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Until 2015, Paul Frazier was living a relatively normal teenage existence. An 18-year-old with an interest in audio and IT thanks to his father’s work experience, Paul was not only actively working in the tech industry but also regularly involved at his home church, Mt. Vernon Church, a small congregation about an hour northeast of Charlotte, NC, helping his dad with the tech team.
But a hereditary nerve condition reached its climax with a series of medical events that resulted in a severe spinal cord injury that left him permanently disabled with a case of incomplete quadriplegia. In this condition, an individual has irreversible spinal cord damage, but enough communication remains between the brain and the body to avoid full paralysis.
For Paul, it was the beginning of a new life, one in which he not only had to adjust to daily living with his new disability, but also in how he would still maintain his love for serving in his local church. It was in the latter area that he ended up experiencing more challenges than he ever would have imagined.
“The world just doesn't think ADA accessibility,” Paul notes. “They think everyone is just normal. Not everyone has the knowledge of dealing with people with disabilities.”
Accessibility isn’t just about ramps and signage—it’s about creating a culture where everyone can contribute.
The things that able-bodied church techs tend to take for granted immediately became enormous obstacles. Now mostly restricted to using a wheelchair or crutches, he was instantly confronted with the difficulty in doing things most techs take for granted: climbing ladders or using a lift to access heights, hopping on stage to fix or rearrange equipment, and even accessing his church’s sound booth.
Despite the enormity of those challenges, he refused to back down, thanks to a mantra instilled by his father.
“My dad's motto is keep pushing until you can't push no more,” Paul proclaims, “and that's just how I've lived my life is, I'll keep going until I can't do it anymore.”
Small adjustments in process and attitude can open the door for huge opportunities.
On the days that he’s “feeling froggy” (as he calls it) and bold, he’ll push himself physically to the point of overexertion, just in an attempt to complete whatever tasks remain undone.
“If I can do it, I'll do it, even if that means the next day I pay for whatever I did” with added pain and discomfort, he emphasizes. “It's how I look at life.”
It is the reality of being a technician in an environment that is woefully unprepared to accommodate his handicap.
With a sanctuary built in 1969, Mt. Vernon’s worship space existed long before ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance was mandatory for new buildings. There are stairs everywhere but no ramps or lifts, pathways that may or may not be wide enough for a wheelchair, and plenty of heart and compassion from leadership, but very limited funding to enact change.
Removing barriers helps volunteers focus on what matters most: serving in ministry.
The ministry moved its sound booth to the ground floor to help Paul’s access, and even though there’s still not enough space for him to navigate into it without challenges, the addition of an iPad to manage the audio console’s infrastructure has made service operation easier.
But while he has become more limited in his hands-on technical ability, his handicaps have actually helped him grow as a leader of his small team (which is largely comprised of students he once led in the church’s youth group), because it forces him to rely even more on communication and encouragement so he can adequately explain the whats and hows to his team for things he himself can’t accomplish.
“If there's something like climbing ladders, I have plenty of my tech team people that will come and climb ladders, and I will direct them, ‘Hey, this cable needs to go this way, or this line needs to run this way.’ It just depends on what we need done,” he explains.
“And like I had several of my youth, former youth of the church a couple weeks ago pulling network cables through the rafters and drilling in the rafters, and I was just directing them of, ‘Hey, pull the wire this way, wait, don't hit that wire because that's the SDI wire to the projectors.’ And then one of the kids hit that. And you know, I didn't get mad. I was like, okay, well, this is the teaching moment.”
It is moments like this one that he has been preparing for since this past summer’s Capture Summit in Houston, a conference for church techs and creatives. While many of the classes focus on skills-based learning, it was the discussion of a management principle that had an immediate impact on him.
“We are really starting to lean more [on communication] since I've come back from the Capture Summit,” he explains. “I've become really more diligent about getting standard operating procedures written down because I'm not always around to be holding [my team’s] hands.”
The most effective teams are built on belonging, not just technical skill.
But it was another interaction at Capture Summit that awakened an even deeper passion with Paul for sharing the message about how important it is for tech ministries to develop inclusive ways that anyone, even those with disabilities, can actively serve.
“The context of the conversation was during an ‘Ask the Tech Director’ panel,” recalls Will Chapman, the Online Minister and a longtime technical staffer at Texas’ Cottonwood Creek Church. “The question I was asked [by Paul] was something like, ‘How do you go about accommodating people who want to serve who have disabilities?’"
While Paul’s disability is visible, there are plenty of disabilities in others that are not so apparent, and this is where Cottonwood has strived to make accommodations initially.
“We’ve been purposeful about personalizing onboarding for new volunteers on our media team to make sure we get to know them and create a safe place to share anything they might not be comfortable sharing in a group environment,” Chapman says. “This is primarily aimed toward those who struggle with things like autism, Asperger’s, etc., that are not as visible.”
Paul applauded this level of acceptance and implored other ministries to think similarly when encountering potential team members who have disabilities of any kind.
“You're supposed to be able to enable them, not disable them,” he pointedly states. “Because we all have our levels of difficulty, no matter what our issues are. We all have that level of, ‘Can I do this? Am I willing to learn it?’ The thing I think people see in people with disabilities is that we are not able to do anything. But God made us the way we are.”
A disability shouldn’t limit someone’s ability to serve, he continues, because “God gave us the talents we have, if we’re disabled or not.”
Unfortunately, many ministries struggle assimilating anyone with differences, and for tech team leaders, who are often more comfortable with gear than with people, it can be challenging to think outside the box on ways to get anyone with a disability involved in serving.
“A seeing-impaired person would have difficulty as a camera operator, but what about using a Braille computer as a chat host on the live stream, where they respond to comments in both public and private chat?,” asks Chapman. “A hearing-impaired person could also serve as a chat host on the live stream or as a stage manager watching a closed-captioned video feed.”
Or, like in Paul’s situation, a church could provide a tablet to remove the need for someone to have to physically be in a sound or control booth, or could also consider integrating remote PTZ cameras to allow disabled team members to run cameras without having to scale a platform. Perhaps there’s even a way, using Q-Sys programming or a Stream Deck, to take complicated functions and simplify them, so a teammate with limited physical dexterity could just push a button instead of managing multiple stations or computers.
Regardless of the specific use case, the important part is that ministries realize how critical it is that they think creatively about how to make their tech teams accommodating, because that effort (or lack thereof) can speak volumes.
A thriving production environment is one where no one is left on the sidelines.
“People in general require that emotional connection,” says Paul, “and for people that have disabilities or whatever you want to call it, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, [when you don’t see opportunities for involvement] it’s like, ‘Oh, I guess I'm not worth it to them, or I'm not worth the time to be put into.’”
“It’s a mental block of, ‘I’m not worthy to be in that position [to serve].’”
On the flip side, finding a place to serve can be a tremendous boost for self-esteem, morale, identity, purpose, and contribution, and it reinforces the message the Apostle Paul shared in Romans 11:29 that God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable.
“Why did the Holy Spirit gift us to be leaders in the church?,” asks Chapman. “Ephesians 4:12 [says] their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.’ If you’re a leader in the church, your job is to train others to do the work of the ministry as you lead out in doing ministry.”
It’s a true premise regardless of whether those we lead carry any kind of handicap or disability. God gave everyone a gift, purpose, and calling, and ministry leaders carry the responsibility to help develop that in our teams.
It may not be easy, especially for technicians who may feel stretched and unqualified to do so. But those techs can also take to heart Paul’s favorite verse, which he often uses to motivate himself to persevere through difficulties of his own.
It’s Philippians 4:13. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
