I recently concluded a sermon series looking at the Apostles’ Creed, which is one of the foundational statements of the church that articulates our foundational beliefs about God. The series’ final sermon examined the statement “I believe in the holy catholic church” and “the communion of saints.”
As I often tell my congregation, the church is “the ongoing witness of Jesus Christ in a broken and hurting world.” The church is to worship God and to express God’s love outward through our living response in the world as an act of faith. The church, as well, is truly the body of Christ and the witness of Christ to a world that often wonders what to make of Jesus and the Lord’s love.
The church includes all of us who seek to love God, grow in faith, and serve the Lord. We all make up the great communion of saints, in heaven and on earth, who desire to love and serve God. That includes those in the disability community like myself.
When we think about the church and the disability community, we often think about what the disability community needs from the church. We talk about vital needs like acceptance, accommodations, care, and respect as vital needs for the community. I wonder, though, what does the church need from the disability community? I believe that there are things the church can learn from the disability community that will help the body of Christ live more into its mission to live as the ongoing witness of Jesus Christ.
Photo credit: James Newcombe on Unsplash.com.
I believe the disability community can help the church see what unconditional love and acceptance look like. One of the things that I value about the disability ministry community is how much we are there for each other. We are all on this journey together, with various needs, concerns, and situations, yet we share a common love and acceptance towards one another. It is love that is not conditional but freely shared because we are all children of God on this journey together. We desire to love and encourage one another through our faith in God.
When the church can too often look like the world and only love those who fit into our ideas of what faith should be like, or only accept those who fit neatly into our box, the disability community encourages the church to love as Jesus calls us to love: unconditionally and with a desire to see every person as a child of God with sacred and holy worth.
I also believe the disability community can help the church be adaptable. The church must continually learn and adapt to properly share the gospel with the world. The message of the church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not change, but how we reach people throughout time can and does change. This willingness to adapt is another thing I value about the disability community. The community seeks to find ways to make church work for those we often ignore in the church. We will try, learn, adapt, and try again. It is all with a desire to help someone know that God loves them, and we do, too. We are not committed to a one-size-fits-all mentality, as if that ever works, but are willing to think through what is best, what can work, and what we can do.
While the church did a great job adjusting throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it still struggles to reach beyond itself and adapt to meet the needs of the people. Too often, the concerns of a few outweigh the mission of Christ, to where the status quo is more valuable than reaching people for Christ. The disability community can show the church that adaptability creates new possibilities to reach people and share God’s love in new ways. It can help the church be bold in its witness for Christ.
There are other ways the disability community can help the church. I believe, as a pastor and father of an autistic child, and someone who struggles with depression, that the church needs the disability community to help remind it of its greater purpose: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Shannon Blosser is the senior pastor of Pea Ridge United Methodist Church in Huntington, WV. Follow his work at shannonblosser.com.
