Amplifying Our Witness: Practice-Centered Ministry with Adolescents and Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities

Nearly twenty percent of adolescents have developmental disabilities, yet far too often they are marginalized within churches. Amplifying Our Witness challenges congregations to adopt a new, practice-centered approach to congregational ministry -- one that includes and amplifies the witness of adolescents with developmental disabilities. Replete with stories taken from Benjamin Conner's own extensive experience with befriending and discipling adolescents with developmental disabilities, Amplifying Our Witness shows how churches exclude the mentally disabled in various structural and even theological ways. It stresses the intrinsic value of kids with developmental disabilities. It reconceptualizes evangelism to adolescents with developmental disabilities, emphasizing hospitality and friendship.