not begin with Peter by saying, "I have a ministry position for you." He said simply, "Follow me." The first question of calling, then, is not, "What am I supposed to do with my life?" It is, "Whose voice am I following?"
Our culture loves the idea of "finding your calling," but usually what we mean is discovering the thing that makes us feel most fulfilled. We search for that sweet spot where our abilities, passions and opportunities come together perfectly. There is some wisdom in that. God gives gifts. He shapes personalities. He gives us experiences and abilities that can point us toward places where we can serve well.
But Christian calling cannot be about self-discovery. It is a response. Someone has called. We answer. And that means the call may not always lead toward the place where we are most comfortable or even the place where we feel most competent. Sometimes the call of God leads directly into our strengths. Sometimes it exposes our weakness. Sometimes it leads somewhere exciting. Sometimes it leads somewhere lonely. Sometimes it leads to a pulpit. Sometimes it leads to a classroom, a construction site, a hospital room, a kitchen table or a neighbor's front porch. Sometimes the assignment lasts thirty years, sometimes thirty minutes.
The assignments change. The Caller does not. I can see that more clearly now than I could when I was younger. I have been a missionary. A pastor. A teacher. A chaplain. Now I serve churches and pastors in another role altogether. For years I might have described each transition by saying, "God called me to..." Maybe that's true. But increasingly I wonder whether these have been less like separate calls and more like different stretches of road following the same voice, saying “Follow me.” The road changes. The Voice doesn't. And sometimes following that Voice requires courage.
That may be another reason Boromir's horn has stayed with me. He does not sound it from a place of safety. By the time the horn sounds beneath those trees, Boromir has already failed badly. He has tried to take the Ring from Frodo. He knows what he has done. But when Merry and Pippin are threatened, he stands and fights. He is wounded. And still he stands.
The horn sounds not because Boromir knows he will win, but because faithfulness requires him to stand where he is and do what is before him. There is something about calling in that too. We sometimes tell stories of calling as though answering God means finally discovering the path on which everything fits and sometimes, they do.
But Scripture is filled with people whose obedience took them into places they would never have chosen. Calling does not come with a promise that the road will be easy. It comes with the promise that the One who called us is worth following. Perhaps that is why I find myself thinking so much these days about younger leaders. There are young men and women sitting in our churches right now who hear something but don't yet know what it is.
Maybe one can't stop thinking about planting a church. Another keeps noticing children in his community who have no father in their lives. Someone else has an inexplicable burden for foster families. Another loves Scripture and feels something stir every time she teaches it. Someone keeps thinking about missions. Someone keeps seeing a neighborhood everyone else drives past. Someone is twenty-two years old, sitting across a table from an older Christian and finally gathering enough courage to say: "I think God may be calling me to something." Our first instinct may be to help define the something. But maybe our first task is to help them recognize the Someone.
Before we ask where the call is taking them, perhaps we should help them ask whether the voice they hear is drawing them closer to Christ. There will be time for internships, education and mentoring. There will be time to talk about gifts, theology, and opportunity. But we are not simply trying to fill pulpits or ministry positions. We are trying to raise up people who know the Voice well enough to follow wherever He leads.
And those of us who have been walking this road for a while have a particular responsibility. We know something about the sound. We also know how easy it is to misunderstand. We know about doors we were certain God would open that remained stubbornly closed. We know about assignments we thought would last forever that ended. We know about seasons when the voice seemed unmistakable and others when we walked mostly by faith. We know, too, that following Christ has sometimes taken us places we never would have chosen for ourselves.
Perhaps part of our calling now is helping another generation listen. I don't know exactly how my friend's father would have described his call to ministry. I wish I could ask him. There are a great many things I wish I could still ask my own father. Perhaps that is one of the strange gifts that grief offers. It reminds us that there are conversations we should have while there is still time to have them.
So, tell your children the story. Not merely the story of how you became what you are. Tell them about the Caller. Tell them why you followed Christ. Tell them about the moments when you sensed God leading you somewhere you had not planned to go. Tell them about the times you got it wrong. Tell them about the doors that closed and the ones that opened. Tell them about the seasons when following required more courage than you thought you had.
