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What Can I Do? Tricia Borah on Forming a Parish Disability Ministry

January 16, 2025

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To continue our “What Can I Do?” interview series, I would like to introduce you to Tricia Borah, the coordinator of teen and young adult disabilities ministry at St. Brigid Catholic Church in Johns Creek, Georgia. Tricia provides an outstanding example of what is possible in parish ministry. All it takes is seeing the need, the cooperation of a pastor, lots of energy, and a strong desire to serve with an openness to being led by the Holy Spirit. That first necessity, the need, is everywhere. In many, if not most, parishes there is no disability ministry—no welcoming place for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) to find community and to grow in their faith.  

Read on and be inspired!


Mark Bradford: Tricia, thanks very much for your time and your willingness to share your experiences in coordinating the disabilities program at your parish. Would you please start by introducing yourself, letting us know what drew you to this ministry, and sharing what need it is that you have hoped to fill? 

Tricia Borah: Thank you so much, Mark, for the opportunity to share about this amazing community of people at our parish! My husband, Todd, and I live in Johns Creek, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta where we have attended St. Brigid parish for about twenty-five years. We have two adult children who also live in the area and have been involved with this ministry. In fact, my daughter, Marissa, is the reason I initially got involved twelve years ago as a volunteer. I had just returned from a trip to Nicaragua serving with Mustard Seed Communities, which is a Catholic organization caring for children, teens, and adults with disabilities who are orphaned. The trip had such a profound impact on me that when I returned, I started looking for a way to get involved with the disability community at a local level. Marissa (who was in high school at the time) learned that our parish was starting an adaptive youth group and needed teen and adult mentors, so we both got involved as regular volunteers. Eventually, my husband and our son, Jake, started coming, and we had the blessing of serving together as a family. Five years later I had the opportunity to step into the role of coordinator, and this is my seventh year leading the program.  

The two specific needs I hope to fill in this work are to provide community and help our participants foster a relationship with our Lord. According to the mission statement, the ministry “exists to provide a space where teens and young adults of all abilities feel welcomed, loved, included, and valued. . . . It’s a place where we can grow in faith and friendship together.” 

“We just don’t want our kids to be invisible.”

Many of the participants are young adults who have aged out of educational services and experienced a large void previously filled by their school communities. One comment that has stuck with me for years came from a mom who said, “We just don’t want our kids to be invisible.” That singular comment has influenced so much of what I do in my role. Too many families who have a member with a disability either stay away from the Church or remain on the sidelines because they don’t feel like they are wanted or needed. Our goal is to provide these individuals a space within the Church where they know they are loved and valued, and for the parish at large to witness all the members of the Body of Christ present and contributing to the life of the Church.  

In addition, I believe that each of these young people deserves to have a personal encounter with Jesus. Providing a way to grow in faith, deepen prayer lives, and focus on the sacraments is at the heart of the ministry.  

Tricia and group of individuals in ministry

Please explain the ministry itself. How often do you meet, when did it begin, and what is its structure? Also, how many individuals are involved? 

Around twelve years ago, one of our parish’s youth ministers, Alyshia Koerner, listened to the families of our parish and—with the support of our former pastor Bishop David Talley—developed a youth ministry for teens with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The ministry is adapted specifically toward these teens’ understanding, experiences, gifts, and talents, and it incorporates peer mentors as a key feature. Our regular youth ministry is still available to everyone, but we have added another option to better meet the needs of older teens and young adults with disabilities.

The name of our ministry is LTE Special Needs Youth Group. The LTE acronym comes from Life Teen and Edge, which are the high school and middle school youth ministry curriculums that we use at St. Brigid. 

When LTE first started, there were just a few teens and volunteers participating, but this year, there are twenty-six participants, plus over forty volunteers. Of these twenty-six, eight are from other parishes and come to St. Brigid’s because there isn’t currently a disability ministry at their parish. Some of these individuals have been turned away from other parishes, and some tried regular youth ministries and found them not a good fit. Several participants are from families that have moved out of the boundaries of St. Brigid but continue to come to LTE because they don’t want to give up the community. Originally, the ministry was intended to serve teens and young adults up to age twenty-one. However, as the group of participants got older, it became clear that there was a need to continue to include them since they were aging out of public school services and beginning a difficult time of transition in their lives. We removed the maximum age limit so now teens and young adults of all ages are welcome. Our sessions are primarily focused on faith formation, but we also have some larger special events throughout the year, such as Trunk-or-Treat and prom. 

