In 2023, thanks to faithful, generous supporters, two beloved CMS-started projects in Africa and Asia are celebrating two decades of mission among people at the edges.

Neema Crafts in Iringa, Tanzania, began in 2003 with three deaf men making stationery from elephant dung – they were taught this craft by mission partner Susie Hart.

Susie and her husband Andy had been in Tanzania a short time when Susie noticed how disabled people were stigmatised and ostracised.

Working with the Diocese of Ruaha, she helped show the local community that people with disabilities matter to God.

Today, Neema has trained and employed more than 100 disabled people in craftmaking, hospitality and other industries and their products are treasured around the world.

Neema is increasingly locally led, as CMS mission partners Ben and Katy Ray, who succeeded the Harts, have relocated and placed Neema in the capable hands of Diana Nzagi, Erick Moshi and mission associates Hannah and Joseph Adams.

Jigsaw Kids Ministries in Manila, the Philippines, also started small, with mission partners Kate and Tim Lee spreading out some toys on their living room floor for local children to play with.

It has grown to multiple centres providing education, Bible clubs and fun activities for hundreds of children living in poverty.

Having handed over Jigsaw leadership to CMS local partners a few years ago, Tim Lee continues to support and advise the ministry from Cumbria.

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The post Neema and Jigsaw: 20 years at the edges appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Mission, disability and creativity

by Emma Major

Mission?

Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

Mark 16:15 (ESV)

This is the crux of mission for me: it is to GO into the world and join in with what God is already doing in ALL of creation. “Go”; mission is going into the world, whether that’s the local community, a far-flung country or an online community. “All” of creation; mission is not just being with those who look like you or act like you, not just those in church or known to church, but every single person, especially those you don’t see in church.

What might God be doing that we are called to join in with? Jesus tells us to care for the poor, feed the hungry, stand up for the downtrodden, protect the weak and guide the lost. That seems like a good list to start with; or, to put it more succinctly, share the love of God with everyone.

I know that in the past I have put God in a box called “church” contained safely in church because that’s where it’s easy to find God, talk about God and share God. Even when I spoke about church being the people not the building, I was still limiting God to those who were part of that wider definition of church. I knew that God is everywhere in life, in every place, every activity, every silence, every question. God is at home, work, leisure, health, politics, justice, illness, recovery, life and death. I couldn’t contain God safely; God was waiting for me wherever I went to join in with God’s work of loving everyone.

Then I lost my sight overnight and my mobility within months. I became disabled. Going into the world was literally almost impossible, but before I get into that, let’s define disability.

Disabled?

You’re disabled “if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities”.¹

I’m disabled; I’m a blind wheelchair user with long Covid. However, my impairments aren’t the greatest disabling factor in my life, society is; and my disability doesn’t define me, my gifts and talents do.

We all have gifts and talents, experiences and knowledge to be valued; we must celebrate everyone for their gifts as well as knowing each person’s needs. However, if we can’t get into a room, no one will ever even know about our gifts, skills and talents. That’s the most disabling part of being disabled.

An example. A church meeting is arranged in London to start at 9 a.m. in an old building. Most people can jump on a train early in the morning, get the Underground a few stops and bounce up the stairs into the building. I know that’s true – I used to do it all the time.

As a wheelchair user, I have to pre-book my place on a train and the assistance (ramp) to get on and off it. Most of the Underground network involves steps, which makes it inaccessible. I need to catch a taxi but most of those aren’t truly accessible. The taxi drops me near the building but not quite close enough to avoid the blocked drop curb. Those steps into the building are interesting; how do I get someone to tell me where the accessible entrance is without going up them? (I’ve spent hours sorting this out and know who to ring.) Eventually in the building, I realise I can’t get around the room and no one knows where a disabled toilet is. I could go on.

What happens now I’m disabled? I stop going to meetings; there are no disabled voices in the room, because it’s too exhausting and depressing, especially with fatigue in the mix.

The Bible is full of Jesus healing people – much has been written around how those accounts are more about healing spiritually than healing physical or mental disabilities.

Instead, I want to briefly share two passages:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”

Jer. 1:5 (ESV)

God knew us and knows us and knows what will be in our futures. Everything we are throughout our life is loved and blessed by God, no matter what disability we might have.

“Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Luke 24:39 (NRSV)

Jesus was disabled when he was resurrected; he still had the physical damage from the crucifixion. As Nancy Eiesland writes:

… the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God. Jesus, the resurrected saviour, calls for his frightened companions to recognise in the marks of impairment their own connection with God.²

The biggest barrier I had to overcome when I became disabled was the one in my mind that said I could no longer live fully, I could no longer do… just about everything. And it’s true; life became extremely challenging, as you’ve read in the example above, because the inaccessibility of the world is placed on disabled people rather than on the barriers to full inclusivity.

But just because I couldn’t “go” or “do” as I did before didn’t mean that I could no longer “go” or “do” – it would just be different. In fact, it would be better, more out of the God box, more available, more creative.

Creative?

Relating to or involving the use of the imagination or original ideas to create something.³

Everyone is creative; yes, even you. We overcome obstacles by being creative: we speak and that’s creative, we draw and paint and garden and sew and photograph and tell jokes: we are all creative. Creativity is an integral part of human life and a central part of being a Christian.

Creativity is right there at the very beginning of the Bible:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Gen. 1:1 (ESV)

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Gen. 1:27 (NIV)

Then let’s hear from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Eph. 2:10 (NIV)

If God is creative, which we know to be true, then so are we. Creativity is literally a God-given gift.

Can creativity be missional?

These two verses from Colossians speak to me about the mission of creativity:

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Col. 3:17 (ESV)

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

Col. 3:23 (NIV)

Mission is about finding where God is working and helping out. God is the initiator and we respond. Jesus told us: “Without me [Jesus], you can do nothing.”⁴

God created me. God created me with gifts of creativity that have come to the fore artistically through my disability. God has grieved with me and healed me through all the challenges I have faced, and God has guided me to new ways of living and new ways of being a minister.

Hardly anyone would think someone almost entirely blind could paint as I do, but thanks to technology and the whisper of God to keep going, I do. Then, when I share my creations, I am sharing my faith and the blessing of God in my life; that is mission.

I don’t mean sharing just the church and faith-related creativity, but all of it – because my life is inspired and energised by God and therefore so is everything I create.

Here are three examples.

• Pentecost painting⁵: I painted this for Pentecost and shared it online; it was picked up by church leaders and Christians who asked if they could use it for prayer or in services. This is clearly mission.
  
• Caring for creation⁶: These abstract paintings and associated poems were created in prayer about the climate emergency. They talk to people, no matter what their faith, about the importance of caring for God’s creation. They might point to God or they might not, but they are inspired by God – and this is mission.
  
• Landscape paintings⁷: I miss going into the woods and the hills; I miss the wild places of the world. But I have learned to paint digitally and I have learned to travel to wild places through my painting, and that gives me freedom. These paintings aren’t explicitly about faith, they are just paintings that I have enjoyed creating; when I share them they speak to people, they spark conversations, they form connections and they inspire other people to see what is possible in their lives. This is mission.

Can sharing the day-to-day realities of my life and faith through my creativity be missional?

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!

1 Chron. 16:11 (ESV)

I share my weakness and strength, my pain and joys, the reality of my life as a woman, as a disabled woman, as a disabled disciple, as a disabled minister seeking and following God every day.

I live differently, I am called differently. I bring a different view of humanity and this is an important reflection in the world. By sharing my life creatively online I have a ministry of presence, recognisable as a person of God bringing people together.

I creatively share who I am, honestly, openly about how God is at work in my life. I write, paint and share knowing that God is in every moment of my life, in every word I write, in every colour I paint. But even more than that, I know that God will be with whoever engages with my poetry and art: a constant presence waiting to be found, a still small voice waiting to be heard. God inspires me and leads me and then leads others to receive what I give. If that isn’t mission, then I don’t know what is.

This is a poem I wrote in June 2016, which is just as relevant today as it was then; this is my ministry, my mission, to share creatively.

Such a week of awful news
TV full of doom and gloom
Fifty dead
Shot in a club
MP shot
Doing her job
Added to the wars non-stop
And inequality that drops
The weakest in the darkest place
Without water
Without a home
All across the world they roam
And no one wants to take them in
They are blamed for everything

Why?

What has our world become
I do not know what can be done
But surely
One thing we should see
Is that it’s real for you and me
All this grief
All this loss
My heavy heart
Removes life’s gloss
Today I want to shut it off
To close the door
Switch off the phone
Makes me want to be alone
And cry
And rant
And shout so loud
God of mine
Why do you allow?

And yet I know
That my dear God
Is crying too
Through all this loss
Seeing our world
Feeling our pain
Seeing the evil
Repeat again
God must despair
At our lack of care

It’s overwhelming
What can I do?
I’m just one person
As are you
But together
Joined with many more
Surely we can do
What’s been done before
To make a change
Improve our world
To heal the sick
And warm the cold
To feed the hungry
Save the damned
We can’t give up
Let’s make a stand
To shout out loud
Put down the hate
Love each other
Gay or straight
Enemy, neighbour
Near or far
Evil cannot win this war
Love must open every door
So together stand
Together say
We’ll help each other
Come what may
Through prayer and action
Donation
Petition
THIS is our God-given mission
With hopeful heart
I impart this vision
Can you make the same decision?