Tell them about the Voice you have spent a lifetime learning to recognize. And when someone younger sits across the table from you and says, "I think God may be calling me, but I'm not sure," resist the temptation to immediately hand them a map. Sit with them. Listen. Pray. Help them listen past all the other noise for the Voice that first said: Follow me.
Because somewhere in the distance, a horn may already be sounding. And when it sounds, perhaps those of us who have heard it before should remember Aragorn. He did not hear Boromir's horn and analyze it from a distance. He ran toward it. Maybe that is part of our calling now. When we hear the sound in another generation, run toward it. Come alongside them.
Help them discern the Voice. Help them find the courage to answer. And if the road ahead is long, uncertain and costly, remind them that the call was never about where they were going. It was about Who was calling.
The horn is sounding. May we have the courage to answer. And may we have the wisdom to help others recognize the sound.

One of the first things I learned about driving in Alaska was how to look for something I couldn't see.
Moose are surprisingly difficult to see in the dark. That might seem strange considering a full-grown moose can weigh well over a thousand pounds and stand taller than most cars. But against the darkness of an Alaskan winter, their dark bodies can simply disappear into the landscape. And when something that large disappears, learning how to find it matters.
A lifelong Alaskan friend taught me the trick. "Don't look for the moose," he told me. "Look for the negative space." Sometimes the most important thing you can see is what isn't there.
For nearly eight years, I lived and pastored on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, where much of life revolved around a single highway running from Soldotna through Kenai and north toward Nikiski. The church I pastored was on that road. The schools where my children attended and where I sometimes substitute taught were connected by it. Safeway was there. Walmart was there.
If you were going somewhere, chances were pretty good you were going to spend at least part of the trip on that highway. The State of Alaska did a remarkably good job keeping it relatively clear through the winter. The moose apparently appreciated the state's efforts to maintain their favorite walking trail.
That becomes particularly problematic during an Alaskan winter because daylight is a precious commodity. As December approached, the sun might not make an appearance until around 10:30 in the morning and could disappear again by three or four in the afternoon. So, I spent a lot of time driving on that highway in the dark. And in Alaska, darkness has moose in it.
I had hit deer before moving to Alaska. They can certainly damage a vehicle. A moose is an entirely different proposition. They stand high enough that a vehicle may take out their legs and then receive the rest of the animal through the windshield. I saw what happened when vehicles encountered moose, including much larger vehicles than mine. I had no desire to join that particular club.
Fortunately, I had a good friend who had lived in Alaska his entire life. He was a science teacher at the local high school and had spent years working with Alaska Fish and Game during the summers. He knew wildlife, and as far as I knew, despite a lifetime of driving Alaskan roads, he had never hit a moose. That made him an expert worth listening to, and his advice was surprisingly simple. "Look for the negative space."
Moose are remarkably difficult to see at night. Their dark bodies can disappear against the landscape, and you cannot necessarily count on the familiar reflection from an animal's eyes to alert you to their presence. So instead of staring into the darkness hoping to recognize the outline of a moose, my friend taught me to watch the landscape. Trees. Brush. Snow. The shoulder of the road. You learned what should be there. And then you watched for the place where something seemed to be missing. Negative space.
Sometimes what looked like an empty place in the landscape wasn't empty at all. Something very large was occupying it. I wasn't simply learning how to see moose. I was learning how to notice what I couldn't see.
When the Negative Space Moved
I learned just how important that lesson was one winter morning. It was early, still dark, and I was driving from my house toward Nikiski. I don't remember exactly where I was going or what I needed to do when I got there. I remember that there weren't many cars on the highway. I was listening to a book and enjoying that rare quiet that exists before the chaos of the day begins. By then I had been in Alaska long enough to understand negative space. I knew to keep a broad awareness of the shoulders of the highway rather than staring straight ahead.
