“I help churches become places where every family belongs. Founder of The Jenna Initiative — named for my sister with disabilities.”
I'm Michael Rarick, founder of The Jenna Initiative, a faith-based nonprofit that equips and certifies churches to become genuinely inclusive communities for people with disabilities.
The work is named for my sister Jenna. She was born prematurely and lives with autism, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. Watching our family search for a church that could fully include her, and seeing how often we came up short, showed me this was bigger than us. 49% of families affected by disability have reduced or stopped attending church, not because they wanted to leave, but because no one built a seat for them.
So we built one. The Jenna Initiative created the Certified Accessible Church Community (CACC) designation, the first national certification standard of its kind for church inclusion. We're now equipping pastors and ministry teams across the country to close that gap.
