Mark Stephenson

Jenna, thanks for this biblical, thoughtful and challenging blog. Just as we need to reponder our theology of the city, as you say, we also need to reponder our theology of church buildings, programming, ministries, and communications that makes openings for all of God's people. 

Beautiful! Thanks John for this message which is especially appropriate for this holy week. 

National Public Radio reported on this subject today. An interesting piece, and equally interesting comments that follow, which for the most part are reasonable and respectful of the different sides of this issue. 

Terry, thanks for sharing this fine article. In the past, a lot of people involved in justice work have ignored people with disabilities, even though they, as a group, are the poorest of the poor and the most oppressed of the oppressed in any society. When counting people with intellectual, sensory, and physical disabilities as well as people with mental illnesses, one is talking about 20 percent of the human population. It's so good to see that little by little, this vast portion of humankind (at least 1.3 billion people) are getting ignored less than they used to. 

I just got a copy of Beyond Suffering from Joni and Friends. Haven't studied it yet, but perusing table of contents and authors suggest that it will be good. I've heard good things about it from others too.

Also, you may want to check out Inclusion Handbook which is available through Faith Alive.

Dutch, Thanks for sharing. My mother has severe dementia. Even her perceptions of what she hears and sees are affected by this degeneration of her brain. I just pray that by God's grace she continues to have the assurance of God's love.

Oh my, just found this question today. Here's a short article I wrote some time ago that gives possible funding sources: Funding for Church Building Accessibility.

In a private email message to me, Mark Mast was asked, "How did all the people find out about the church?" Mark replied,

We started out with a woman in our church whose son was in a group home. This organization allowed us to reach out to their homes (they trusted her). We then met with the main organizations in our area. We find they all know each other so one positive introduction was all we needed to get a meeting for permission to invite their homes to Odyssey. Once we hit 20 folks, it has all been word of mouth. We are now exploring how to again connect with the directors and then with the houses. We have 90 group homes in our area (we used to house the state institution), and we have only had contact with about 30 of them. Currently the state of New York is making the spiritual lives of those who are wards of the court a priority. So we also had encouragement from the Governor’s office (who at the time was blind) which opened a lot of doors as well. Once again, by far, it was word of mouth!

Great insight! The people with disabilities that get the most media coverage (and let's throw the Jerry Lewis telethons into this mix too) are those who, it seems, consider disability as an intruder in their lives, not part of their identity. At least, this is the narrative that the media seems to understand. I would guess that most in the media do not understand people who embrace a disability as part of their identity in the way that civil rights leaders embrace their ethnicity as part of their identity. Therefore, disability also is not portrayed as part of the diversity of human nature, but only as an intruder that must be overcome.

AJ French, the person who wrote this blog entry -- Do Justice -- wrestles with the same idea, only on a much, much more personal level.