Mark Stephenson
After receiving an M.Div. degree, I served as pastor of two Christian Reformed churches for a total of 17 years. From 2006 through 2021, I was the Director of Disability Concerns for the Christian Reformed Church, and relish the close working relationship CRC Disability Concerns has with the Reformed Church in America Disability Concerns ministry. I have served as interim Director of the CRC's Offices of Race Relations and Social Justice since Feb 2020. My wife Bev and I have five living children, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren. Our oldest child, Nicole, was born extremely prematurely in the late 1980’s and lives joyfully with severe, multiple impairments. That label does not define her. She loves magazines, loves interacting with people, loves roller-coasters and wild amusement park rides, and she loves to worship and to pray with God’s people. In any group, she shares her own unique gifts.
Posted in: Listening to a Fellow Christian with Schizophrenia
Beautifully said. Thank you! Yes, God's grace tastes most sweet when we are the most thirsty for it, and people who have often thirsted for his grace have a wonderful gift to share with others.
Posted in: Church Outreach and Disability
Ken, sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. What are you suggesting I send to the churches? Tx, Mark
Posted in: Church Outreach and Disability
That's a good idea. I kept a fairly low profile with this webinar because I have never led one before, so I didn't do wide promotion. Will publicize more the next time. Thanks for the suggestion. It's not available yet, but a recording of this webinar will be posted in the "Webinar Archives" at the bottom of this page.
Posted in: Glamorizing Disability?
Ken and Spitfire,
Yes, I really appreciated Rich's post for the reasons you give. I hope you take time to read his book Relentless Grace; it's honest without being self-pitying, including the parts in which he confesses his self-pity.
In our experience as parents of a child with severe disabilities, we had to be very careful to whom we spoke and what we said for fear that it might seem like we were complaining. The last thing we wanted was to have it seem that we were complaining about our daughter. But honest sharing about a typical day could sound like that. So of couse, when people asked us how we were doing, we would say, "Fine," and leave it at that.
When I instruct seminary students about pastoral care with people with long-term needs, I encourage them to take the posture of a student and the person with a disability and/or family members are the teachers. I tell them that one of the most loving things they can do is ask, "Tell me what a typical day is like," then just listen and let the other know that they are heard. For Bev and me, it was a rare and wonderful love when someone truly wanted to get educated on what a day was like in the life of our family!
Mark
Posted in: Bring It On, Satan
Michele, I pray for God's grace and help for you, and for complete healing for your sister.
Posted in: Do Older People Have "Disabilities"?
What a great insight. I never thought about that before. We all use "accommodations" all the time, yet those accommodations that are used mostly by people with disabilities are the ones that carry the stigma.
Will a time come when people view these kinds of accommodations not with stigma but with appreciation? Already we consider eyeglasses sometimes as fashion accessories. See this article in Fast Company magazine for a glimpse (with a caution about some inappropriate language):
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/super-human.html
Posted in: A Virtual Misfits Club for Parents of Children with Disabilities?
Darla, thanks for your comments. It sounds as if the journey with disability is especially lonely for your family. God's blessing and strength! Mark
Posted in: A Virtual Misfits Club for Parents of Children with Disabilities?
Ken, thanks for your comment. We'll have to see how this evolves. Perhaps a broader focus for a group might be good, or perhaps there may be interest in different groups. Right now Sara is exploring a possibility, and I'm giving her a little help with that exploration. Blessings, Mark
Posted in: What's Normal
The word "normal" should not be applied to worship, people, or to anything besides objects. My favorite quote about it is by Whoopi Goldberg: “Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.”
Posted in: What's Normal
The word "normal" denotes conformance to a certain standard; it comes from the Latin for carpenter's square. Therefore, I doubt that most people use the word without thinking of it as prescriptive. Also, as soon as we call a certain worship pattern "normal," we imply that any change from that pattern is abnormal. Instead of describing any pattern of worship as "normal," wouldn't it be better to talk about the "usual pattern" of worship?
Posted in: A Second Arizona Tragedy
Randy, Ken, and Nelly,
Thanks so much for your comments. In the U.S., we finally have a mental health parity law which requires insurance companies to provide the same treatment for people with mental illnesses as they do for people with other kinds of illnesses. This was passed a year or so before recent (and highly contorversial) health care legislation. We'll see how well this parity law actually plays out in how insurance companies put this into practice for people who need this coverage .
As for mental health and the church, I hear you, Randy. In fact, Disability Concerns organized a Mental Health Task Force a little over a year ago to address issues of ministry with people with mental illnesses. The Task Force began their work by going to a conference sponsored by Pathways to Promise, an organization dedicated to helping faith communities address mental illness. One of the founding denominations of Pathways is the CRC. Pathways' homepage has a link to a summary of the conference with many conference documents. I highly recommend a look. When you click on the link, it will look like a pdf of the conference brochure, but they added links to many other documents in that. It's rich with help.
Disability Concerns has also provided some simple resources for ministry on our website, but it's only a beginning. Last summer the Mental Health Task Force did an informal survey of pastors because we realized that ministering with people with mental illness, whether or not they are confrontational, is often one of the most difficult challenges that pastors and congregations face. We want to keep working at this and in fact are drawing in CRC Pastor Church Relations into the conversation starting next month. Randy, I forwarded your first post to the Task Force because it expresses so much of what we heard from other pastors as well. Thanks for writing.
Posted in: A Second Arizona Tragedy
Randy, how painful for you, for this person and his family, and for the whole church community. I will make this a matter of prayer, and I hope that other readers do too. It strikes me that we need to pray for at least four different groups of people:
Thanks for making your lament public so that the rest of us can grieve with you and pray with you.