, , , , , ,

Talk with Doc About Disability Ministry 101: Podcast Episode 092

, , , , , ,

Beth sits down with Doc Hunsley, the founder and executive director of SOAR Special Needs Ministry, who will be leading a Ministry Intensive at the Disability & The Church 2024 conference. Doc shares his personal journey of becoming involved in disability ministry as well as his passion for helping churches take the next step towards disability inclusion. Doc's Ministry Intensive – Disability 101 – will cover various aspects of starting and enhancing a disability ministry, including volunteer recruitment, training, programming, and curriculum. Plus Beth learns a fact about Doc that she never would have guessed.

Listen Anywhere You Find Podcasts!

Beth Golik: Hey everyone, this is Beth Golik, one of your co-hosts for Key Ministry, the podcast, and today I cannot wait to introduce you to my friend, Doc Hunsley. Doc is the founder and executive director of SOAR Special Needs Ministry. I brought him here today because he is the go-to guy when it comes to volunteers and starting a disability ministry, and he is going to be leading a Ministry Intensive for us at Disability & The Church 2024, as well as presenting a breakout session on volunteers. I thought we'd just get a little taste of what he's going to talk about and I know you're going to want to sign up for the conference to hear more. So Doc, welcome, and if you could first tell us a little bit about yourself and SOAR Ministry, and then we're going to ask you some questions.

Doc Hunsley: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much Beth, and I love being here. Thanks for bringing me. And first off, if you're listening to this and you have not signed up yet for Disability & The Church conference, do so today. It is going to be impactful. And even if you've never had an idea of doing disability ministry in your church or you've got a well established ministry, you need to go. We've got something for everybody. So yes, like Beth said, I'm Doc Hunsley and no, Doc's, not my real name, that's a nickname. My real name is Stephen. Everyone calls me Doc because I'm a pediatrician. Worked in the ER, got sick taking care of my patients, almost died, should have died, was brought into the world of disabilities and special needs by being a father. My second son, Mark, ended up having Dravet Syndrome, a very rare genetic seizure disorder. By the time he was two, he was diagnosed with autism. My wife and I, both being pediatricians, went from taking care of a lot of kids with special needs to all of a sudden being parents of a child with special needs and for the first time in our life we finally understood what it meant to be a parent.

It's 24/7, stress sky high and hard. And we also had a hard time finding a church we could go to. I actually became the children's pastor at my church and told our senior pastor I wanted to do a disability ministry and he told me, no, I don't want those kinds of people here. And I knew already it was hard to get into a church, but now being a staff and having my own son and other kids there, that was the first time I came face to face with how a lot of senior leadership feel today just because they're scared and don't understand it. And so God opened some doors. I was eventually able to do that. And then fast forward 13 years ago now, my son Mark was cured of everything when he was born into heaven at the age of five and a half.

And then 10 months after that was when SOAR got launched. God led us to another church and I told them I wanted to serve any way I could because in order for me to heal emotionally, physically, spiritually, I needed to serve others, get eyes off myself and onto other people. And their senior pastor and children's pastor got together and told me, "Doc, we've kind of been spying on you and stalking you. We've heard about you. We want to have a world-class, children's ministry, but can't do that without having a special needs ministry. Would you come on and do that? So that's how SOAR Special Needs started was as a ministry at Grace Church 12 years ago, we're now completely independent nonprofit since December of 2019. I'm passionate about training churches, whether they're just starting with doing disability ministry to already having something and taking the program to the next level.

I've now trained up over 550 churches throughout the United States and 18 countries around the world. And I truly mean this. If you think your church has a world-class, children's ministry or a world-class student ministry, unless you are welcoming individuals with disabilities, it is not world-class. It's not even biblical, it's not even biblical. So we’ve got to get out of the mindset that, oh, we've got this world-class ministry. Our church is world-class. It's not world-class until we are accepting everyone. It's Luke 14. God has commanded that we accept everyone and have them. And what I love with that, Jesus says, go now. He doesn't say, go when you're ready. Go when you have the training, go when you have the money. He says, go now. Bring them into the church. Give them a seat of honor, not just in the classroom, but have them in leadership in every part and why? So that you will be blessed, your church will be blessed. The church I was at, I started with three individuals, recruited 20 volunteers. Eight years later we were serving over 800 individuals with disabilities and 2,500 volunteers. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the blessing that God promised, and it is a promise and a commandment. So that's me in a quick nutshell.

Beth Golik: I love it. Quick? Never quick, but yes, that's right.

