Full Inclusion and Belonging in the Body of Christ

By Joni and Friends|Published On: March 15, 2023|Categories: Family Retreats|

Matthew playing the keyboard and smiling.

Our Joni and Friends Nashville team first saw Matthew as he played piano as an opener for a school play.

The effects of Matthew’s autism make verbal communication difficult for him, but he expresses himself fluidly through music.

And while music can help Matthew connect with others, his parents have struggled to find places where Matthew can experience full inclusion and belonging—both at school and at church.

Finding Joni and Friends has encouraged and empowered Matthew’s mother, and provided a space for her to share her story with people who understand. Now she and our Joni and Friends team are working together to advocate for greater awareness and access for the Nashville disability community.

For more than forty years, Joni and Friends has been committed to reaching and serving people with disabilities with practical help and the saving love of Christ.

Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ.

To bring this vision to life, Joni and Friends offers a variety of primary services and programs, both locally and globally.

Needs among people with disabilities, in Nashville and in countries around the world, are so great!

Your gift today will support all our Joni and Friends Nashville ministry programs, reaching vulnerable people who otherwise may never hear the Good News of Jesus!

You can help people living with disability experience the truth: that they belong in the body of Christ.

As 1 Corinthians 12:12–20 tells us:

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”