About the author

Emma Major is a pioneer lay minister, blind wheelchair user, artist and poet. Her poems have been included in numerous books and she has written her own collections of poetry on miscarriage, mental health and climate change. In 2020 her first book combining both poetry and art, Little Guy: Journey of Hope, was published by Wild Goose Publications. In 2021 Emma’s first exhibition of paintings and poems, “Caring for Creation”, was exhibited around Berkshire; it was hosted at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. She currently has paintings in two other exhibitions and has five books of poetry and paintings in various stages of publication. You can find Emma online at LLMCalling.com or on social media @emmuk74, where she shares her artwork and poetry to encourage, bless and affirm people.

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Notes

1 “Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010,” GOV.UK, https://www.gov.uk/definition-of-disability-under-equality-act-2010.
2 Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 100.
3 “Meaning of creative in English,” Lexico, https://www.lexico.com/definition/creative.
4 John 15:5 (RGT).
5 https://www.llmcalling.com/post/pentecost-1?fbclid=IwAR3prmd5Msnpl4c7hPQKOHG8C3vP4cuor71lsprzcQLoUf7YgT9iX2lpy2o
6 https://www.llmcalling.com/caringforcreation
7 https://www.llmcalling.com/contact

The post Mission, disability and creativity appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Mission and disabled people

by Tim Rourke

In 2013 I attended a course called Self-Management of Long-Term Health Conditions. There were people on the course who lived with a range of different impairments, from Parkinson’s disease to spinal conditions and ME. We had different conditions but shared many of the same experiences of living as disabled people in the UK today.

Having shared with the group a prayer activity that I use on my bad days, a discussion about church began. I discovered that since we received our various diagnoses, every member of the group had been to a church. Twelve people searching for help in a time of hurt and pain had tried to connect with God through various Christian communities. I also discovered that from that group, I was the only person still going! As a disabled evangelist this shocked me and made me wonder why, and what can we as disabled and non-disabled Christians do about it?

According to the research we carried out in the Derby diocese in 2020, an estimated 11 per cent of church members are disabled, using the definition of disability from the Equalities Act 2010.¹ This compared to a national average of 15 to 20 per cent in the general public and over 40 per cent for 65-year-olds.

Interestingly the number of common adaptations made to a church building did not directly correlate with the number of disabled people in any given church. On reflection, the Disability Inclusion Working Group (Derby Diocese) felt that adaptability and willingness to listen to disabled people’s stories increased the likelihood of them being a part of a church community. Disabled people in decision-making bodies and leadership were also fairly uncommon.

Disabled people are among the most isolated groups in UK society. Sixty-seven per cent of people feel uncomfortable when talking to a disabled person (according to a report by SCOPE in 2014).² Disabled people are more than four times as likely to feel lonely, “often or always”, and more than twice as likely as to experience domestic abuse than non-disabled people.³

This potentially has huge implications for disabled people and the church’s mission and evangelism across the UK.

Often churches aim to grow through engagement with people we meet through social interactions outreach and connecting with our communities. As disabled people are often find themselves excluded by those communities and beyond the edges of society, these methods will struggle to engage.

Pioneering among groups who are not engaged with the church might prove more successful, one might think. However, because these communities congregate around pre-existing groups, there is a need to consciously reflect on how many disabled people live in these groups to begin with. In my experience meeting with pioneers, this is rarely done.

The diagram highlights some of these challenges. The church (in green) tries to influence and encourage people in the wider society to respond to Christ, but it is more likely to meet people who are from “easy-to-reach” groups. “Harder-to-reach” groups, in this case disabled people, need to be engaged with in specific and intentional ways.

At the same time, disabled people who are already within the church need to be seen as important, valued and flourishing. Christianity needs to be Good News to them, and listening to their experiences needs to inform and shape the engagement for the future.

Over the course of a year, a team of disabled Christians from churches across the Diocese of Derby looked into ways that church structures and local churches can engage with disabled people and become more receptive to their needs. Together we wrote a report called “The Disabling Church… and what to do about it”. At Diocesan Synod in October 2021 the report was received and these three challenges for the diocese were accepted:

Attitude

Challenging the assumptions and attitudes of a community is the most influential way for inclusion to take place. Churches, like all communities, have set ways of operating that are often not reflected upon or written down. These were probably not shaped by disabled people and therefore don’t often accommodate disabled people who need to do things in a variety of different ways.

Christians also have quite a history of making judgements of disabled people and using inappropriate methods of prayer. The experiences have damaged many in the disabled community. Most visibly disabled people have at least one story of being singled out for prayer, often without their consent. This makes the church a challenging place to engage with in the first place.

However, with a flexibility and a willingness to listen, simple changes can build bridges instead. In one example, a church had an unusual way of reading the psalms antiphonally between the reader and the congregation. It was joined by an older teenager with learning disabilities who asked to read in the service. The church changed its practice immediately to only have one response at the end of the reading, so that he could be included!

Access

Often the barrier to thinking about access is that we have many old buildings and few funds to make them accessible, with ramps, toilets and hearing loops costing money that we don’t have.

However, there are things that can be done very cheaply. For example, including photos and a description of your building on your website so that people know what they will face when they enter enables people to plan their way in before they arrive. Also, make sure the signs in your buildings are clear, readable and correct.

If you can’t do everything (and you probably can’t), then do something! Get advice from organisations or advisors, or even better, invite a group of local disabled people into your church and ask them what would be most useful for them to know so that they can get around in your building. You have experts locally, so use them.

And please stop saying “everyone welcome” on your posters! While you are probably open to anyone who wants to come, that doesn’t help disabled people know if or how they can come. There is little more demoralising than turning up to discover that the event that everyone is welcome but that can’t include you!

In Derbyshire, a new church group was forming around the joy of nature and meeting God while spending time outside. The group knew that the planned walk was flat. In the first session, a scooter user came along to test it. Now all the publicity says “wheelchair accessible”. Knowing things in advance helps disabled people to know that they are “welcome” too!

Agency

Representation of disabled people in the leadership of the Church of England is hard to judge. As far as I am aware, no bishop has stated that they are disabled, although by the definition used in the Equality Act and the age profile of bishops, they probably are.

Disabled people often face extra challenges to other forms of ordained or lay leadership, and because they are disabled, they may never be given the opportunities to serve in the first place. This lack of involvement leads to sidelining and othering of disabled people. This is often seen when our intercessions pray for the ill and the sick as them, rather than us.

A pioneer Christian community were writing their prayers and liturgy, which included disabled people. Disabled people were involved in the creation of the prayers, which affirmed everyone as they were and encouraged everyone to respond to God’s call. The “us and them” prayers that churches often use didn’t need changing or adapting, because they were never written in the first place. Involvement of disabled people in all we do in our churches informs our inclusion more than anything else.

So, what is Jesus’ Good News for those people on the “long-term health conditions” course who joined and then left the church?

Maybe it is to be loved as they are. To be listened to as they are. To be included as they are!

Not because God will take away their symptoms and conditions (a cure) to make them acceptable to others, but because in the church, the disabled and resurrected body of Christ, together we can find hope, peace, love, healing and belonging.

About the author

Tim Rourke is a disabled Church Army evangelist developing a pioneering community with others in Chesterfield in Derbyshire. The community consists of three groups: disabled adults, disabled children and carers. For the last two years, Tim has been leading a disability inclusion project to produce a report to help disabled people to flourish and be accepted better across Derby diocese. He is studying for an MA in Theology and Transformative Practice at The Queens Foundation, focusing on the experiences of disabled people. Tim’s hobbies include playing board games, cooking and watching sport.

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Notes

1 You’re a disabled person under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a “substantial” and “long-term” negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. “Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010,” GOV.UK, https://www.gov.uk/definition-of-disability-under-equality-act-2010.
2 “Brits feel uncomfortable with disabled people,” SCOPE, 8 May 2014, https://www.scope.org.uk/media/press-releases/brits-feel-uncomfortable-with-disabled-people/.
3 “Outcomes for disabled people in the UK: 2020,” Office for National Statistics, 18 February 2021, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/disability/articles/outcomesfordisabledpeopleintheuk/2020.

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Mission, and dispelling the disability/ tragedy narrative

by Kay Morgan-Gurr

“I’d rather be dead than in that.”

This statement is often thrown at me by people as they wave a hand towards my wheelchair. I’m not alone in this. Many people I know have similar comments made about their various disabilities. Friends with learning disabilities are dismissed with a “Well, they don’t know any different, the poor things,” along with “But I feel so sorry for their parents.”

Where does this judgement come from? Why do people think that it is better to be dead than disabled?

It comes from what is known as the “tragedy narrative” and it speaks into every stage of life where disability is concerned.