Then something registered. I still don't know whether I saw movement, noticed something in my peripheral vision, or simply had that strange intuition that tells you something isn't right. I looked to my right. The negative space moved. A large cow moose was coming across the highway. I slammed on the brakes. That seemed like an excellent idea until I remembered that I was driving on an Alaskan highway in winter.
The road was relatively clear, but there was still ice. My Dodge Journey began to fishtail. For a few moments I was trying to control the car while simultaneously watching an enormous moose move directly across the space my vehicle had occupied only seconds earlier. Somehow, we missed each other. It was close. Very close. I remember thinking that one of her back legs couldn't have been more than a few inches from my driver's-side mirror.
Then everything stopped. My car sat in the highway. The moose stood on the other side. I looked at her. She looked at me. She gave me what I can only describe as the Alaskan-moose equivalent of, "Idiot. Watch where you're going." Then she lowered her head and went back to eating.
I sat there for a moment with my heart somewhere near my throat, looking at an animal whose belly seemed almost level with the roof of my Dodge Journey. She was enormous, and I remember thinking she might even have been pregnant. I have no grand explanation for why everything happened exactly as it did that morning. I only remember sitting there thinking that the Lord had spared my life. I have also thought many times since about what my friend had taught me. Look for the negative space.
What We Don't Know
Leadership has a great deal in common with driving through Alaska in the dark. There are things we know. There are also things we know we don't know. Those are usually manageable. If I know that I don't understand something, I can ask a question. I can read. I can research. I can call somebody who has spent his life studying wildlife and ask him how not to hit a moose.
But there is another category that is much more dangerous. There are things we don't know that we don't know. We don't ask questions about them because we don't know there is a question to ask. That is difficult for leaders because most of us think we are a little smarter than we really are. I certainly do. Experience can actually make the problem worse.
Experience is enormously valuable. After years of ministry or organizational leadership, we begin recognizing patterns. Someone tells us about a conflict and we think, "I've seen this before." A church encounters a problem, and we remember another congregation that experienced something similar. We begin drawing from a reservoir of accumulated knowledge. That's part of wisdom.
But experience carries a temptation. Eventually, "I've seen something like this before" can quietly become "I know what this is." Sometimes we do. Sometimes there is a moose standing in the dark. The danger was there before I saw her. My headlights didn't create the moose. My awareness didn't make her real. My inability to see her clearly certainly didn't make her less capable of totaling my car. Reality does not wait for the leader to recognize it before becoming real.
Wisdom Knows Its Limits
Paul wrote something to the Corinthians that has increasingly struck me as an important posture for leadership: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know" (1 Corinthians 8:2). Paul wasn't writing a leadership manual. He was dealing with questions of knowledge, conscience, love, and food offered to idols. But his warning about knowledge reaches much farther.
Knowledge can produce confidence. It can also produce conceit. Proverbs approaches the same problem from another direction: "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame" (Proverbs 18:13). A few verses later we read: "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him" (Proverbs 18:17).
The first explanation sounds right. The pieces fit. We understand the situation. Then somebody else walks into the room carrying information we didn't possess. Suddenly the landscape changes. Biblical wisdom isn't knowing everything. Biblical wisdom includes knowing that we don't.
For the Christian leader, there ought to be an additional reason for this kind of humility. We believe in an omniscient God. Which means we are not Him. That theological distinction is worth remembering before we become too impressed with our own assessment of a situation.
Negative Space in Leadership
After enough years of leadership, you begin realizing that negative space is everywhere. It can be the person who used to contribute during meetings but has stopped talking. The family that quietly disappeared from church. The ministry everyone assumes is healthy because nobody is complaining. The neighborhood that changed while the church continued operating according to a twenty-year-old picture of the community. The volunteer everybody depends upon but nobody has asked how they're doing. The pastor who keeps saying, "I'm fine." The financial practice nobody remembers starting. The person who is never invited into the room.
Sometimes negative space isn't even a problem. Sometimes it is possibility. Who aren't we reaching? What aren't we trying? Whose gifts have we overlooked? Where might God already be working that doesn't fit neatly into the categories we normally use? The question isn't merely, "What am I seeing?" Sometimes wisdom requires asking, "What am I not seeing?"
