To minister well with people who have disabilities, we need to understand the wide range of disability and the ways in which all of us can unintentionally exclude people with disabilities from the life and ministry of our churches.
Diekema has identified for church leaders yet another gift that people with disabilities bring to their churches. They can challenge congregations for underestimating anyone who lives with disability, and they can serve as mentors to the entire congregation...
The stereotypes about mental illness that our society tells us are, mostly, lies. In poem, memoir, funeral sermon, eulogy, and painting, people narrate life with mental illness through Disability Concerns’ Stories of Grace and Truth.
Transformation begins in a church family when there is enough interaction to make this authenticity contagious. It is liberating to throw off pretense, to admit insufficiencies, and to become completely dependent on God.
Tom Hoeksema and his wife, both white, decided they needed to visit Grace when their adopted African American son asked during a communion service at their previous church, “Do black people ever get to serve communion here?” The first time the Hoeksemas visited Grace, a member who had an intellectual disability walked up to them, reached out his hand in welcome, and said, “Hi, I like you!”
Don't get me wrong. I love our dog Marley. But I do not plan to see Marley again when Christ reappears and the heavens and earth are renewed. When he dies, he'll be gone except for our memories and our pictures.
Chris said that when his parents gave him his first voice synthesizer, he went from not speaking to talking in complete sentences in one day. I praise God for Christian leaders like Chris who can speak so articulately. He talks about disability, of course, but more importantly, he talks about what it means to be human.
In this blog post about a Time magazine article on Down syndrome and prenatal testing, Amy Julia Becker talks about her own experience being interviewed for the article and her appreciation for the article’s balance.
Can you imagine the firestorm of criticism if some media outlet speculated about the state of this soldier’s marriage as a reason for his violent behavior? A firestorm would be justified. Yet no firestorm erupts when pundits speculate about his mental state.
In a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, the authors, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, promote the idea that regions where abortion is legal should also allow the killing of newborn children. The Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer put forth a similar argument a number of years ago.
Jeremy Lin, a point guard with the New York Knicks, has been in the news. Thanks to his fine playing, people are taking notice of him, and with that extra attention some commentators have engaged in stereotyping resulting in racial jokes and slurs about Lin's Asian heritage.
Please don't ask if I'm content in my singleness. I'm not there yet, and I don't know when I will be. I see myself as single by circumstance, not necessarily by choice.
When Frank Eckl and his family sat down for dinner at Don Julio’s restaurant last November, they had no idea this decision would begin a series of events that would result in the arrest of a young woman and the closing of the restaurant.
A controversy rages about the definition of autism. The American Psychiatric Association is considering a redefinition of the term for the newest edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
When my mom broke her hip this past Tuesday, the four of us had to decide whether or not she would have surgery. Because mom has late stage dementia, she could not make the decision herself.
After 12 years of meeting my wife's ever more challenging mobility problems, I have found a lot of good solutions. People are available to help; I want to be one of those who will.
Steps toward greater unity will honor the Savior who came, bled, died and rose again for all of his chosen ones regardless of denomination.The CRC and RCA have engaged in mutual work together in many areas including Disability Concerns.
Though diversity brings richness to life, diversity should not be an end in itself. In fact, a very diverse groups can be unbearable. At their worst, diverse groups can break into factions that engage in gang warfare and “ethnic cleansing.” When churches consider creating diverse communities, they need to focus attention also on welcome, hospitality, and inclusion.
A simple, short guide won't make all the challenges go away, but it can help everyone enjoy the holidays a bit more. This guide, written by Barbara Newman, gives practical advice that can be of help to those who care about people who have a difficult time with all the changes that come with the holidays.
Recently, Max Lucado published a book which included a devotion with reflections on disability and disease called "We Shall Be Like Him." Although he intends to encourage the reader, the language used and assumptions made in the devotional diminish people with disabilities.
I am the mother of a special needs child with a cognitive impairment. This presents various blessings and challenges for our family. One of the things that we have wrestled with for years, is whether or not our child would ever partake in communion.
Some people may wonder what it would mean to “celebrate” disability week, because they believe that disabilities are nothing to celebrate. However, we do have reason to celebrate the people in our congregations who live with disabilities.
James Soliday, a former employee of 7-Eleven who has 95 percent hearing loss, managed several stores effectively for many years, but was terminated, it seems, because a new supervisor was not willing to accommodate for his hearing loss as his supervisors had in the past.
Robertson’s cavalier approach to the marriage commitment reflects our culture’s cavalier attitude toward commitment. But true Christians understand that love is not based on convenience but on commitment.
Christianity Today reports, "In North Carolina, Elevation Church leaders removed a boy with cerebral palsy from church because he was disrupting the service. Then asks six prominent worship leaders to the question: “Should churches try to minimize disruptions in services?”