Everybody belongs. Everybody serves.
Disability
Safe Church
Michele
Ken 
Staci
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...
Lest we forget, out of 2.3 million American veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, 633,000 (25% of the total) have a service-connected disability. Overall, about 3 million (14%) of the total number of living US veterans have a service-connected disability. We owe an extra debt of gratitude to the disabled vets . . .
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.
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.
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.
It is obvious that sin has impacted our world in regards to disabilities. But what is often less obvious is the power of God working through such disabilities.
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.
Over the years Jerry Lewis helped raise two and a half billion dollars for medical research for treatments and cures for the various forms of muscular dystrophy that affect about two percent of the population. That money has come at the expense of significant controversy.
If we truly want to honor the image of God in each individual, we’ll use dignified language because it avoids condescension and recognizes the fundamental equality of people.
I am beginning to wonder if many of the things I consider tragic in myself and others are special gifts that, when properly noticed and submitted to, become a way for the community to better receive the richness of God.
After a shooting rampage in Grand Rapids, Police Chief Belk said he did not know Dantzler's mental-health diagnosis, but said he was "obviously a very troubled individual involved in some horrible activity." Why is Belk speculating about Dantzler's mental-health diagnosis? Whether or not Dantzler had a mental illness is no more relevant
If we are serious about our mission as God's agents of renewal in society, our efforts at eliminating injustice, mitigating poverty, and helping people to become self-sustaining need to start with people with disabilities. If every anti-poverty effort, every development initiative, every benevolence committee in every CRC in North America began with the question, "How will this affect people with disabilities?" our work would be transformed dramatically for the better.
Any congregation that is serious about hospitality and serious about justice must recognize that disability isn’t about those people over there, it is about us, and it affects nearly every aspect of church life (as well as society).
Although arguments in favor of assisted suicide appeal to dignity and relief from suffering, they always miss the main point: the sanctity of human life. Whenever people are permitted to seek out the assistance of their doctors to take their own lives, society begins to put pressure on some individuals to bring about this final solution to the challenges they face.
Using the r-word (retard/retarded) about another person or about doing something foolish slams fellow image-bearers of God. Take a pledge at this website to promise not to use it and to encourage others to stop using it. Also, check out the new PSA produced by r-word.org.
James Durbin found fame on American Idol this season, though he was cut this past Wednesday. I rarely watch American Idol, and I know little about James Durbin or his music. Except this, Durbin lives with Asperger syndrome and with Tourette syndrome. I don’t want to set him up as “an inspiration,” which would do him a disservice, but I do want to set him and the staff of American Idol out as trailblazers.
Near the end of the play, just after being beaten and abandoned by his handlers, he calls after them in a husky voice, “I’m a man. I’m not an animal. I’m not an elephant. I’m a man.” The Elephant Man helps audiences reckon with the painful dehumanization that many people with disabilities experience: gawked at or ignored, left at the margins
The National Association of Evangelicals produced a document in 2004 called “For the Health of the Nation.” It is not so much about health care reform as about the health of the United States as a nation. The scope of the document reaches far beyond the “traditional” evangelical issues of abortion and marriage. These are
The discussion last week after my post about the Tucson shooting brought home to me all the more clearly that mental illnesses do not affect “those people” over there, but they are us. Pejorative labels like “crazy” and “whacko” only reinforce this separation or stigma which hovers over people with mental illnesses. But the people who live with mental illness are not just those with the disease itself, but also their family members, friends, fellow church members, and society as a whole.
In Christ's disability, we recognize him as true God and find in him a compassionate companion who dwells with us in our limitations.
The first tragedy, of course, is the senseless death of six people and wounding of several others including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a week and a half ago. A second tragedy arises from the first. This second tragedy follows on the heels of every random act of mass violence.
Individually and collectively we image God. We collectively image God, because God is a divine community of three Persons. One person alone cannot image God fully, because God is a community.