Transition and Negative Space
Leadership transitions have a way of making these questions unavoidable. Every new leadership position comes with things you know you need to learn. There are budgets to understand, names to remember, organizational charts to study, policies to read, and relationships to develop. Those are the visible things.
Then there is everything else. Organizations, and churches in particular, contain enormous amounts of institutional knowledge that have never been written down. There are histories, relationships, wounds, victories, habits, expectations, unwritten rules, and assumptions that everybody who has been around long enough simply knows. The new leader doesn't.
Questions I have increasingly learned to ask during transition is: What does everybody else know that they assume I know? What did the previous leader know that nobody thought needed to be written down? And perhaps the most unsettling question: What question haven't I learned to ask yet?
Those questions require humility because leadership transitions create pressure to demonstrate leadership. We want to do something, change something, fix something, move something. We see something that doesn't seem right and our instinct is to hit the brakes. Which brings me back to that highway.
Seeing the Moose Isn't Enough
I saw the moose. That was good. Then I slammed on the brakes. That was understandable. But I was driving on ice. Recognizing a problem correctly does not guarantee that we will respond to it wisely. Leaders can correctly identify a problem and still make things considerably worse through panic, speed, overcorrection, or simply acting before they understand enough.
This may be particularly tempting during transition. We discover something strange and immediately want to fix it. Change the structure, rewrite the policy, end the program, or start another one. Sometimes moving the furniture is the change we see but is a moose in the dark. Sometimes that is exactly what leadership requires. Sometimes we have just sent the car sideways across an icy highway.
Recognition has to be followed by discernment. Seeing something should lead us to another question: Do I understand this well enough yet to act? Sometimes the answer will be yes. Sometimes wisdom means slowing down, asking another question, finding someone who knows the landscape better than we do, and looking again.
Learning to Drive in the Dark
I didn't stop driving after that morning. I lived in Alaska for years afterward. I still had sermons to preach, children to raise, schools to visit, groceries to buy, people to see, and places to go. You cannot live your life terrified that somewhere in the darkness there might be a moose.
Leadership works the same way. Humility does not require paralysis. We have to move. We make decisions with incomplete information. We lead without knowing everything. We take the next step without being able to see every consequence that step might produce.
That's not necessarily recklessness. That's life. The question is how we travel. Good leaders listen and they ask questions, seek counsel, and learn history. They pay attention to people's faces and notice who is present and who isn't. Most importantly they pray and become a little suspicious of easy answers, especially their own. And every once in a while, instead of asking only, "What am I seeing?" a good leader will ask, "What am I not seeing?"
Headlights are wonderful things. They illuminate enough of the road for us to keep moving. But they do not illuminate everything. Leadership is much the same. We rarely get the entire landscape. God usually gives us enough light for the stretch of road in front of us and then asks us to move faithfully through it. So, we move but we move humbly.
Good leaders learn to watch the road in front of them. Wise leaders learn to watch the edges too. They listen for what isn't being said, notice who isn't present, question what everyone assumes, and remain humble enough to believe there may still be something in the darkness they haven't learned to see.
You cannot spend your life afraid that a moose might step onto the highway. You still have somewhere to go. But it helps to remember that the reach of your headlights is not the boundary of reality. Sometimes wisdom means learning to look for the negative space.

I was a special education kid.
Even now, that sentence feels a little strange coming out of my mouth. Maybe that says something about me or about how people of my generation understood disability. Probably a little of both.
I was born with a club foot. My parents worked hard to make sure I never thought of myself as disabled. They expected me to participate, compete, work, and figure things out just like everyone else. I am grateful for that. But there were things my body could not do the way everyone else's could, and at various points I received special education services.
The strange thing was that I was also identified for gifted and talented education. I was a kid living in two educational worlds: special education over here, gifted education over there, and only one me standing between them.
I didn't grow up planning to become a special education teacher. Ministry came first. I began as an associate pastor of youth while completing my first master's degree in Christian Education. Along the way, I taught in a Christian school to help support my growing family.
