Disability

I’m both a person with multiple disabilities, and a good worker. The problem with holding those two concepts in tension is my distinct lack of efficiency. I can do the things I’m skilled at regularly – in church contexts, I can pray, preach, receive and count offering, sing, and not only assist in but help to celebrate the Eucharist – but, when I do them, all those tasks are slower and more deliberate than they would be when done by able-bodied people. Moreover, all those tasks may have small pieces missing.

I am both a person with multiple disabilities, and a faithful servant of Christ. I’ve been trying my entire adult life to be paid something like equity for the accessibility-advocacy work that I do in the church…and happily, sometimes I’ve succeeded! I have a few thoughts about economic equity for believers with disabilities. So, in this short post, I want to connect part of Paul’s “household code” in Ephesians 6:5-8 to the need for believers with disabilities to experience economic even-handedness. We need to be paid properly for our work!

Bartimaeus and Actively Listening to People with Disabilities in Churches

In my previous blog-post, “Embodying Equity,” I asserted that disability is a theological, political, and personal issue, and explained several strategies that believers of varied abilities can use to create access and equity within our churches. Let’s go one step further by examining Jesus’ encounter with Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52 as an example of fulsome, embodied equity.

Several years ago, when Lindsay Wieland Capel first learned of the CRC’s Disability Concerns, she was so impressed by the ministry that she sat down and wrote a letter to director Mark Stephenson.

Introducing herself, she commented how blessed he was to do the work he did in advocating with and for people with disabilities and providing resources and support to both them and the ministry’s many volunteers. She confided he had her dream job and that one day she’d love to work in a similar position.