Disability and the Church

Disability and the Church PDF Author: Lamar Hardwick
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083084161X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
IVP Readers' Choice Award Lamar Hardwick was thirty-six years old when he found out he was on the autism spectrum. While this revelation helped him understand and process his own experience, it also prompted a difficult re-evaluation of who he was as a person. And as a pastor, it started him on a new path of considering the way disabled people are treated in the church. Disability and the Church is a practical and theological reconsideration of the church's responsibilities to the disabled community. Too often disabled persons are pushed away from the church or made to feel unwelcome in any number of ways. As Hardwick writes, "This should not be." He insists that the good news of Jesus affirms God's image in all people, and he offers practical steps and strategies to build stronger, truly inclusive communities of faith.

Disability and the Church

Disability and the Church PDF Author: Lamar Hardwick
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083084161X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
IVP Readers' Choice Award Lamar Hardwick was thirty-six years old when he found out he was on the autism spectrum. While this revelation helped him understand and process his own experience, it also prompted a difficult re-evaluation of who he was as a person. And as a pastor, it started him on a new path of considering the way disabled people are treated in the church. Disability and the Church is a practical and theological reconsideration of the church's responsibilities to the disabled community. Too often disabled persons are pushed away from the church or made to feel unwelcome in any number of ways. As Hardwick writes, "This should not be." He insists that the good news of Jesus affirms God's image in all people, and he offers practical steps and strategies to build stronger, truly inclusive communities of faith.

Disability and the Gospel

Disability and the Gospel PDF Author: Michael S. Beates
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433530481
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Michael Beates's concern with disability issues began nearly 30 years ago when his eldest child was born with multiple profound disabilities. Now, as more families like Michael's are affected by a growing number of difficulties ranging from down syndrome to autism to food allergies, the need for church programs and personal paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Working through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability while answering hard questions, Michael offers here helpful principles for believers and their churches. He shows us how to embrace our own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken, bringing hope and vision to those of us who need it most.

The Disabled Church

The Disabled Church PDF Author: Rebecca F. Spurrier
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823285545
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
How do communities consent to difference? How do they recognize and create the space and time necessary for the differences and disabilities of those who constitute them? Christian congregations often make assumptions about the shared abilities, practices, and experiences that are necessary for communal worship. The author of this provocative new book takes a hard look at these assumptions through a detailed ethnographic study of an unusual religious community where more than half the congregants live with diagnoses of mental illness, many coming to the church from personal care homes or independent living facilities. Here, people’s participation in worship disrupts and extends the formal orders of worship. Whenever one worships God at Sacred Family Church, there is someone who is doing it differently. Here, the author argues, the central elements and the participation in the symbols of Christian worship raise questions rather than supply clear markers of unity, prompting the question, What do you need in order to have a church that assumes difference at its heart? Based on three years of ethnographic research, The Disabled Church describes how the Sacred Family community, comprising people with very different mental abilities, backgrounds, and resources, sustains and embodies a common religious identity. It explores how an ethic of difference is both helped and hindered by a church’s embodied theology. Paying careful attention to how these congregants improvise forms of access to a common liturgy, this book offers a groundbreaking theology of worship that engages both the fragility and beauty revealed by difference within the church. As liturgy requires consent to difference rather than coercion, an aesthetic approach to differences within Christian liturgy provides a frame for congregations and Christian liturgists to pay attention to the differences and disabilities of worshippers. This book creates a distinctive conversation between critical disability studies, liturgical aesthetics, and ethnographic theology, offering an original perspective on the relationship between beauty and disability within Christian communities. Here is a transformational theological aesthetics of Christian liturgy that prioritizes human difference and argues for the importance of the Disabled Church.

Troubled Minds

Troubled Minds PDF Author: Amy Simpson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830843043
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Reflecting on the confusion, shame and grief brought on by her mother's schizophrenia, Amy Simpson provides a bracing look at the social and physical realities of mental illness. Reminding us that people with mental illness are our neighbors and our brothers and sisters in Christ, she explores new possibilities for the church to minister to this stigmatized group.