Ministry eventually took me overseas as a missionary pastor in Belgium and later to Alaska. There, education found me again. While pastoring, I began substitute teaching and increasingly found myself working in special education classrooms. Something clicked. I had always been drawn toward under-served people and communities, so I returned to school, earned a master's degree in education with an emphasis in special education, and eventually became a certified Kentucky special education teacher.
For much of my adult life, ministry and education have crossed paths. I have stood in pulpits and classrooms and watched pastors try to understand families while teachers try to understand children. Perhaps that is why a question increasingly troubles me: Are our churches prepared for the children and families already coming through our doors?
The world in our classrooms has changed
In the 2022-23 school year, nearly 110,000 Kentucky children ages 3 to 21 were served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. That represented about 16.6 percent of Kentucky's public-school enrollment. Put simply, roughly one out of every six Kentucky public-school students receive services under IDEA.
Autism presents an especially striking picture. According to the Kentucky Department of Education, autism accounted for 3.06 percent of Kentucky students with disabilities in 2008-09. By 2022-23, that percentage had risen to 9.99 percent, more than tripled in less than fifteen years.
Why autism identification has risen so dramatically is complicated. Better recognition, earlier screening, improved access to evaluation, and changes in diagnostic practices are all part of the discussion. For the local church, however, there is a simpler reality: These children are here. They live in our neighborhoods and attend our schools. Their families live and work in our communities. And on Sunday morning, some of them walk through our doors. What happens next?
When behavior is communication
One of the most important lessons I learned in special education is remarkably simple: Behavior is often communication. That doesn't mean inappropriate behavior never needs correction. It means that before responding, we should sometimes ask: What is this child trying to tell me?
A child covers his ears when the worship band begins. Another cannot stay seated during Bible study. A child rocks back and forth, screams when the class unexpectedly changes activities or refuses to make eye contact. To an untrained observer, those behaviors may look disrespectful or disruptive. They may actually be saying: This room is too loud. I don't understand what is happening. Something changed. I need to move. I am overwhelmed. I cannot tell you what I need.
Perhaps before we correct every behavior, we should learn to hear what some behaviors are saying. That isn't lowering standards. It is learning to see the person standing in front of us.
Whose image do they bear?
Christians rightly talk about the imago Dei, the image of God. Genesis tells us humanity was created in His image. I bear God's image. You bear God's image. But theological convictions become more revealing when they inconvenience us. What about the child with profound autism who does not communicate verbally? The teenager with Down syndrome? The adult with an intellectual disability who may never live independently? Do they bear God's image in precisely the same sense that I do?
The answer must be yes. Yet sometimes our churches function as though the answers were, “Yes, but...” Yes, but they cannot participate like everyone else. Yes, but children's church isn't equipped for them. Yes, but they can be disruptive. Yes, but our volunteers don't know what to do. The imago Dei cannot rest upon intelligence, verbal ability, emotional regulation, productivity or independence. The image of God is not awarded according to ability.
Neither was my value as a child determined by what I would later become. I eventually became a pastor, missionary and teacher. But none of that made me more valuable than I was as the little boy receiving special education and gifted services. Some children with disabilities will accomplish things that surprise everyone. Others will require significant assistance throughout their lives. Both bear the image of God. Their worth was settled before we ever measured their ability.
Wanting God but struggling with church
The research ought to get our attention. In one survey of 416 parents, nearly one-third reported changing their place of worship because their son or daughter with a disability was not welcomed or included. A 2025 study identified continuing barriers involving congregational attitudes, expectations for participation, volunteer capacity, available support, and communication.
Perhaps most troubling, a 2026 study of 330 Christian parents raising children with disabilities found that 74.3 percent said their faith had become more important, while 60.3 percent said their involvement in church had decreased. Think about that. Faith became more important while participation in the gathered church went the other direction.
Some families may not be walking away because God has become less important. They may be quietly walking away because participating in church with their child has become too difficult. That should bother us.
Jesus saw the person at the edge of the crowd
Mark 5 tells of a woman who had suffered from chronic bleeding for twelve years. Her condition carries consequences far beyond physical suffering. She approaches Jesus almost anonymously, wanting only to touch His garment. She is healed, but Jesus stops. Eventually she comes forward trembling, and Jesus calls her something remarkable: “Daughter.”
Jesus saw more than her condition. He saw her and restored someone stuck at the margins of relationship and community. I am not suggesting that autism, Down syndrome or intellectual disability should be treated like this woman's illness. The connection is not disability or disease. The connection is alienation and belonging.
Jesus has a habit of seeing people everyone else has learned to see sees primarily through their condition. The church that bears His name should do the same. There is a profound difference between saying, “You may attend our church,” and saying, “You belong to us.”
Paul takes it even further
Paul tells the Corinthian church: “The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Corinthians 12:22). He doesn't say weaker members should merely be tolerated or graciously endured. He doesn't even stop at inclusion. He calls them indispensable. And notice the word before it: those who “seem” weaker. Seem weaker according to whom? According to IQ, speech, mobility, social skills, independence or the ability to sit quietly through a forty-minute sermon?
Paul challenges our measurements of strength. Tolerance says, You can stay. Accommodation says, We will make adjustments so you can participate. Inclusion says, There is a place for you here. Belonging says, This is your church too. But indispensability says: We are not the whole body without you. That is a radically Christian understanding of inclusion. We aren't trying to catch up with culture. We're trying to catch up with Paul.
Public schools have spent decades learning how to accommodate children with different educational, developmental and behavioral needs because IDEA requires them to. The church should not need a federal mandate. Scripture gave us a theology of imago Dei long before IDEA gave schools a mandate for accommodation. Schools are required to make room. Churches should want these families here.
What can we do next Sunday?
A pastor of a small church may think, “We don't have the staff or money for a special-needs ministry.” You may not need one. Not every church needs an elaborate program or an expensive sensory room. But every church can take steps toward belonging.
First, ask before assuming. Talk with the family. Ask what helps their child participate, what creates difficulty, and how their child communicates. Don't only ask, “What does your child need?” Ask, “What does your child love?”
Second, train one or two people. A small church doesn't need an army of specialists. Start with willing people who understand some basics about autism, sensory overload, intellectual disability, and emotional regulation. Teach them one sentence: Behavior is often communication.
Third, create flexibility before creating a program. A quiet corner, headphones, a visual schedule or permission to move while listening may accomplish more than an expensive room. Give families permission to step away when things become overwhelming and return without embarrassment.
Fourth, reconsider “good church behavior.” A child doesn't need to make eye contact to hear about Jesus. A child can move and still listen. Noise isn't always disrespect. A meltdown isn't necessarily rebellion. Sometimes our expectations need discipleship too.
Finally, move from helping people to needing people. If people with disabilities are always recipients of ministry, we have stopped short of Paul's vision. Discover their gifts. Let them serve and contribute. Instead of only asking, “How can we minister to them?” ask: “What has God placed in them that our church needs?” That is what we do with indispensable members.
Every church needs a plan for belonging.
I would love to see every Kentucky Baptist church intentionally wrestle with this. Not every church needs a special needs ministry. But every church needs a plan for belonging.
What happens when an autistic child comes next Sunday? When a family raising a child with Down syndrome walks through the door? When an adult with an intellectual disability wants to become part of the congregation? Who welcomes them? Who listens? Where can they participate? How will we discover their gifts? Will they remain people we minister to or become people with whom and through whom we minister? We should begin answering those questions before the need arrives at our door.
I sometimes think back to that little boy living in two worlds: gifted education and special education. I could never have known where those worlds would lead. But that isn't the point of the story. I mattered before any of it happened. Before the degrees. Before the classrooms. Before the mission field or the pulpits. And so does the child who will walk into one of our churches next Sunday.
We don't know what that child will become, what she will accomplish or how independently he will someday live. We don't need to know. Scripture has already told us something far more important: Image bearer.
And when that person becomes part of Christ's church, Paul gives us another word. Not tolerated, burdensome, or merely accommodated.
