UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Features
Overcoming the challenge: Methodists changing attitudes on the disabled Bill Fentum, Aug 15, 2008
FILE PHOTO BY MAILE BRADFIELD; OTHER PHOTO BY JOHN GORDON
Barbara Steinbrenner, an American Sign Language interpreter, signs during the 2008 General Conference. Ministry to the deaf is just one of the ways United Methodists help physically and mentally challenged persons to participate in the church.
By Bill Fentum Staff Writer
When the Rev. Evy McDonald saw the first TV spots for the United Methodist ad campaign, “Igniting Ministry,” a few years ago, one thing bothered her.
“No one in those ads was disabled,” she said. “They all looked too perfect. It’s like we were saying, ‘Our church is only for perfect people.’”
Ms. McDonald, pastor of Grace UMC in Newburgh, N.Y., knows that isn’t true.
Childhood polio left her with a permanent leg brace and weakness in her upper arms. But she still pursued a call to ministry, was ordained an elder in 2004, and now serves as co-chair of the Association of Physically Challenged Ministers, an official United Methodist caucus.
The denomination’s 2004 Book of Resolutions calls local congregations to audit their buildings each year, removing “barriers [that] impede full participation of people with disabilities.”
“Most churches have a long way to go,” Ms. McDonald said. “They may have ramps and assistive listening, but no way for people in wheelchairs to get to the pulpit or choir loft. In so many ways, we fail to include everyone.”
And experts agree, the problem is more about attitude than architecture.
“You can build a ramp or have accessible restrooms without really valuing people,” said Ginny Thornburgh, director of the Interfaith Initiative for the American Association of People with Disabilities.
Ms. Thornburgh’s son Peter suffered extensive brain damage in an accident when he was four months old. Now 48, he lives in a supervised apartment in Dillsburg, Pa., where he joined Chestnut Grove UMC a few years ago.
“He was raised Presbyterian, but this wonderful Methodist church has become his church home,” said Ms. Thornburgh, who attended Peter’s confirmation service with her husband, former U.S. Attorney Gen. Dick Thornburgh. “Peter took his membership vows, then stood behind the podium to make a statement of faith, ‘I am happy in my church; I am happy to have Jesus on my heart.’
“You could just see the whole congregation in great pride, hearing him. They knew him so well, and cared so much about him. If you have a friend with a disability, and it’s a genuine friendship, you become passionate about issues that affect them. It’s a transforming experience.”
Speedway UMC in Indianapolis, Ind., serves about 400 local residents with developmental disabilities. Activities include summer camps for children and teens, a monthly parents’ night out, and social groups for youth and adults.
“It’s really cool to see how kids nurture each other in the youth groups,” said Beth DeHoff, chair of special-needs ministries at Speedway. “A child may have Down syndrome but be a real life-of-the-party girl, and can bring out someone with Asperger’s syndrome who doesn’t know how to talk to people very well. Then when she’s struggling with motor skills, the same kids she’s helped can help her.”
Speedway’s program got its start, Ms. DeHoff added, because her church family saw the need firsthand.
“My son Kyle has Down syndrome and autism,” she said, “and our pastor’s son is also in the autism spectrum. So we’d already experienced bringing children with disabilities into the life of the church. It wasn’t a huge leap to include more people.”
The United Methodist Task Force on Developmental Disabilities recently produced the Gateway Curriculum, a three-year Bible study for adults with mental retardation; it supplements teaching guides already available for intellectually disabled youth, such as Living in Faith (Cokesbury, 2006).
The task force, part of the Health & Welfare unit of the denomination’s General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), met with six United Methodist agencies Aug. 6-8 in Nashville, Tenn., to seek ways of collaborating in the 2009-2012 quadrennium.
“We need to organize better in annual conferences,” said Patricia Magyar, Health & Welfare’s executive secretary. She also oversees deaf ministries for GBGM, and says the creation of a National Committee on Deaf Ministries by the 1992 General Conference made all the difference in serving that community.
“The committee gets about $68,000 a year to give grants for deaf ministries,” Ms. Magyar said. She gives credit for leadership to newly elected Bishop Peggy Johnson, former pastor of Christ UMC of the Deaf in Baltimore, Md.
“Every movement needs someone with a passion, and Peggy is such a strong force,” Ms. Magyar said. “But we still hear stories of deaf people who go to church and can’t worship because there are no interpreters. It’s heartbreaking.”
A commission in the Virginia Conference has monitored the state’s UM churches since 1972 to keep alive ministries to those with all physical and mental disabilities. Congregations are urged to observe Disability Awareness Sunday on the first week in February, and training events are held for clergy, Sunday school teachers and volunteers.
The Rev. Tizzy Walker, the commission’s chairperson, leads “experiential workshops” throughout the conference. Participants wear earplugs, sit in wheelchairs or use glasses to simulate degrees of blindness.
“It’s the most effective thing we do,” Ms. Walker said. “People come away with a little better understanding of what others live with all the time.”
Ms. Walker has been hard-of-hearing since early childhood, and it’s made her an advocate for providing assistive-listening systems and sermon manuscripts to hearing-impaired parishioners. People in the pews, she’s learned, are often more likely to understand her needs than fellow clergy.
“Part of it is because I function so well,” she said. “I’m more articulate in my speech than many hearing people, so I’ve had accusations leveled at me that I make myself out to be more deaf than I really am, to be the center of attention.”
Such reactions aren’t uncommon, says the Rev. Eric Pridmore, who helps to chair the Association of Physically Challenged Ministers with Ms. McDonald.
Mr. Pridmore, 38, was diagnosed as a teen with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease. Now blind in one eye, he co-pastors Memorial UMC in Bolton, Miss., with his wife, the Rev. Lisa Pridmore.
“But when I go to a clergy meeting and Lisa’s not with me,” he said, “other pastors seem reluctant to offer help. That’s not always the case, but it tends to be. There’s just a sense that clergy ought to be self-sufficient, able to leap tall buildings. The reality is, none of us is independent.”
On Sundays he uses an MP3 player and earphone to help him recite liturgies. When it’s his turn to preach, he writes sermons in enlarged type on his computer, then memorizes the text.
“A few days ago I preached about Jacob struggling with God near the river Jabbok, and how we all struggle with unfairness in life. My disability, I think, has made me more aware of that. I struggle, for instance, with not being able to see my children’s faces.
“But disability is the way God made us. We all bear the scars of this life, in one form or another. And I think the church is slowly coming to understand that. Not as fast as we want, by any means; but there are signs of hope.”
FILE PHOTO BY MAILE BRADFIELD; OTHER PHOTO BY JOHN GORDON
Speedway UMC in Indianapolis, Ind., serves about 400 local residents with developmental disabilities. Activities include summer camps for children and teens, a monthly parents’ night out, and social groups for youth and adults. 