Disability and the Way of Jesus

Disability and the Way of Jesus PDF Author: Bethany McKinney Fox
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830872388
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
2019 IVP Readers' Choice Award What does healing mean for people with disabilities? The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus offering physical healing. But even as churches today seek to follow the way of Jesus, people with disabilities all too often experience the very opposite of healing and life-giving community: exclusion, judgment, barriers. Misinterpretation and misapplication of biblical healing narratives can do great damage, yet those who take the Bible seriously mustn't avoid these passages either. Bethany McKinney Fox believes that Christian communities are better off when people with disabilities are an integral part of our common life. In Disability and the Way of Jesus, she considers how the stories of Jesus' healings can guide us toward mutual thriving. How did Jesus' original audience understand his works of healing, and how should we relate to these texts today? After examining the healing narratives in their biblical and cultural contexts, Fox considers perspectives from medical doctors, disability scholars, and pastors to more fully understand what Jesus does as he heals and how he points the way for relationships with people with disabilities. Personal reflections from Christians with disabilities are featured throughout the book, which concludes with suggestions for concrete practices adaptable to a variety of church settings. Bridging biblical studies, ethics, and disability studies with the work of practitioners, Fox provides a unique resource that is both theologically grounded and winsomely practical. Disability and the Way of Jesus provides new lenses on holistic healing for scholars, laypeople, and ministry leaders who care about welcoming all people as Jesus would.

Of Such is the Kingdom

Of Such is the Kingdom PDF Author: Summer Kinard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944967611
Category : Church work with people with disabilities
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Disability is not a boundary to holiness, because God is with us. But it can sometimes be an obstacle to full participation in the life of the Church, simply because many do not understand what is needed to help people with disabilities overcome any physical, mental, or interpersonal challenges they may face in church and in leading an Orthodox Christian life. This book addresses the question from theological, practical, and experiential perspectives, giving individuals and families with disabilities the opportunity to voice their needs and suggest some things the rest of us can do to make them welcome in the household of God.

Enabling Hearts

Enabling Hearts PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789811453656
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description


Living Fulfilled Lives

Living Fulfilled Lives PDF Author: Sue Sutton
Publisher: Sarah Grace Publishing
ISBN: 9781910786369
Category : Learning disabilities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Do you want to make a positive difference to the lives of those with a learning disability? In Living Fulfilled Lives, Sue Sutton draws together skills and knowledge from different disciplines and helps make us all aware of the hopes and dreams of those with a learning disability and empower them to live the fulfilled lives they deserve.

Enabling the Disabled

Enabling the Disabled PDF Author: Rev. Dr. Theresa C. Taylor
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1973642875
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Are you looking for church growth? Maybe you need more volunteers? Do you want to tap into the largest group of unreached people in the United States and in the world? Do you know what this group is? They are our neighbors, and they are in this group simply because they are disabled. Enabling the Disabled will help you get to know those with disabilities, and it will show you what they can and will bring to your church family. Disabilities hit all of us at one point in time, whether they are temporary or permanent. And disabilities cross over all social groups. But God commands us to love our neighbor, and he doesn’t qualify this by saying only love those you are comfortable with. Author Rev. Dr. Theresa C. Taylor encourages you to welcome them with a genuine desire to have them become part of the body of Christ. God wants each of us to dance at his throne in heaven, regardless of what our physical circumstances may be while we sojourn on the earth. So what are you doing to help the disabled glorify God? Enabling the Disabled will give you the understanding and the tools you need to do a better job welcoming the disabled into your church.

Strong at the Broken Places

Strong at the Broken Places PDF Author: Stewart Delisle Govig
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780804211536
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
When linked to biblical teachings, understanding disability offers congregations and society the pathway to hope and change. Stewart Govig, himself disabled, provides a practical resource that enables congregational communities to achieve a balance of realism and hope in responding to the needs of all of its members. He examines the attitudinal barriers thrust upon persons with disabilities and investigates the biblical resources for overcoming these barriers. He advocates an understanding of the Christian community that removes social stigma.