It speaks into life before birth. When parents find out their child will have a disability, the first thing they are offered by the medical profession is a termination. The tragedy narrative says any child with a disability will have no quality of life. This pronouncement is often made by medical people who have no lived experience of children with disabilities (other than in a medical capacity) and do not understand their worth or their quality of life. A friend who had a doctor that just could not understand why she was fighting so hard for the treatment her son needed asked some of her friends – me included – to write something about her son to show the amazing quality of life he had. She got the treatment he needed, but she should not have had to do this.

If the narrative of disability is only of tragedy, there is no worth. This is clearly seen in the prenatal screening now given to detect Down syndrome. Since this has been in place, terminations for Down syndrome have risen hugely and are regularly offered, along with much pressure to do so, right up until birth.

This narrative is also seen in the reaction of people to a child born with a disability – the “I’m so sorry” response when they learn the child has “something wrong with them”. Even as a 50-something I get the same reaction from people, usually said with a slight tilt of the head to the side along with a pained expression. My reaction is often, “Why be sorry – I get to sit down all day, and I can wear heels without fear of blisters and tripping over!”

Another reaction I get is: “That must be so hard!” The truth is, it wouldn’t be so hard if the world were more accessible and disability weren’t seen as the worst thing in the world.

Disability seems to be an upsetting and uncomfortable word for many people who have no experience of it. People try to cancel the word out and replace it with something more palatable because the word is just so… “tragic”. The phrase “differently abled” is from this stable, and it makes many disabled people shudder when they hear it.

This idea of disability being a tragedy also impinges on working or having a job. A friend on social media recently received private messages saying she must have been lying about being disabled because she had a job and disabled people don’t work. Of course, this isn’t true – disabled people do work. But I suspect the struggle for many disabled people in finding work is not only driven by fear and not wanting to make accommodations, but also this view of disability being so awful; because disability is so horrible you can’t work, and if you do work you won’t be good enough and need sick leave all the time. Statistics actually blow this out of the water. Generally, disabled people with the right accommodations have less time off, work longer and harder, and are loyal to their employer. I don’t see that as a tragedy.

Over the pandemic, many disabled people have been given “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders without their knowledge. At other times, many of us have been asked time and time again about our resuscitation wishes. Sometimes this starts with, “Are you still refusing the DNR?”

Why is this? It’s that tragedy narrative again, where we’re told our lives aren’t worth living, so why should they bother resuscitating us? They think they will be doing us a favour.

The truth is, our lives have worth. I have a full life. I laugh a lot, enjoy a lot and I live a lot. Yes I have a job I love, but that shouldn’t be a measure of my worth.

All these reactions overflow into church life too. I’ll start with the elephant in the room: why do so many Christians chase after people with obvious disabilities and demand to pray for healing, or say awful things like, “If you trust in Jesus, you will be able to get out of that chair”? This tells disabled people that they are not acceptable to God unless they are cured. Now that IS a tragedy.

When disability is seen as a tragedy, and the compassion response is only driven by this narrative, disabled people will struggle to find their place in the church in the way that God intended. This will be the case for not just those of us with the noticeable disabilities, but those with invisible disabilities, neurodiversity, mental health struggles and more. Of course, when we don’t fit the narrative of “disabled person now fixed – job done”, we get a secondary tragedy to add to the list: our faith becomes the perceived problem.

We need to change the narrative.

Through my acquired disability, I have learned much. I have gained more than I have lost. God has been in that place with me, and when I am struggling with extreme pain, there is divine beauty in that place. As I’ve worked alongside children who have additional needs I have learned much. There have been many holy places as I have sat with them.

My own disability has been a bonus in many areas of ministry, but where it hasn’t, it has often been due to this view of disabled people only being receivers of ministry, not those who minister. Many see my ministry as awkward and even a “bad advert for the church”. Yet I believe my disability is a unique gift to ministry and something that God can use. Once again that tragedy narrative creeps in; I cannot minister as a disabled person because there is nothing positive about disability. Therefore I find few platforms I can access to preach and even fewer theology books I can listen to instead of read.

My journey with disability began when I was 14. I didn’t know at that point I had a genetic condition that would rear up and bite me later! I was asked to “help” on a church camp for young people with disabilities. The language was very much around “doing to”, not with or alongside. This was about pity and doing something about it. The word “tragic” was constantly in the background. I even won an award for “helping on a camp for ‘handicapped’ children” from a para church youth organisation! The bus journey to the campsite soon bashed the saviour attitude out of me. The girl I was to “be responsible for” quickly became a friend; she taught me much and set me on a path of ministry that affected my whole life. We were equals. I made many other friends on this camp who have continued to teach and influence me and helped me on my own journey with disability. I carried on with those camps for years. By the time I stopped, the tragedy narrative was nowhere to be seen. But it reappears without fail when my friends try to enter our churches.

Throughout society, including our churches, the narrative of tragedy filters through everything. It’s like a water leak that can erode tiles, ceilings, floors and concrete – it affects everything. It may not look like the culprit, but there is always a channel back to it.

As a church we need to shift our thinking and change the narrative. Why are children with disabilities and additional needs never mentored – especially for leadership? Why are disabled people often overlooked for ministry roles? This is just one area where we need to change the narrative.

Disabled people should be seen like any other. They should be in leadership roles; they should be teaching our children, leading mission teams and allowed to be on the mission field. This not only gives worth and dignity but dispels the myth of tragedy. It also shines a light to the rest of the world about how we value the voice and the presence of disabled people in our lives and our churches.

About the author

Kay Morgan-Gurr is co-founder of the Additional Needs Alliance. She is a visually impaired wheelchair user and used to be a children’s nurse specialising in additional needs and disability. Kay has been in ministry for over 27 years, initially working with children and families, but now works as Pondering Platypus Training and Consultancy. She works alongside many organisations as an advisor and trainer, and is a writer for Christian Today. She is married with two grown-up stepsons, loves real decaf coffee and does rather a lot of knitting and crocheting! She tweets at @KayMorgan_Gurr.

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The golden light of God’s kintsugi: mission and mental health

by Bill Braviner

There is a poem by Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, available in translation as “Childhood Friends”, which contains the following lines:

Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don’t turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.¹

Rumi seems to have been the first person who explicitly talks about the light entering a person through a wound, but it is an image that has been taken up and used by many people since.

Benjamin Blood wrote in 1860:

There is a crack in every thing that God has made; but through that crevice enters the light of heaven.²

In 1929, Ernest Hemingway wrote:

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.³

And famously, Leonard Cohen sang of the light coming in through the cracks in his 1992 song “Anthem”. Cohen’s own comment on the song was, “There is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.”4

How do all these quotes help us explore mission and mental health?

As someone who has experienced severe mental health difficulties in the past, I write from the perspective of that experience, and of the healing I continue to experience, as well as the insights I have gained over a decade’s reflection on and learning from the experience.

In common with many people who have suffered psychological, emotional or spiritual trauma over the years, one of the concepts and images that became, and remains, very resonant for me is that of the Japanese art of kintsugi – the repairing of a broken object by incorporating new material that highlights and celebrates the repair, the joins, the “cracks”, and makes the resulting object into something that celebrates its story and identity as something that once was broken and is now more beautiful, because of the repair rather than in spite of it.

This image became very profound for me, as it has for others, because I experienced a deepening of my understanding of God, of the world and of myself, as a result of the process of living through and living with mental health issues, and the experience of how God wrought healing in me.

My healing noticeably began when I was brought up short by the realisation (obvious in so many ways!) that the story of Easter, of the resurrection, contains the central truth that Christ was raised with his wounds – and that, in fact, it was the wounds themselves that were offered as a proof of his resurrection, for example in John 20:24–29. Just as the risen Christ bore his wounds, so my healing would be not in spite of mine, but with them – and in some ways, through them.

We live in a world where many are wounded, in many ways. The psychological, emotional and spiritual wounds that so many people carry are not more important than the physical wounds inflicted on so many in our world, but neither are they less so. We recognise far more acutely today the seriousness of, for example, PTSD – something for which a century ago, brave men were being shot as “cowards”.

Healing from such woundedness need not, and often does not, involve a recovery from something so much as an adapting to it, a living with it. We are not called to a God who says, “Come back when you are fixed,” but to a God who is with us in our walk through the valley of the shadow of death, a God who promises that the weary and heavy-laden can cast their burdens on him and find rest for their souls. Our healing is less about “being fixed”, and far more about finding peace, wholeness, shalom in God.

This becomes very important when journeying with people who have psychological, emotional or spiritual burdens that are impacting negatively on their mental health, on their ability to interact with and cope with the context in which they are living, the circumstances of their lives, the filter through which they are able to see the world.

Where, for those of us who live with woundedness in our psyche, our emotions and our spirit (and I would argue that to some extent at least, this is all of us), do we find the deepest activity of the Holy Spirit? Surely it is at those very places of brokenness, where God seeks not so much to undo our woundedness but to transform it, not so much to “fix” as to heal, not so much to bring repair as wholeness? It’s at those places, those parts of who we are, where God finds the cracks through which the light – the light of God’s love and life – gets in.

