Prospects

Ok so those who know anything about us will know that myself and Joy are the proud parents of 2 children with learning difficulties, we adopted them so in a sense chose to accept them with their difficulties and disabilities.

One of the things we have felt is a part of our ministry is getting the church to accept those who have disabilities, especially learning difficulties/disabilities, as valued and important members of the church community.

In our fellowship we have had a guy coming along for some time who has learning difficulties and it hasn’t always been easy to know how to handle him, its been interesting to see how he seems to have been accepted by some, alongside our own 2 children who are by and large made to feel right at home, although some are still very nervous and frightened of Steven because his behaviour can seem rather strange, I don’t say this to condemn or criticise these people because I am not sure I would have reacted any different towards him if it wasn’t for the fact that we adopted him, although, given time, they seem to have been accepted on the whole.

Anyhow, when we did our building project a couple of years back one of the main objectives of the project was to remove as many of the physical barriers to worship for those with disabilities, improved A/V facilities, better layout & lighting, disabled toilet, generally much more accessible buildings, it has been my hope that our church, and the church at large, would take on the call to reach out to those with disabilities, especially learning difficulties, as they represent one of the largest un-reached communities in this nation, but it requires more than just improved buildings to allow those with learning difficulties to participate in our services, it takes an attitude of acceptance and welcoming.

It is far easier to accommodate someone with physical disabilities because all you have to do is adapt the building, in order to accept those with learning disabilities you need to adapt the people, which can be so much harder! However it is a challenge that the church has to rise to, the Disability Discrimination Act gives us a legal responsibility to ensure that we adapt to the needs of those with disability but it is so difficult to legislate for attitudes of mind, yes we have complied with the physical requirements of the act, as so many companies and organisation have done so, but we also need to comply with the spirit, indeed, we as the church, as those who seek to Love God and Love others, should be streaks ahead, we should be showing the world how to be accepting and welcoming instead of just complying with the law we should go over and above it, find the Gold standard and aim for that, if our faith means anything to us it means that we love other human beings wholeheartedly, regardless of their background and abilities and we accept people who are not like us as if they are our brothers and sisters, this is easier to do with people of other nations and colours but those with learning difficulties frighten the average person on the street, mainly because of ignorance I am not using that word in a critical way, we are all ignorant of something we know nothing about, we don’t know about or have regular contact with people with disability so we are ignorant of them and their needs/ways and this makes us frightened, being honest, even though I am the father of 2 children with disabilities (one of which has quite profound learning disabilities) I too am afraid of some of the adults I have come across, both in my role as driver for Social Services and in my day to day life, in-fact I recall a few months ago a discussion at one of the leadership meetings about the guy who had been coming to church, it was said that people feel uncomfortable around him, he is a pretty big guy, and I had to confess that I am just as nervous as everyone else BUT it is our responsibility to overcome these fears and prejudices and not allow those fears and prejudices to become barriers to them coming to know the God who loves them just as they are.

So, why say this now? well this morning we had a group from Acorn Fellowship joined us for our morning service, they are Causeway Prospects group working with adults with learning difficulties. We have had some involvement with them, at one time I used to drive one of the minibuses for Acorn and we have come across causeway at Grapevine and they ran a session on Worship Academy so we were pretty much familiar with what they do, it was good to see them here this morning and to have a number of the guys from Acorn share with us this morning, several spoke, including Ruth, who runs the Bedford Monday meeting (meets in our premises) and Julie who had the original vision to run this project, which has been running for 18 years now.

After the service myself and Joy were chatting to Julie, we were saying how it would be good to see some of these folk incorporated into local fellowships as well as being a part of the Acorn group, several already go along to one church or another, when one of the guys (Graham) approached Julie and said he would like to come along to our church every week! Well if that’s not God speaking I don’t know what is!

So, next week we are going to pick up Graham and another guy, and bring them to church with us, the idea is that they will start coming every week, they will hopefully come on the church minibus but for the first couple of weeks we will bring them in so that they get familiar with us and people they can relate to and know they can approach us if they have any problems.

It is going to be interesting to see how they get on and how well the fellowship adapts to incorporate them into the fellowship, they could well mess up our nice neat and organised services and cause a bit of disruption but this is a challenge that we will have to rise to, they are just as valuable in the eyes of God as the rest of us and they deserve the time and space to meet with him just as much as we do.

I think that there is going to be a period of adjustment on the fellowship until we get used to having Graham & Andrew around but the challenges they will bring will be exceeded by the blessings that come from following Jesus commands to minister to ‘the least of these people’ so exciting times are in store for the fellowship.

Time to crank up the profile of disability issues, I have for a while wanted to see if we could organise and run a disability awareness day for churches in the town, in-fact it was only earlier this week that David G forwarded an e-mail (sent to my work address) from Pete Windmill, asking if I had any further thoughts on the issue of having such a seminar, this is one of the things I had mentioned to Julie, apparently it is every much on her heart to have such an event so I think it is likely to be down to her to organise! I will offer our buildings to host the event, and help where and if I can but that help is likely to be limited at the moment because of my own health issues.