Simply, Indispensable.
Sources and Further Reading

1. National Center for Education Statistics. “Number and percentage of children served under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Part B, by age group and state or jurisdiction: Selected school years, 1990-91 through 2022-23.” Digest of Education Statistics, Table 204.70. U.S. Department of Education. Kentucky reported 109,749 children ages 3-21 served under IDEA in 2022-23, representing 16.6 percent of public-school enrollment. NCES IDEA enrollment data
2. Kentucky Department of Education. “Students Identified with Autism, Ages 5 (in Kindergarten) to 21, Served Under IDEA, Part B.” Kentucky data show that the percentage of students with disabilities identified with autism increased from 3.06 percent in 2008-09 to 9.99 percent in 2022-23. Kentucky autism data
3. Ault, Melinda J., Belva C. Collins, and Erik W. Carter. “Congregational Participation and Supports for Children and Adults with Disabilities: Parent Perceptions.” Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 51, no. 1 (2013): 48-61. doi:10.1352/1934-9556-51.01.048. Survey of 416 parents examining participation, inclusion, welcome and support for people with disabilities and their families in congregational life. University of Kentucky research record
4. Carter, Erik W., Kari Maddox, Madeline Pettit, Shannon R. Eshman, Melody V. Escobar, Grace Casper, and Jason L. Le Shana. “Barriers to Belonging: The Church Experiences of Families of Children with Disabilities.” Review of Religious Research (2025). doi:10.1177/0034673X251386820. Interviews with parents identified 22 barriers across nine areas, including congregational attitudes, expectations for participation, volunteer capacity, available supports, gathering spaces and communication. Barriers to Belonging study
5. Alford, Allison, et al. “Faith Matters: The Religious Lives of Christian Parents Raising Children with Disabilities in the USA.” Journal of Religion and Health (2026). doi:10.1007/s10943-026-02613-6. Study of 330 Christian parents examining religiosity, strength of faith, church participation and the experience of raising children with disabilities. Faith Matters study
6. Carter, Erik W., Madeline Pettit, Kari Maddox, Melody V. Escobar, Shannon R. Eshman, Jason L. Le Shana, and Grace Casper. “Faithful Belonging: Supporting Families of Children with Disabilities in Church.” Religious Education 120, no. 5 (2025): 410-425. doi:10.1080/00344087.2025.2524976. Research focused on practices that help churches move beyond accessibility and inclusion toward meaningful belonging for children with disabilities and their families. Erik Carter's faith and disability research bibliography

Biblical Passages
Genesis 1:26-27, humanity created in the image of God (imago Dei).
Mark 5:25-34, Jesus' encounter with the woman who had suffered from chronic bleeding and His restoration of her as “Daughter.”
1 Corinthians 12:12-27, the church as the body of Christ, particularly verse 22: “the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.”

For more than 30 years, people have called me Pastor Al. I have heard it in hospital rooms and church hallways, at weddings and funerals, around dinner tables and in conversations I would rather forget. I have worn the title long enough that I am not sure where "Pastor" ends and "Al" begins.
And now, for the first time in a very long time, I am finding out. I recently stepped away from serving as the senior pastor of a local church and into a new ministry role as an associational mission strategist for the Northern Kentucky Baptist Association. I am not leaving ministry. In some ways, the circle of ministry God has given me has become larger. But something is changing, and I have discovered that changing what you do has a peculiar way of making you question who you are.  
So lately I have found myself asking a deceptively simple question: Who is Al? I thought I knew. Then, at almost exactly the right moment, Søren Kierkegaard complicated things. I came across an article discussing Kierkegaard's understanding of despair, particularly the ideas he develops in The Sickness Unto Death. Kierkegaard's despair is not simply sadness or unhappiness. It is something deeper, a sickness of the self. One of its most disturbing possibilities is that a person might pass through life without ever truly becoming the self that God created him to be, and perhaps never even realize it.
That thought has bothered me. Not because I consider myself particularly unhappy. I don't. God has given me a good life. But Kierkegaard's question is more unsettling than whether I am happy. The question I find myself coming back to is: am I becoming the man God created me to be? Or, perhaps even more uncomfortable, have I spent my life becoming the man I thought I was supposed to be? There is a difference.
I have always been hungry. I love learning. I love books. I love theology, philosophy, science, history, and questions that refuse to behave themselves. I have spent much of my life feeding my mind. I have degrees and will probably pursue another. I write. I teach. I build things. I lead. I am almost instinctively looking over the next hill. Years ago, I was talking about this with my friend and mentor, Dr. Jim Hamilton. I told him that one of the characteristics I saw in leaders was that they never seemed satisfied. There was always another hill, another challenge, another possibility. Jim gently turned my language around. "Maybe leaders aren't never satisfied," he suggested. "Maybe leaders are always hungry." I liked that better. I still do. But Kierkegaard has made me ask another question: Hungry for what? That question reaches into uncomfortable places. 
There have been seasons when titles mattered more to me than I wanted to admit. Years ago, while pastoring the International Baptist Church in Jurbise, Belgium, I ministered among accomplished military officers and leaders. Their names were frequently surrounded by titles, ranks, degrees and accomplishments. I had education and experience, but I sometimes felt small in those rooms. I was Pastor Al. And over the years, I became comfortable with that. Maybe too comfortable.
"Pastor" told people something about me before I ever opened my mouth. It gave me a place in the room. More importantly, somewhere along the way, I think it became part of the way I explained myself to myself. Now that title is changing, and I am discovering how much weight I allowed it to carry. That has sent me back to the beginning. Before Scripture tells us what humanity accomplished, it tells us who we are. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," God says in Genesis 1:26. Before Adam cultivated the garden, before he named the animals, before marriage and children, before accomplishments or failures, God established man’s identity. Image-bearer.
Then Genesis 2 slows the story down. God forms Adam from the dust of the ground and breathes into him the breath of life. There is something beautifully intimate about that picture. Adam does nothing to earn his first breath. He has no résumé. No degree hangs on the garden wall. No one calls him pastor, doctor, president or anything else. He is formed by God. He receives life from God. Then God gives him something to do.
I wonder if I have sometimes reversed that order. Maybe many of us have. We spend so much of life constructing identities from what we do. Pastor. Teacher. Mother. Father. Executive. Missionary. Doctor. Business owner. Retired. Successful… Needed. None of those identities is inherently wrong. Some represent sacred callings. But they cannot bear the weight of telling us who we ultimately are.
That brings me back to my hunger. I still want to learn. I still want to lead. I want to help churches become healthier and pastors become stronger. I want to write more books. I may finally finish that doctorate. There are still hills I want to climb, and I hope I never lose the desire to see what God has placed beyond the next ridge. But I am beginning to wonder whether the important question is not simply whether I am running. It is what I am running toward. And perhaps, sometimes, what I am running from. Have I been running toward the man God is forming me to become, or have I occasionally been running from the fear that who I already am isn't enough? I don't know.
That's not a very satisfying conclusion for an article, but it is an honest one. I am writing this from the middle, not the other side. I haven't solved the identity crisis. I haven't discovered the three easy steps to becoming your authentic self. Frankly, I am increasingly suspicious of people who have three easy steps for anything important.
What I am discovering is that Christianity offers something deeper than discovering my "true self." Paul writes that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). He tells the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Maybe the goal, then, isn't finally to discover some pristine version of Al buried underneath thirty years of ministry. Maybe the question is: Who is Christ forming Al to become now? I don't know exactly who that man will be, but I know he will still be hungry. He will still ask too many questions. He will probably still dislike unnecessary rules. He will still read books, build things, dream about what could be, and occasionally wonder what is beyond the next hill.
But I hope he is becoming increasingly comfortable with something that was true long before anyone called him Pastor Al. He is made in the image of God. He is known by God. He belongs to Christ. And he is still being formed. Perhaps that is enough identity for the next step of the journey. 
For now, at least, I am learning to answer to just, Al.