In mission, therefore, in working with people, or communities, or societies to enable and encourage an openness to the work of the Holy Spirit as God seeks to reveal his kingdom more and more fully, it is the places of brokenness, of woundedness, of crucifixion, that ought to be a central focus. It is those places, those cracks, where the healing God seeks to bring, needs to pour in – and it is in transforming those aspects of people, communities, societies and so on that the glory of resurrection begins to be seen, that new life begins to flourish, that the glory of God transforms trauma and brings beauty from brokenness.

As the golden light of God’s kintsugi pours in through the cracks, part of the healing is that people, communities, societies begin to discover anew what they are and what they are called to be, what potential they have and what they can do. Often this is in new or unexpected directions, through new perspectives opened up by the processes of brokenness and healing. My own engagement in the field of disability and theology would be a case in point, but so would the stories of so many others. Some good examples are recounted in Pastor Mike Mather’s Having Nothing, Possessing Everything,⁵ and in Fr Greg Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir.⁶

It is my conviction, borne out of over 30 years engagement in parish life, 26 of them in ordained ministry, that it is when we pay attention to beautiful work of healing that God is doing and seeks to do in people (including ourselves), in communities and in society, that we come to an appreciation of where God’s mission is focused, and where God’s activity is directed. This is not to suggest that God is only interested in particular people or places – only in those who have some recognisable psychological, emotional or spiritual difficulty but it is to suggest that there is something of this in us all, and in all the ways we live together, that God seeks to work on, to heal and yes, to use as a strength – for his power is made perfect in weakness.

God calls us, not so much to “the broken”, as to engage individually and corporately with our brokenness; not so much to “the poor”, as to engage individually and corporately with our poverty; not so much to “the needy” as to engage individually and corporately with our needs, and with our abilities and assets, so that the golden light of his wholeness can both pour into us through the cracks in our being, and also shine out of us through those same cracks, for the healing of others and of the world.

The wounds we carry, then, are not so much burdens to be shed as anchors of grace. Not so much shame to be borne, but openings to love. Not so much faults to be fixed as openings to healing, to wholeness, to the kingdom and to Christ. May we help one another to let God pour in the golden light of his kintsugi, that all may see the enhanced beauty and blessing of those who know that they are made whole.

About the author

Originally from South Shields, County Durham, Bill Braviner trained with Price Waterhouse as a chartered accountant after university, before responding to a call to ordination. He was ordained in 1995 and recently moved to the Diocese of Leeds, where he is the archdeacon of Halifax.

Having experienced a period of mental health difficulties some 10 years ago, Bill was led to develop his engagement in issues around disability, working with and journeying with others who brought a perspective from the “inside”. This led to the formation of Disability and Jesus, a “user-led” group that seeks to encourage change and foster access and inclusion across the church. Bill was also disability adviser to the bishop and Diocese of Durham from 2015 until leaving the diocese to take up the role of archdeacon.

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Notes

1 “Childhood Friends” in The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks et al. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 139–41.
2 Benjamin Blood, Optimism: The Lesson of Ages (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1860), 91.
3 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (London: Arrow Books, 2004).
4 Reported in Cassie Weber, “‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’: The story of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’”, Quartz, 11 Nov 2016, accessed 22 October 2021, https://qz.com/835076/leonard-cohens-anthem-the-story-of-the-line-there-is-a-crack-ineverything- thats-how-the-light-gets-in/.
5 Michael Mather, Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018).
6 Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010); Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).

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Mission with children and young people with additional needs and their families

by Mark Arnold

One in five of the 13 million children and young people in the UK have additional needs of some kind.¹

That’s approximately 2.5 million children/young people, yet even before the COVID-19 pandemic at best only 10 per cent of them had any kind of contact with church. More recently, the #LeftInLockdown research carried out in 2021 by the Disabled Children’s Partnership highlighted that over 90 per cent of disabled children still found themselves socially isolated despite lockdown easing.² That includes isolation from church.

Many children and young people with additional needs, and their families, have found the last couple of years overwhelmingly difficult, as much of the vital support that they had relied on has been cut back or stopped altogether. I’m co-founder of the Additional Needs Alliance and over the course of the pandemic we asked families to tell us how it had been going for them. Words like “horrendous”, “exhausting”, “anxious” and “lonely” were common.

Practical and missional

So, what does being missional, reaching out to children and young people with additional needs and their families, look like for us as church in 2022? How can we respond to the needs of these struggling families? Before we can even think about supporting them spiritually, we need to be thinking about how we can support them practically – we need to show them the gospel before we can tell them the gospel.

We could offer to do some shopping for them or pick up a prescription. We could arrange to deliver a meal, or take a cake around as a welcome treat. We could create a small team to provide occasional respite support for a family, or accompany them to some of the many, often intimidating, meetings that they attend. Perhaps transport is an issue; we could help there too. Most of all, we need to keep in contact, making sure that no family feels forgotten. As a parent who responded to the Additional Needs Alliance survey put it:

Notice us. We will always cope and be “OK” because we don’t have any other choice. See beyond the bravado and offer us something to make sure we know you’re taking us with you.

And as we think about those practical ways to provide support, we need to be aware that many families will have had years of rejection, exclusion, discrimination and negativity, and that might have been from the church, too. I’ve heard too many stories of children and their families being told that they are no longer welcome as their child might be “a health and safety risk”, or that “this isn’t a special needs church”, or even a disabled child, a child for goodness’ sake, who was told by their Sunday school teacher, “Don’t come back.”

As always, we can learn from the examples that Jesus gave us: how through his encounters with people he showed us how to be loving and inclusive of all, creating belonging and community for everyone, leaving no one out. Children and young people mattered to Jesus during his ministry on earth; he healed them, he raised them from the dead, he rebuked anyone who turned them away and he didn’t discriminate against any of them. Neither should we.

Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52)

A favourite Bible story of mine is when Jesus met Bartimaeus, a man who was blind and who begged on the road near Jericho. Jesus had been going around teaching, preaching and healing people, and a large crowd was travelling with him. As he passed by where Bartimaeus was begging, Bartimaeus heard the commotion and asked what was going on. Someone told him that it was Jesus and his followers, and so Bartimaeus shouted out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”³ What happened to Bartimaeus next is what can commonly happen to children, young people or adults with additional needs; Bartimaeus was told to be quiet, to keep out of the way, to not be a bother. But the more they tried to stop him, the more Bartimaeus kept crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus heard him and asked Bartimaeus to come to him.

You can imagine the scene: Bartimaeus is in front of Jesus; a large crowd is gathered around jostling for position to see what happens. The expectation is reaching fever pitch among the people who have heard about the miracles that Jesus has been performing. Then Jesus does something unexpected, something that takes the crowd by surprise, something that teaches us about how we should be with someone who has additional needs. Jesus asks Bartimaeus a question, “What would you have me do for you?”⁴

The crowd must have been incredulous; it’s Bartimaeus, he’s blind – you’ve been going around healing people, so what do you think he wants from you?! Now I’m sure that Jesus, as a human being, knew that Bartimaeus was blind; and I’m sure that as God made flesh, he knew what Bartimaeus wanted from him, but Jesus didn’t assume. Jesus didn’t decide on Bartimaeus’ behalf; he gave Bartimaeus the dignity and respect to allow him to ask for himself, for his own voice to be heard. Bartimaeus said, “I want to see,” and so Jesus restored his sight; but in Jesus’ encounter with Bartimaeus – the way he was with him, the question he asked him – he teaches us some very valuable lessons, 2,000 years later.

Ask

A starting point for missionally reaching out to families with children and young people with additional needs is to work “with” them and not “to” them. So often, children and young people, and their families, can have inclusion “done unto” them poorly by well-meaning people who could have done things much better if only they had asked. By using the simple ASK approach below, the input of children and young people with additional needs, and their families, can help us know the best way to reach and support them. It recognises that helpful phrase, “Nothing about us without us.”

A. Ask – Simply ask. Get in touch with families of children and young people with additional needs and ask them to help you to get this right in your church. Tell them that you really value their input and that together you can make a difference. You might have to apologise if your church hasn’t sought their input before or has ignored their previous suggestions. Ask them what barriers they have experienced – there will probably be some you haven’t thought of – and agree to work on removing them together. Other adults with additional needs or disabilities in your church might provide useful pointers here too.

S. Seek – What solutions can they think of? Are there ideas that have been helpful for them/their child or young person in other settings, such as school, home or other clubs, that could be adapted to work in church? We don’t have to invent the wheel, there is likely to be a perfectly good one rolling along elsewhere in a child’s life!

K. Know – Learn from the families and from the children and young people themselves. They know most about their/ their child’s best ways of experiencing and navigating a safe and successful way through the world and will have a wealth of knowledge to share that can help us in our church context; let them be your guide!

The language we use when journeying with families or the young people themselves is vitally important too. Do we include a box on a form for something that asks, “Does your child have any special needs?” and then be surprised when that box is left blank and yet a child subsequently arrives who needs support? Think about those families that have been told that their child isn’t welcome at church anymore; how likely are they to declare their child’s additional needs again?