Doc Hunsley: Yeah, there's never quick with Doc,

Beth Golik: But SOAR has been such a blessing, not just for your local area, which you're huge in your local area, Overland Park, Kansas area, but you're working with churches nationally and internationally as well. So that's a little bit about Doc and about SOAR. You can see his passion and his knowledge and his experience. So Doc, tell us a little bit about the Ministry Intensive that you will be doing at Disability & The Church. So just for those of you who aren't familiar, the conference is May 1st through 3rd, which is a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And so our programming is going to be all day on Thursday and Friday. But on Wednesday there's the option to register for a Ministry Intensive. These are deep dives -- from 1:00 to 4:30 PM -- in a particular subject matter. Doc is leading one of them. So Doc, tell us about your Ministry Intensive.

Doc Hunsley: Yes. So my Ministry Intensive is Disability 101, and it might be poorly named because it's really for everyone. It's just doing disability ministry, special needs ministry, however you want to call it. And it's for any size church. I've helped churches as small as six to as large as over 30,000. So it really doesn't matter. And we're all called to do it. So with this intensive, I'm going to cover every single aspect from starting to those who have already started and take it to the next level. Talk about volunteers, about recruitment, about training, about actual programming, every single aspect of it including curriculum and things with that. It is going to be an absolute fire hose of information. And I know there's so much there that I always tell people, don't worry, you don't have to take all the notes because I'll have a great handout for you.

And honestly, the handout is almost and will eventually turn into a book. It's already about 70 pages long. So I'm telling you, you're going to get a ton of information that you're going to be able to walk away with this in your hand and be able to truly apply it. And after that intensive, it's not just one where you're going to hear all these ideas, you're going to get solid info that you can truly not just chew on, but apply in any size church and do it the way you want. What I'm really passionate about is every church is different and every church does disability ministry a different way. And I'll help you find what is the best way for your church and then take that to the next level and keep adding to it however we can, so we can serve as many individuals and families as possible. So check out the Disability 101 Ministry Intensive with Doc Hunsley [at DATC2024]. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait for you to be there. And I promise you, you are going to love being there. It's going to be a lot of fun and you'll get all the information you need.

Beth Golik: I love it. I love it. And I think one thing that I know is really important to me, and I know this is important to you Doc, is that after people attend a training like this -- yes, it's a lot of information and you talked about it's like drinking from a fire hose -- that they are able to take that next step once they get back to their home church. And I know that's something that's important to you too, and I know that you would be willing to kind of follow up with people as they go back and apply what they've learned from your Ministry Intensive.

Doc Hunsley: Yeah, absolutely. I'll give everyone who's in my intensive and then anyone who's listening to this, I'll give you a free one hour consultation where especially after that intensive, you can sit and chew on that for a little bit and then meet with me one-on-one over Zoom, and we can then talk specifically your next steps at your facility, at your church, how you can apply that, how to make that really work, whether it be volunteers. Everyone always says, oh, I don't have the volunteers. You know what? That's just a bunch of hogwash. We can get volunteers, you can recruit them, and it's really super easy. We just do it wrong. And I've broken the code on that and it really is amazing how easy it is, and no one believes me, but ladies and gentlemen, I'm one of the biggest introverts you will ever meet.

Beth Golik: I do not believe that!

Doc Hunsley: I'm an introvert, but I can make myself act like an extrovert and I hate going up and just talking cold turkey to someone I don't know. And so that part is hard for me when I'm trying to recruit volunteers in that. But because I'm so passionate about what I'm doing, God's given me the power to overcome that, and I've learned ways to do that. So any of my introvert friends out there, I get you. I feel you. I can help you through that as well, because I wasn't joking. Yeah, I wasn't joking earlier. I said I had 20 volunteers that grew to 2,500 in less than eight years. And it's all just through the simple things I've learned. It's things I wish I knew earlier when I was a children's pastor, but finally learned them as a disability pastor.

Beth Golik: Wow. Well, if this sounds intriguing to you -- and I'm sure it does -- I encourage you to go to the conference website: keyministry.org/datc2024. We'll link all this in the show notes. We'll link to SOAR Special Needs Ministry in the show notes, and you can always find our show notes at keyministry.org/podcast. So I'm getting excited for May, just hearing about Doc's Ministry Intensive. He's also doing a workshop on volunteers. You're not going to want to miss this. So Doc, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with our audience, and we will see you soon.

Doc Hunsley: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, and I'll tell everyone, come soar with us at Disability & The Church Conference. Look forward to seeing you there.