Including People With Disabilities In Faith Communities

Filled with anecdotes, vignettes, thought-provoking quotes from experts and community members, and specific examples of successful strategies, this innovative guide helps faith communities become places of welcome and belonging for people with a wid

Pastor Lamar Hardwick was thirty-six years old when he found out he was on the autism spectrum. This revelation prompted him to reconsider the church's responsibilities to the disabled community. Insisting that the good news of Jesus affirms God's image in all people, Hardwick offers practical steps and strategies to build stronger, truly inclusive communities of faith.

Everyone wants to belong. Shelly Christensen, an international leader in faith community disability inclusion, gives step-by-step guidance to any faith-based organization committed to welcoming and including people with disabilities and mental health conditions. An essential and practical tool for your journey of inclusion.

America operates by ableist norms, which often silence or hide from view those with a disability. This book provides a platform or peek inside the lives of eight people with a disability, and it offers solutions for achieving access justice.

The story of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is often unknown or misunderstood by people in faith communities. Whole Community provides an introduction to the disabilitys definition and history, and an overview of current issues in ethics, cultural perceptions, and public policy. Through personal stories and often-surprising data, a new framework for relationship emergesone that reaches beyond mercy to mutuality and chooses to see disability as diversity rather than deficit. David Morstad has steeped his book, Whole Community in years of rich experiences, relationships, and wisdom. The result is an outstanding book that takes the deep and important questions and convictions about living as one body together in Christ and turns that into practical and accessible direction for our Christian communities Barbara J. Newman, author of Autism and Your Church and Accessible Gospel, Inclusive Worship In Whole Community, Morstad explores the many important facets of inclusion in faith communities in a straightforward manner, with thoughtful stories and experiences interwoven between the hard questions and realities of the current state of disability inclusion in our congregations. I highly recommend this book for anyone beginning or developing disability inclusion efforts in their places of worship Karen Jackson, executive director of Faith Inclusion Network of Hampton Roads and author of Loving Samantha Whole Community is an excellent resource for faith leaders and congregations interested in improving access and inclusion for people with disabilities. Morstad explores a journey toward relationship through which congregations benefit from the gifts and talents people with disabilities bring to the community of faith Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, editor, The Christian Citizen

A church has built an accessibility ramp and perhaps refitted its restrooms to accommodate a wheelchair. Now what? This new resource by a noted author of several books on people with disabilities offers a theological and practical approach for congregations, with clear, targeted strategies for full inclusion of all members, recognizing and using the gifts that each member brings to the congregations life together.

Disability and spirituality have traditionally been understood as two distinct spheres: disability is physical and thus belongs to health care professionals, while spirituality is religious and belongs to the church, synagogue, or mosque and their theologians, clergy, rabbis, and imams. This division leads to stunted theoretical understanding, limited collaboration, and segregated practices, all of which contribute to a lack of capacity to see people with disabilities as whole human beings and full members of a diverse human family. Contesting the assumptions that separate disability and spirituality, William Gaventa argues for the integration of these two worlds. As Gaventa shows, the quest to understand disability inevitably leads from historical and scientific models into the world of spirituality--to the ways that values, attitudes, and beliefs shape our understanding of the meaning of disability. The reverse is also true. The path to understanding spirituality is a journey that leads to disability--to experiences of limitation and vulnerability, where the core questions of what it means to be human are often starkly and profoundly clear. In Disability and Spirituality Gaventa constructs this whole and human path before turning to examine spirituality in the lives of those individuals with disabilities, their families and those providing care, their friends and extended relationships, and finally the communities to which we all belong. At each point Gaventa shows that disability and spirituality are part of one another from the very beginning of creation. Recovering wholeness encompasses their reunion--a cohesion that changes our vision and enables us to everyone as fully human.

"The question of why God would allow pain and suffering in the world has vexed believers and nonbelievers forever. In Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Timothy Keller takes on this enduring issue and shows that there is meaning and reason behind pain and suffering, making a forceful and groundbreaking case that this essential part of the human experience can be overcome only by understanding our relationship with God. Using biblical wisdom and personal stories of overcoming adversity, Keller brings a much-needed, fresh viewpoint to this important issue."--Back cover