Ask families how their child best likes to be supported and helped, what they enjoy doing, what positive things people say about them; these are all questions that are much more likely to help us get to know a child or young person better, unlock useful and helpful information, and be great conversation starters. A useful tool to help with this is a “one-page profile” and sample templates for these can be found in the resources area of the Sheffkids website: www.sheffkids.co.uk. I suggest you try using these with all of the children and young people that you journey with; you will find out more about them than you might think!

So, as we reach out into our community, looking to minister and be missional with children and young people with additional needs and their families, practically showing them the gospel of love, let’s recognise how difficult the last couple of years in particular have been for them, let’s apologise for when we’ve got it wrong, let’s ask them how we can help, and let’s journey together with them to support them practically and spiritually in the future.

Resources

If you would like a study pack to help you as a church to journey with this some more, including video resources and 10 study questions to explore, to help you to create a church where everyone belongs, you’ll find everything you need here: https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.com/2019/07/18/10-ways-to-belong/

About the author

Mark Arnold is the additional needs ministry director at leading national Christian children’s and youth organisation Urban Saints and is co-founder of the Additional Needs Alliance, a vibrant and fast-growing online community. He is an enthusiastic national and international advocate and ally for children and young people with additional needs. Mark blogs as the national award-winning The Additional Needs Blogfather, and is father to James, who is autistic and also has learning difficulties and epilepsy. Mark is on Twitter at @Mark_J_Arnold

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Notes

1 Department for Education, “Reforms for children with SEN and disabilities come into effect,” GOV.UK, 1 September 2014, accessed 4 October 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/reforms-for-children-with-sen-and-disabilities-come-into-effect.
2 Disabled Children’s Partnership, #LeftInLockdown – Parent carers’ experiences of lockdown,” 2021, accessed 4 October 2021, https://disabledchildrenspartnership.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/LeftInLockdown-Parent-carers’-experiences-of-lockdown-June-2020.pdf. Further information in https://disabledchildrenspartnership.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-Loneliest-Lockdown.pdf.
3 Mark 10:47 (NIV).
4 Mark 10:51 (RGT)

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A man with a mission: Mark 1:40–45 and “mission with” disabled people

By Naomi Lawson Jacobs

Introduction

Nicki is a wheelchair user. She is also a former church planter, with experience of leading churches and a heart for those on the edge. For years, she has been seeking a church where she can use her gifts and be of service to others, in the church community and beyond. When I interviewed Nicki for my research on the experiences of disabled Christians, she remembered how one church had perceived her:

I told them that I worked full-time and that I did normal things, but it was like they didn’t hear it. It was so against what they assumed about me that they couldn’t take it on… Even when they knew that I didn’t need them to do it, it was almost like they felt like they had to be a good Christian and take care of me.¹

She shared a simple, powerful cry to participate in her church and reach out to others with God’s love:

When we get our new building, the first thing I want to do is join in and do normal – just basic, normal stuff in the service. I want to share communion. I want to take the offering. I want to just go and ask someone if it’s okay to pray with them or share something with somebody, just so that people realise that I’m not different.

Nicki cannot yet participate this fully in her church and its outreach. Church buildings and attitudes have disabled her, including the attitude that she is only in church to be looked after. When churches see disabled people solely as objects of mission, they cannot see us as fellow Christians with ministries of our own. They cannot see us as a blessing to their community – only as a burden.

But the Holy Spirit is at work beyond the church gates. Out here, on the edge, mission and ministry are happening among communities of disabled people, who have often found churches inaccessible, inhospitable or exclusive. In this article, I will reflect on one biblical model for disabled people’s mission to each other, and to churches. Then, reflecting briefly on the history of mission and its impact for disabled people, I will ask what it would take for churches no longer to reach out in mission to disabled people, but to share in a new vision of mission with us.

A resistant reading

The Bible and the Christian tradition have had a profound impact on disabled people.² In churches and theology, the Bible has long been interpreted using a “normate hermeneutic”.³ As we read the Bible, we read our own ableist cultural attitudes into the text. Instead of allowing the nuanced silences in the stories to speak, readers tend to centre our own perspectives. Non-disabled readers are unlikely to think about the disciples as disabled – even though the disciples worked in a dangerous industry and lived under occupation – because they imagine the Bible’s central characters as having bodies and minds like theirs, and only notice disabled characters who need help or healing.⁴ Churches rarely ask about the impact of their theology or biblical interpretation on their attitudes to disabled people’s access, participation and outreach. Reflected in the mirror of ableist readings of the Bible, disabled Christians are easily reduced to objects of pastoral care – and mission. As Fiona MacMillan puts it, “In a Church which professes the Gospel paradox of strength in weakness, [disabled people are] often objects for pastoral attention rather than agents of change.”⁵

And yet, many disabled Christians resist these marginalising interpretations of the Bible. We are looking for more authentic biblical models of our lives as disabled Christians, often inspired by disability liberation theology. “Biblical texts are living traditions,” says disability biblical scholar Holly Joan Toensing, “that are challenged and renewed by lived experience of ongoing generations of Christians.”⁶ By reading the Bible in ways that reflect disabled people’s experiential reality, we can all reflect more honestly about how the churches have responded to disability – through disempowering concepts of mission, for example.

In this first part of this article, I’m going to reflect on Mark 1:40–45, using the story as a “way in” to help us think about disabled people and mission. This will be a resistant reading,⁷ in which we allow the silences in the biblical text to speak, as we listen to the people it has silenced. The man with leprosy in Mark 1 has a new vision of mission to tell us about. Then it will be the turn of today’s disabled Christians to speak, as I share a few stories from my research. Disabled Christians are calling churches to a transformed vision of outreach and ministry. In a kingdom where Jesus rewrites the story, this vision could turn the churches’ approach to mission upside down.

The mission of a man with leprosy

In Mark 1, a man who has leprosy seeks out Jesus. No doubt the man has heard rumours of this teacher’s power and authority, even this early in Jesus’ ministry. But this man is no passive recipient of mission. He takes initiative, boldly telling Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”⁸ In some versions of this story, Jesus becomes “indignant” – angry. We are not told what he’s angry about. But we know that Jesus answers boldness with boldness. “I am willing,” he says, and touches this untouchable man, whose stigmatised skin disease would have led fearful people to keep him at arm’s length. Once the man is “made clean”, Jesus gives him instructions not to tell anyone, but to go and offer sacrifices to the priests, presumably at the Temple, who can declare that the man is clean. In double disobedience of Jesus’ order, the man does not go straight to the Temple to allow the priests to judge whether he is worthy or unworthy. Nor does he follow Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone. Instead, he goes out to “talk freely, spreading the news” about Jesus. As a result of the man’s fruitful witness, Jesus is mobbed by so many people, he has to retreat to the wilderness – to the “lonely places”, as the NIV has it.

This man is marginalised by the text, and that can make it a challenge to listen to the silences in his story. He is unnamed – the ultimate sign of someone who is “only” a side character – which is unlikely to encourage readers to identify with him. We know almost nothing about him, and though we can infer quite a bit about his situation, that means drawing on some contested contexts. And, like all the disabled characters in the Gospels, after this man is healed, he seems to disappear from the story.⁹

To open up the silences in the story, we start not with the disabled man himself, but with Jesus. In that strange reference to Jesus feeling “indignant”, there is a key to the lived experience of the man with leprosy. Some manuscripts have Jesus feeling “compassion” for this man, but many biblical scholars think “indignant” is the earlier meaning.¹⁰ What did Jesus have to be angry about? Perhaps, as some scholars have argued, Jesus was angry at Satan for causing illness, or even angry at the leprosy itself.

But this is a resistant reading. We find new answers when we centre the perspective of the man with leprosy. This is a story about purity and impurity – all the language is about cleansing, not healing.¹¹ Here is a man who has been excluded from society, stigmatised as a result of his impairment, which led him to be perceived as impure.

The Jewish purity system, laid down in Leviticus and other texts, is likely to have kept many disabled people out of the Temple. It might have pushed them to the edges of community life, too. Even worse, this system kept them poor. If people with leprosy recovered, and hoped to be restored to religious and social community, they had to bring sacrifices to the Temple before they could be declared clean – and those sacrifices cost money. As Sam P. Mathew puts it: “The rich and the powerful always interpreted the purity laws to their advantage. Thus the purity system became instrumental in oppressing the poor and marginalising the people.… Those persons who were considered lepers were oppressed socially, religiously, economically and psychologically.”¹² I can hardly imagine Jesus’ indignant rage at this unjust system, which had kept this man isolated and destitute. The priests had the authority to do something about this – to declare the man clean. They did not.

For disabled people, Leviticus is another powerful representational text. There is lively debate among biblical scholars as to how the purity laws were followed, and there were probably diverse views about ritual impurity in first-century Judaism.¹³ But once an idea has been written down in the Bible, it has representational power in our culture. Disabled people are stigmatised in, and by, this passage of Scripture. Anthropologist Mary Douglas says that, in Leviticus, people and things that are irregular or out of place are represented as impure. As the place where God dwells, the Temple must be kept free of the pollution of impurity.¹⁴ Disabled people have “leaky bodies”, inspiring fears that we will contaminate nondisabled people, so we are shut out of the holiest places.¹⁵ Whatever the actual religious and social situation for people with leprosy in first-century Palestine, this Gospel story represents the exclusion of people with leprosy. For the man in Mark 1, exclusion from religious community and society is a lived reality. So it is for many disabled people today. Churches and society push to the edges those people who confront us with the reality that we all so often deny – our frailty, our mortality, our humanity.

Jesus is different. His mission has already taken him outside the Temple gates, to be with outcasts, poor people and disabled people – those on the edge. And, unlike the priests, Jesus is willing to do something about this man’s profound social oppression. As the Messiah, Jesus has the priestly authority to cleanse the man and restore him to community. But then Jesus does something unexpected. He tells the man to go to the priests at the Temple, and offer those expensive sacrifices required by the Mosaic law. We might be tempted to wonder why. But this is a resistant reading, and what the man does next is far more interesting.

Because the man who once had leprosy ignores Jesus. In a power move that speaks of resistance against unjust authority, the man refuses to go and show himself to the priests at the Temple. Why would he go back there, and pay to offer sacrifices, only to be judged and declared “in” or “out” of religious and social community by the same priests who have shunned him, stigmatised him and cast him out?

Today’s disabled people know all about this kind of exclusion from church and society. Like the Temple, many modern churches reject people whose bodies and minds do not fit their norms. When disabled people are pushed to the edge, churches do not need to change to make room for a more diverse range of bodies and minds. We call this system ableism – an oppressive structure in which normative bodies and minds are valuable, and different bodies and minds are disposable.¹⁶ This system keeps disabled people marginalised in many ways that resonate with Mark 1. Today’s disabled people might not be required to pay priests to declare us clean, but we are still an impoverished community. A third of disabled people in the UK live in poverty, and many of us face a dehumanising, humiliating fight for the benefits we need to survive.¹⁷ In Jesus’ words “show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices… as a testimony to them”,¹⁸ some disabled people will hear echoes of society’s constant demand that we prove that we are “disabled enough” – or human enough – to be treated with dignity.

That’s why I find it so powerful that this man does not go to the Temple. Instead, he does everything he has been told not to do. He goes out to “talk freely” about Jesus – κηρύσσειν, meaning to proclaim or preach. It’s a word sometimes used for Jesus’ own preaching, and for that of his disciples, proclaiming the kingdom of God. I imagine the man running to tell his own disabled community about Jesus first – all his friends with stigmatised illnesses, who have lived on the edge with him. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, I imagine him telling them, “Come and see a man who…” – a man who is angry at the way the community of people with leprosy has been treated by priests and Temple authorities. A man who is willing and able to restore the outcasts to society, without demanding a profit for the powerful. No wonder Jesus is mobbed by new followers. No wonder Jesus has to retreat to the “lonely places” – where, I imagine, he meets yet more lonely outsiders who have been pushed to the margins of society.

When we leave the man who once had leprosy, he’s a Man with a Mission. But this is not a mission of the priests or religious leaders. They are back at the Temple, waiting for people to come to them, to be judged as clean or unclean, valuable or disposable.

No, this is a mission of the marginalised, to the marginalised. Jesus is inspiring a movement of outsiders, who want to live in his upside-down kingdom,¹⁹ where the powerful are dethroned, and those who have been cast out are restored to a diverse community. Where all bodies and minds are valued by God. Where Jesus sees the way disabled people have been stigmatised and impoverished and pushed to the edge, and he gets angry. And then he does something about it. For the man who once had leprosy, the Man with a Mission, that foretaste of the kingdom changes his life. He has a gospel to proclaim.

The mission of the churches

When churches think about mission, they tend to think about mission to. This charitable, pastoral approach to mission has a long tradition in church history, as churches reached out to people who had been thrown on the rubbish heap of society. They set up schools for those whom society would not educate, hospitals for those whom society would not treat, and soup kitchens for those whom society had left destitute.²⁰ When the world considered people untouchable, churches reached out to touch them, sharing the gospel through words and hospitality alike.

But this history has a dark side. Christian pastoral care and mission have marginalised and disempowered disabled people. When the powerful reach out to those on the margins, it is easy for them to believe that they have everything to offer, while the objects of their charity only have need. What began as mission can easily become paternalism and colonialism.²¹ Postcolonial theorists have described the mission of western Christians to the majority world as “the politics of rescue” of the white saviour.²² Disabled people, too, have been used by Christian mission to motivate charity, as Christians imagine they are saving the “wretched of the earth”.²³ Thanks in part to this history of mission, a powerful “disability business” now defines and controls the lives of many disabled people.²⁴ Like the Temple priests waiting to judge the man who once had leprosy, these professional services decide whether disabled people are “deserving” enough for help, rather than working with us to create equity for all. A Christian model of outreach to the “needy” has shaped this disempowering system.

In my decade spent interviewing disabled Christians, I have heard many stories of people whose churches saw them as the object of ministry and mission, rather than people with ministry of their own – and even with a mission to the churches. Earlier, we talked about Nicki’s disempowering experiences in churches that wanted to serve her but could not imagine how she could serve them. Then there was Deirdre, who has a chronic illness and can rarely leave her bed. She longed to offer prayer ministry to the church where she remains a faithful member, at a distance. Deirdre not only had the gift of prayer, she had the rare gift of time to pray. But Deirdre’s offer to be part of the church prayer rota was never taken up. Her gifts went unused. There was Victor, a committed member of his church, who wanted to lead an Alpha group. His church leadership worried about how, as a blind man, he would serve dinner during the evening. In their failure to imagine a more inclusive, cooperative vision of Alpha, this church’s real failure of imagination lay in being unable to see Victor as a potential leader. For Nicki, Deirdre, Victor and many others, their churches could only see disabled people as objects of mission and ministry.

Instead, these disabled people longed to participate in their churches, through service, leadership and shared mission. Nicki knew she was a valued part of a church when she was able to serve her community through the youth group, connecting with young people in difficult situations. Another participant, Jane, believed that disabled people should be in church not just to receive outreach, but to play an active role in church life. Jane described this as mutual participation: “being helped and helping – reciprocal use of what skills we all have to crowdsource the desired result.”²⁵ Being church together means being part of an interdependent community, where we all minister to each other. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, we are all given unique gifts, and the parts of the body that “seem to be weaker” are indispensable. If the eye says to the hand, “I don’t need you,” the body is incomplete.²⁶

A mission for justice

But this vision of a missional kingdom is about more than inclusion. It’s about justice.

When we listen to the story of the Man with a Mission, we come to understand why inclusion is not enough. Too often, disabled people are invited to churches, but not truly welcomed there just as we are.²⁷ In mission to disabled people, when churches assume that disabled people are only here to receive, they may miss the ways disabled people are already being church together. “Come to the places from which you have been cast out,” churches say, “so that we can minister to you.” Why would disabled people respond enthusiastically to this invitation any more than the man healed from leprosy was willing to go to the Temple to be judged? The echoes of missional paternalism are evident. And when churches reach out in in mission to disabled people, they do not always ask why there are disabled people on the margins of society to reach out to at all. Like the priests in Mark 1, not enough churches are asking the uncomfortable questions about how they contribute to disabled people’s marginalisation, casting us out to the edge. That’s when we see how a sole focus on pastoral care can distract from questions of justice.

But this is a resistant reading; shift your perspective. There is church out here, in the wilderness. Disabled Christians are seeking communities where we are valued just as we are. When we can’t find that in the inaccessible buildings and inhospitable cultures of institutional churches, many of us are forming these communities for ourselves, ministering to one another and reaching out to the churches. In the UK, two examples are YouBelong and Disability and Jesus. Both have a mission to reach disabled people online, while working with churches to help them become more accessible. At the Living Edge conference on disability and churches,²⁸ we have spent the past decade reimagining a more just and inclusive church, through events uniquely led by disabled Christians for disabled Christians. In my research, I heard stories of prayer and fellowship groups where two or three disabled people gathered, and of disabled Christians ministering to each other in the corridors and kitchens of churches, when they could not get into the sanctuary. Here, on the edge, we call to each other: “Come and see a man who is angry about oppression and injustice, and wants to restore us to the church – through, and with, each other.” This is a mission to the churches as much as to those outside their gates. The Jesus of the upside-down kingdom is a Jesus that non-disabled members of churches might need to meet.

What does this mean for the institutional churches, and their tradition of mission to disabled people?

One of the great insights of liberation theology is that God is on the side of the oppressed. In the Mark 1 model, mission is about justice. Like Jesus, those in the churches may need to start by getting angry, asking why disabled people have been pushed to the margins – even if the answers are uncomfortably close to home. Just as Jesus often did, they may need to ask questions, and truly listen when disabled people share the gift and resource of our answers. Those willing to follow us to the “lonely places” may see that that God is already at work here, in mission by disabled people, to disabled people.

As churches learn to listen to our silenced stories, they may be confronted with some difficult questions. How can they empower disabled people’s mission and ministry where it is already happening, out on the edge? How can they enable the access, participation and leadership of disabled people, not just in our own communities, but in the churches where many of us have yet to be made welcome? This is mission, but it is not disempowering mission to disabled people. It does not position the outsiders as those who receive and the powerful as those who hold the keys to salvation. Instead, this is mission together with disabled people, in an upside-down kingdom of God.

Disabled people have a gospel to proclaim. If churches are willing to join us on the edge, they might learn to see disabled people not just as objects of ministry, but as fellow Christians with gifts and revelations to share with each other and the church. A blessing, not a burden. The church is renewed from the edge, Sam Wells tells us.²⁹ Together, we can be enriched by a new vision of mission with each other.

About the author

Dr Naomi Lawson Jacobs (they/them) is a disabled, neurodivergent social researcher, writer and trainer. Naomi completed a PhD on disabled people’s experiences of churches in 2019, and aims to use their research to support a growing disabled Christian movement, where a new thing is taking root on the edge of the church. Naomi’s book on disability, churches and social justice, cowritten with Emily Richardson, is due out in 2022. Naomi can be found on Twitter @naomi_jacobs, at home in Islington with spouse and cats, and sometimes even in church at St Luke’s, West Holloway.

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Notes

1 All participants cited in this study were interviewed for my primary research. Some of their stories are told in my thesis; others will be shared in a forthcoming book on disability and the church. Participants chose to use either their first names or pseudonyms, as approved by the SOAS University of London ethics committee. Naomi Lawson Jacobs, “The Upside-down Kingdom of God: A Disability Studies Perspective on Disabled People’s Experiences in Churches and Theologies of Disability” (PhD diss., SOAS University of London, 2019), https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32204/; Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson, At The Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches [working title] (London: Darton, Longman & Todd: forthcoming).
2 It is always important to point out that “disability” is a modern category. The texts of the Bible, which speak to us from across ages and cultures, have different ways of categorising those we would now call disabled. Still, the Bible has helped to shape our modern category of disability. I have not attempted to define disability here, as it would derail the article, but I recommend reading disabled people’s own writing on disability oppression in society, e.g. Michael Oliver, The Politics of Disablement (Basingstoke & London: Macmillan Education, 1990); Sins Invalid, Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: Sins Invalid, 2019). For scholarship on the Hebrew Bible’s categories of disability, see Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature (London: T&T Clark, 2009).
3 Kerry H. Wynn, “The Normate Hermeneutic and Interpretations of Disability within the Yahwistic Narratives” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 92.
4 Janet Lees, “Enabling the Body” in This Abled Body, ed. Avalos, Melcher and Schipper, 162.
5 Fiona MacMillan, “Calling from the Edge,” Thinking Anglicans, 9 February 2018, https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Calling-from-the-Edge-9-February-2018-Final.pdf.
6 Holly Joan Toensing, “‘Living Among the Tombs’: Society, Mental Illness, and Self-Destruction in Mark 5:1–20” in This Abled Body, ed. Avalos, Melcher and Schipper, 133.
7 Resistant readings centre the readings of marginalised groups, while acknowledging that interpretation is influenced by our social and historical perspectives. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
8 All quotations are from Mark 1:40–45 (NIV).
9 Sharon V. Betcher, “Saving the Wretched of the Earth,” Disability Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2006).
10 Seth M. Ehorn, “Jesus and Ritual Impurity in Mark’s Gospel” in For Us, but Not To Us: Essays on Creation, Covenant, and Context in Honor of John H. Walton, ed. Adam E. Miglio et al (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2020), 223.
11 Ibid., 217–33.
12 Sam P. Mathew, “Jesus and Purity System in Mark’s Gospel: A Leper (Mk. 1:40–45),” Indian Journal of Theology 42, no. 2 (2000): 102–03.
13 Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss, “The Origin and Interpretation of ṡāraʿat in Leviticus 13–14,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 643–62. Although some biblical scholars believe this purity system never existed, others think that, by the first-century Judaism of the Gospels, at least some disabled people were pushed to the margins of society by the stigma it created.
14 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 1966).
15 Margrit Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)Ethics (London: Routledge, 1997).
16 From a video conversation between disability activists Patty Berne and Stacey Milbern, “My Body Doesn’t Oppress Me, Society Does,” Barnard Center for Research on Women, 8 May 2017, https://bcrw.barnard.edu/videos/my-body-doesnt-oppress-me-society-does/.
17 “UK Poverty 2019/20,” Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 7 February 2020, https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/files-research/jrf_-_uk_poverty_2019-20_report_4.pdf, 8; Frances Ryan, Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People (London: Verso, 2019).
18 1 Mark:44 (NIV).
19 Some of my disabled research participants talked about the “upside-down kingdom of God”, in which society’s ableist values would be transformed and Jesus’ values would reign. Their theology was probably influenced by Donald B. Kraybill, The Upside-Down Kingdom, revised ed. (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2011).
20 Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
21 These mixed impacts of church pastoral care and mission for disabled people have been written about by deaf and disability liberation theologians. See Hannah Lewis, Deaf Liberation Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007); Kathy Black, A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).
22 Sherene H. Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 15, no. 2 (2000): 91–130.
23 Betcher, “Saving the Wretched of the Earth.”
24 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4 (1982): 777–95. See also Gary L. Albrecht, The Disability Business: Rehabilitation in America (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992).
25 Used with permission.
26 1 Cor. 12:21 (New International Version).
27 Lamar Hardwick, Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021).
28 The Living Edge disability conferences are a partnership between Inclusive Church and St Martin-in-the-Fields church, now in their tenth year.
29 Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto: Being With God (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 29.

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Editorial: Mission and disability | ANVIL volume 38 issue 1

by Kt Tupling

In beginning to think about mission and disability, I was keen to avoid the danger of focusing on the church’s mission being to offer something to disabled people by way of good news, healing and cure. Rather, I wanted to turn this around and reflect on disabled people themselves having a mission to others (including the church!) and offering good news about Jesus from their disabled experiences.

The “Great Commission” in Matthew 28 tells us to “Go, and make disciples of all peoples…”¹ For generations this has been modelled as “the able-bodied, physically well church will go to the margins and seek out ‘the lost’, telling them the good news and bringing them back into the church”. For some time I have questioned whether the margins need to go to the centre, and tell them the Good News! I have long admired the woman Jesus meets (on the margins of her village, and societal relationships) in John 4, who engages in theological debate over water, thirst and belonging, then goes to her own village and invites them back to the margins where Jesus (the centre) is waiting, with the words, “Come and meet a man who knows me…”²

This interdependence of discipleship and mission, the interchangeable nature of the centre and the margins, and the challenge of where Jesus is to be found has been the subject of many fabulous conversations I’ve had with people within the disabled community – both within and without the mainstream church models. These conversations have formed the foundations for this edition of ANVIL.

I am hugely grateful to my colleagues who have written for this edition of ANVIL.

Naomi Lawson Jacobs has done extensive research with disabled people around social justice and experiences of church. Naomi offers us a resistant reading of the encounter Jesus has with the man with leprosy (in Mark 1), and reflects on mission done to disabled people, rather than with or by.

Rachel Noël is an Anglican priest writing about “sanity” and mission from a place of “instability”, from her own experience of psychosis.

Mark Arnold considers how mission is often done to families of children/young people with additional needs and invites us to consider mission with as a collaborative act.

The Japanese art of kintsugi, and the intentional value of “cracks” in our mental health, is the subject of Bill Braviner’s article.

Disabled people – adults and children – are often described within a “tragedy narrative”. Kay Morgan-Gurr explores this and her own experiences of loss and gain, and the impact it has on the church’s mission among disabled people.

Attitudes, access and agency are often missing when the church talks about mission and the disabled community – Tim Rourke writes about this in the context of research done in the Derby diocese.

Emma Major reflects on the interplay between mission, disability and creativity, from within her lived experience as an artist and church leader living with a variety of medical conditions and sight loss.

Each of these writers has lived experience of disability, and faith in Jesus that is rooted within those experiences and not “despite” disabilities. I am humbled that they are my friends.

About the author

Kt Tupling was an Anglican parish priest for 16 years before becoming diocesan disability advisor and lead chaplain amongst deaf people for the Diocese of Oxford in March 2019. That changed in September 2020 to part-time disability adviser. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of two and a half, Katie is now the proud owner of purple crutches, a purple wheelchair, and a red scooter (it didn’t come in purple!). Katie is co-founder of Disability and Jesus, a user-led task group wrestling with theology, discipleship and church practice through the lived experience of disability. She co-authored the book Pilgrims in the Dark – the story of how Disability and Jesus came into being [available on the Disability and Jesus website], and a Grove booklet Worship and Disability, a Kingdom for All (both 2018). Katie’s social media presence includes working with UCB1 Radio and BBC local radio, occasional live feeds on Twitter (@KtTup) and Facebook, a weekly “recorded as live” Sunday service with Disability and Jesus, and a YouTube channel.

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Notes

1 Matt. 28:19 (GNT)
2 John 4:29 (MSG)

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By David Palmer, pioneer minister working with older people in Market Harborough and former CMS pioneer student

Starting points

Twelve years’ working with the international charity Torch Trust was foundational for what I now do as a pioneer minister. At Torch I was responsible for leading and developing the UK network of local groups of blind and partially sighted people. These were largely older people, facing isolation and social exclusion along with sight loss.

Within my own family I also witnessed decline and accompanying loneliness in both my mother and my father-in-law. Despite being in supportive care homes, they lacked social interaction and mental stimulus.

While loneliness can affect people of any age, I was struck by the previous Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt speaking of loneliness having reached “epidemic” proportions, particularly among the elderly. Priest, broadcaster and ethicist Samuel Wells describes the dangers of “ghettoising” old people. [1]

When someone stops contributing to GDP or is unable to continue an active church life, they become marginalised. They are seen as of lesser importance, a burden that needs resolving rather than an asset to be valued.

Preparation

As someone with many ideas and a tendency to rush headlong into new initiatives, I found the basic premise: “See where God is already at work and join in” to be good advice. I spent around a year praying, listening to God, listening to the community, finding out what was already happening and identifying areas of need and opportunity. I talked with key people in the church and the community; I questioned the older generation.

First steps

In the end, the opportunity to be involved at a care home happened almost accidentally. The home’s manager wanted to see more people of all ages participate in the life of the home. I heard the shameful fact that only four of the 49 residents received regular visitors. With my encouragement, three different types of services began to be run each month by different local church teams.

Measuring response is not easy, as many residents have dementia. I gain motivation from Professor John Swinton’s conviction that “any diminution of the self is first and foremost a diminution of community”. [2]

The focus of the services, then, is to trigger good memories and rekindle embers of faith in imaginative ways and, importantly, to honour people and their stories.

A special highlight from last year was the baptism of a 70-year-old man from the home. This year I was privileged to attend and lead the prayers at the marriage of the manager. She and her husband are not part of any church community.

In my role of chaplain to the home, I am grateful for advice, support and resources from Bible Reading Fellowship’s The Gift of Years team. [3]

Further opportunities

Visiting the care home with its overgrown courtyard garden and large expanse of lawn at the rear presented me with another opportunity. So, supported by a team of volunteers who are mostly unchurched, Elderberries was launched: a ministry “with people of all seasons”, bringing together different generations. [4]

In the courtyard area we have created a dementia-friendly, multi-sensory space for residents to access and enjoy. Familiar texts, verses and sayings inscribed on pieces of slate are placed in the beds, each of which highlights one of the senses with assorted plants.

To the rear of the home, an extensive area has been cleared to make way for six raised beds and four ground-level beds in which are grown a variety of organic fruit and vegetables for the residents. Any surplus goes to the team and to a small ethical cafe in town – an outlet which in time could provide us with a source of income. A local doctor who is passionate about preserving fruit trees grown in Leicestershire from the late 1800s has kindly donated a dozen to our site. These, together with more modern hybrids, reflect the ethos of Elderberries – old and young complementing each other.

Partnerships

Building partnerships is crucial. Volunteer Action South Leicestershire run a very successful scheme called Community Champions, matching volunteers with lonely people. A number of referrals have come through this scheme, adding to our volunteer team.

Another supportive partnership has been with the Soil Association, which runs Food for Life, linking schools and care homes and addressing the major social issue of childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating. The Soil Association considers Elderberries a standard bearer for utilising green spaces and is keen to use it as a showcase to other homes in the UK. As a result of this partnership, nursery children have been coming fortnightly to join the older residents in gardening and other activities.

Practical help in the garden for the past two years has also come from employees of a local solicitor’s office who usually give us a couple of days a year to assist with various tasks.

Motivation

Being intentionally missional and part of the Fresh Expressions movement of Church, I aim to make the three-way connection between land, God and community. This is achieved by using resources drawn from Iona and the Northumbria Community, and by observing traditional festivals such as Rogation Sunday and Lammastide.

Throughout my Christian journey, the opening verses of Isaiah 61 have been a source of challenge and inspiration. With Jesus as our example, our calling as his followers, under the guidance of the Spirit, is to creatively bring good news alongside the work of binding up, releasing, comforting, rebuilding, restoring, renewing. To God be the glory!

[1] How then Shall we Live?, Samuel Wells, Canterbury Press, 2016.
[2] Dementia: Living in the Memories of God, John Swinton, Eerdmans, 2012.
[3] Living Liturgies, Caroline George, Bible Reading Fellowship, 2015.
[4] Read more about the Elderberries garden on the Leicester Diocese website.

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At the Church Mission Society Conversations Day in November 2016, I gave a talk entitled Disabled Dreams: coping with change. This talk was the result of reflecting on my experience of dreaming with God, being disabled time and again, coping with this change and dreaming once more. As I shared my experiences and presented my model for coping with change, it became clear to me that the disablements themselves are all part of God’s calling on my life.

By Emma Major, lay pioneer minister at St Nicolas Earley

I’m a pioneer minister and feel most comfortable in the places less commonly inhabited by most ministers: walking alongside people as they dream of how their lives might be and introducing them to God as we journey. Over the last five years this has included crying with families whose babies have died, supporting women coping with post-natal depression, providing space for young mothers and their toddlers, creating new forms of church including Messy, cafe and forest churches and forming a missional community. Right now, I am developing an online prayer and discipling network for disabled people who, like me, have found themselves struggling to access society and church.

Each of these communities started as a dream, an idea planted by God in the situation where I found myself. They have evolved through experience and drawn on the gifts and skills God knew I had in my toolkit. But at the beginning they were all just an image in my mind at a time of disablement.

Dream

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “I have a dream.” I have many dreams, aims, ideas and plans; God is good at using my creativity and showing me what he would like me to do for him. Unfortunately, life has a habit of getting in the way of these dreams; life literally keeps disabling me. This disablement is frustrating, upsetting and often depressing. I don’t like change; it brings out my inner toddler and often results in a tantrum.

There have been a number of major change points in my life. I’m going through one right now as Multiple Sclerosis progresses through my body and causes mobility problems, pain and sight loss. It is this current disablement which has caused me to reflect on my dreams, what it means to be disabled, how we can cope with change as individuals, pioneers and communities and what light may shine through brokenness. Before this I endured a series of miscarriages which resulted in the dream of a support group for women in similar circumstances, the development of liturgy for a service of remembrance and the writing of books. Ten years before, intense depression left me on my knees and completely open to God; that was when I heard his call on my life. Through each disabled dream came a light of hope and a new dream. But first, we have to grieve…

Grieve

Jean Vanier, founder of the 130 L’Arche communities around the world, has written about disability and theology. In Community and Growth he says, “Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.” Jesus healed people: the blind man, the woman who touched his cloak, the dead, children and even tax collectors. Jesus knew that this was necessary to bring them into community with others and with God.

Most of us are not healed dramatically, but love, acceptance and companionship through grief can heal more than we appreciate in our fast-paced, success-driven society. We need time and care to mourn the changes in our lives and/or ministry, to acknowledge the pain, disappointment, loss or anger and come to a place of acceptance before we move on. But to do this we need to lean…

Lean

In Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, Jean Vanier says, “The message of this gospel is simple. It is about being chosen to become a friend of Jesus. It is about mutual presence and learning from each other. To live as Jesus lived and to love as he loved.” This love rejoices in each and every one of us for who we are; a love which wants us to love ourselves and others despite our brokenness. We need to learn to lean, to reduce the value we place on standing strong and firm and instead embrace mutual dependence and the benefit of leaning on each other in times of trouble. And, of course, we can lean on God through prayer and Bible study, with communities and with spiritual directors or guides. Through this leaning we can move beyond our disappointment and pain and start to listen…

Listen

In Japan, broken objects are often repaired with gold – the art is called Kintsugi. The flaw is seen as a unique piece of the object’s history and adds to its beauty. Jean Vanier wrote, “Sharing weakness and difficulties is more nourishing for others than sharing our successes.”

This is what God wants of us within communities. It is what pioneers are called to create, what I feel called to in my disabling – to allow the light to break through the brokenness of life to heal others. But more importantly I am learning to listen to the experiences of others as they have journeyed through their disabled dreams and to learn from them. Through community, as well as individually, we can hear God’s still small voice as he shows us a new dream for our lives. And so we dream again.

Dreaming through change

I have always seen the disabling times in my life as problems to be solved, as hurdles to be overcome, but experience, reflection and prayer are teaching me that problems and hurdles are everywhere.

It is in these times of weakness that I find God with me and see his call on my life. It is in these times that God shines light into the brokenness and seals gaps with his gold. God wants us to focus on the opportunities to serve him. Life is not about merely coping with change but about leaning, trusting and embracing God’s call to be disciples in communities together.

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