We meet each Monday night for two hours, and dinner is provided for all the students and volunteers. Each week, every participant is paired with a volunteer who serves as his or her partner and accompanies him or her through the evening, providing any support required. Students and volunteers check in, find out who their partners are, and then eat dinner together.  

After dinner, we gather as a whole group for prayer, a raffle (because who doesn’t love to win prizes?), and to celebrate any birthdays happening that week. Many weeks we begin with a game or fun activity and then I introduce the topic of the evening. Each session we do a variety of activities to reinforce the topic such as small group discussions, skits, scavenger hunts, crafts, prayer activities, etc. We always end the night in prayer of some kind—a decade of the Rosary, personal prayer intentions, or even spending time in adoration. The goal of each session is fellowship, learning something about our faith, and praying together as a community. 

What materials do you use for faith formation, and how do you individualize them for the various abilities represented?  

The short answer to this question is that there isn’t a set curriculum, and that’s because resources for adaptive youth ministry are lacking in the Church. I’ve found a few great sources online for hands-on activities, and I’ve created some of my own. Some of the things I have tried over the years didn’t turn out the way I expected, but I learned a lot about what worked, what didn’t, and—just as importantly—why something did or didn’t work. I’ve chosen all sorts of topics, such as the virtues, the lives of the saints, Catholic social teaching, the Creed, the sacraments, and Mary. 

Providing a way to grow in faith, deepen our prayer lives, and focus on the sacraments is at the heart of the ministry.  

When I plan our activities for each week, I think about what accommodations or adaptations are necessary so that everyone can be engaged. I ask myself how I can present ideas in a way that reaches the different learners in our group. I consider how those who use wheelchairs or have fine motor skill challenges or are nonverbal have a way to be engaged and participate as well. As I’ve gotten to know each participant individually, this has become easier.  

In everything that I plan, I strive to provide these young people with all the richness of our Catholic faith—not watered down, but instead presented in a way that’s accessible to them. They desire and deserve the same personal encounters with our Lord as anyone else does. We even have a few teens in our group who are not Catholic, and to see how they receive all of this—even an entire year on the Blessed Mother—has been beautiful.

Where do your volunteers come from? Do you have a training program for them, and are they parishioners or from outside of your parish? 

This year I have around twenty adult volunteers and twenty teen volunteers who serve as mentors in the program. Outside of a few exceptions, all are parishioners. I typically have an orientation at the beginning of the year and provide some basic training about what the role of the mentor is, how to handle challenging situations that may arise, and answer any questions they may have. This past fall, we had two parents of our participants join us to share with the volunteers about some typical autistic behaviors, such as stimming, and how to respond. These parents also were able to provide copies of social stories and other visual tools that we could use. 

While we continue to have a mix of teen and adult volunteers who participate, there has been a surprising shift recently in more young adult volunteers joining the ministry. 

Do you provide any sacramental preparation or adaptations in the liturgy at your parish? 

Yes. I think it’s so important to talk about the sacraments and the need to intentionally invite everyone to participate. The Pastoral Statement of US Catholic Bishops on Persons with Disabilities makes clear the importance of providing the opportunity for full participation in the Eucharist: 

It is essential that all forms of the liturgy be completely accessible to persons with disabilities, since these forms are the essence of the spiritual tie that binds the Christian community together. To exclude members of the parish from these celebrations of the life of the Church, even by passive omission, is to deny the reality of that community. Accessibility involves far more than physical alterations to parish buildings. Realistic provision must be made for Catholics with disabilities to participate fully in the Eucharist and other liturgical celebrations.

