Lausanne World Pulse – A Forgotten Barrier: Attitudes toward Disability

By David W. Anderson

The Church must advocate for and defend the welfare and human rights of even the most severely disabled, recognizing that all people are God’s children by creation and have equal value as God’s image-bearers. God does not exclude people on the basis of ability; neither can the Church. The Church must be a change agent in society through living a lifestyle of reconciliation and acceptance. Jesus’ focus on including the excluded must be that of all Christians.

One Example of Disability Ministry
To encourage and equip churches to engage in ministry to and with persons with disabilities, Crossing Bridges Inc., a U.S.-based ministry, has established a collaborative relationship with the Center for Empowerment of Females with Disabilities in Cameroon.4 This collaboration has involved promoting disability awareness and providing ministry training through seminars in several communities, churches, Bible colleges, and seminaries. This training has resulted in confession and repentance among participants for attitudes of neglect and exclusion, and has resulted in the mobilization of many individuals and several churches for evangelistic and social outreach with disabled persons.

Excluding someone with a disability from the opportunity to hear the gospel—whether out of ignorance and oversight or intentionally, assuming the individual is neither worthy nor capable of receiving God’s love—dishonors God, whose love and compassion is not limited. Jesus’ command to his disciples was to take the good news to all the peoples of the world, not just those whom society or culture says are deserving of God’s grace. God’s grace is grace because no one is deserving of it.

Ultimately, the goal of disability ministry is the same as for any other form of ministry: bringing glory to God through proclamation of the gospel and through living a life that honors the one who has called us to be his children. More specifically, disability ministry seeks to:

  1. Open doors to sharing the gospel with disabled persons
  2. Integrate people with disabilities into the life of the church
  3. Model inclusivity and fellowship to the greater community and to the culture
  4. Demonstrate the love of Christ in action
  5. Meet the spiritual, physical, social, and emotional needs of persons with disabilities

The World Health Organization estimates that ten percent of the population is disabled. This equates to more than 670 million persons with disabilities worldwide, approximately eighty percent of whom are thought to live in the developing nations of the world. This presents the Church with a pivotal opportunity to model the practice of Christian love and to obey Christ’s command to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15).

Endnotes

1. 1986. A Century of Mennonite Brethren Mission Thinking: 1885-1984. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

2. McCollum, A. B. 1998. “Tradition, Folklore, and Disability: A Heritage of Inclusion.” In Human Disability and the Service of God: Reassessing Religious Practice. Eds. N. L. Eiesland and D. E. Sailers. 167-186. Nashville, Tennessee, USA: Abingdon.

3. Cf. Fuller, W. H. 1987. “The Church and Its Mission and Ministry.” In New Frontiers in Missions. Ed. Patrick Sookhedeo, 101-114. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Baker Books.

4. Crossing Bridges, Inc., and Center for Empowerment of Females with Disabilities are international affiliate ministries of Joni and Friends International Disability Center in Agoura Hills, California, USA.

Dr. David W. Anderson is president of Crossing Bridges, Inc., a ministry focused on disability issues and the Church. In 2007, he retired from Bethel University (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA), where he was professor and director of graduate programs in special education. He has lectured on biblical studies, disability ministry, and special education in Cameroon, Kenya, Ghana, Haiti, England, and Ukraine.