With this in mind, our parish recently hosted our first sensory-friendly Mass, and we plan to offer these Masses quarterly in 2025, with the possibility of moving to a monthly schedule. The sensory-friendly Mass was held during one of our regular Sunday Mass times and we made several adaptations, including lowering the volume of the music and a shorter, more literal homily. We also offered Mass bags with sensory items such as noise-canceling headphones and a visual schedule of the Mass. Individuals from our ministry served as lectors, ushers, gift bearers, and greeters. The Mass was very well received both by families who have a child with a disability and by parishioners who were there because it was the Mass time they normally attend. It was a great example of how a personal invitation and a few adjustments can really encourage families who have a challenging time attending Mass to just come as they are.  

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When it comes to preparing to receive the sacraments, I approach that on an individual basis with each family. Of the twenty-six young people currently participating in LTE, the majority have been prepared for the Sacrament of Confirmation in our ministry and have received the sacrament in a way that was adapted for them and their families. Several received with the regular high school Confirmation class, and others had a small Mass in the chapel with only family present and celebrated by Fr. Neil, our pastor. The National Catholic Partnership on Disability offers a course on sacramental preparation that was extremely helpful, and I would highly recommend it! This course shifted the lens through which I saw preparing these young people for the sacraments from “what I have to cover” with them to how I can provide a real and meaningful encounter with the Lord. 

For those interested, an example of an activity that shows the accommodations and adaptations we make can be seen here. Every day, the Lord uses the witness of these young people to call many of us into a deeper relationship with him.  

The purpose of this series of interviews is to encourage people to step up to the plate and help where they see a need. What would be your advice to people who may have thought of getting involved in assisting in or even starting a parish program? How would they begin, and what might they expect in terms of support, or even opposition?  

It sounds obvious, but before you can do anything else, you must have the support of your pastor. If the pastor is supportive of this mission, all other obstacles such as budget, space, staffing, etc., can be solved. We are so fortunate at St. Brigid to have Fr. Neil Herlihy, who believes in the mission of this ministry and makes sure we have what we need in terms of resources. Sadly, I’ve seen how difficult efforts to serve this population can be in other parishes for those who do not have the support of clergy. I’ve also seen great new initiatives happening over the past year in some nearby parishes, and that is so encouraging. 

Getting parent input is the next priority. It’s important to get answers to the following questions to help guide the direction of your ministry: 

– What are the ages of the individuals in your parish with disabilities? 
– What obstacles are they facing to participating in the life of the parish? 
– Have they received all of their sacraments? 
– What are the parents’ desires, hopes, and dreams for their family in their faith community? 

The phrase “nothing about us without us” comes from the secular disabilities rights movement and means that individuals with disabilities—and by extension their families—must have a voice in decisions that are made about them. They must be given the opportunity to share their experiences, and they must be viewed as integral members of the community so that they’re valued and included purposefully in decisions. And this input must be ongoing. Every year, I survey my families to find out what went well that year and to ask if there is anything else that we could do to serve them better. Many of my ideas come from this parent input.  

It’s important to point out that our ministry in its current form did not happen overnight. It started very small and has grown and evolved over the past twelve years. What works for our families may not look the same as what works in another parish. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach. So, my advice would be to start small where you see a need, and be willing to grow and adapt over time. Don’t be afraid to just start somewhere—you don’t need to do everything at once! You don’t need any special degrees or qualifications as long as you are willing to listen and learn. You can make such a difference simply by choosing to do the next thing in front of you that fills a need.  

My last bit of encouragement would be that having a ministry dedicated specifically for teens and young adults with disabilities not only makes them feel seen and included in parish life, but it gives all of us the opportunity to get to know our brothers and sisters in Christ better and for the Body of Christ in our parish to be more whole and complete. Recently during one of our gatherings, an adult volunteer commented on just how many gifts and talents were reflected in our group that a lot of people don’t get the chance to see. I agreed wholeheartedly: Where others may see limitations, challenges, and difficulties, those of us who know these young people see artists, storytellers, athletes, entrepreneurs, coaches, musicians, dancers, and actors—all of them amazing, capable, creative, unique children of God.  

I love the St. Irenaeus quote, “The glory of God is man fully alive,” and I believe this is what man fully alive looks like! 

If anyone reading this has any questions or would like some advice in beginning a ministry like ours in his or her parish, I’m happy to be a resource. Feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Here are a couple of links that might also be helpful: