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Disability Ministries

A Reflection on the 2024 ELCA Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza

by Rev. Peter Heide 

At the 2024 ELCA Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza, several firsts occurred surrounding Disability Ministries. It had a more central place than in the past because, rather than offering the one 75-minute workshop we anticipated, in the end, our Disability Ministries (DM) advisory team, represented by coordinator Rev. Lisa Heffernan, Anita Smallin, Rev. Brian Krause, and Rev. Peter Heide, provided three 75-minute workshops, offered a revised Thanksgiving for Baptism service, and participated in a panel discussion with Rev. Jonathan Vehar, DEM for the South Dakota synod and director of the tAble, on the main stage. The DM advisory team also staffed a table in the exhibit area providing business cards with our contact information in Braille and Large Print. Large Print Guidelines | American Printing House (aph.org) Here we were able to make personal contacts.

Anita and Peter standing at a baptismal bowl for the Thanksgiving for Baptism

The revised Thanksgiving for Baptism service may have been the first time that Braille was used at a national event of the ELCA or its affiliates. It was definitely the first time that an eReader, a refreshable Braille display, was used for the reading. NLS Braille eReader Support – Cleveland Public Library (cpl.org)  The Extravaganza may also have been the first time all worship services and other program details presented on screen were made fully accessible by providing document for reading through the eReader. (Many thanks to the organizers and Pastor Sarah Sumner-Eisenbraun, for making this possible.)braille ereader

The importance of this work may make the difference for many Braille users who wish to be leaders in the church. Braille can now be made available by simply providing a thumb drive, SD card, or direct download with the program files in word, plain text, or rtf formats. This means that the high cost of Braille production no longer needs to be a barrier for many Blind people. The issue of Large Print continues to be a challenge, but we move one step at a time.

The presentations of the Disability Ministries advisory team seemed to be well received. One person stated that our workshop was one of the most practical workshops she attended. Another person responding to the presentation of the revised Thanksgiving for Baptism Service said, “My baptism has always been important to me, this service put faces on those who have gone before and really make a difference for me. It has made my baptism more important than ever.”

We thank the Youth Extravaganza planning team for their support of our continued ministry in and throughout the ELCA.

CRLC Listening Session

The Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church (CRLC) was formed by action of the 2022 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. The assembly action directed the Church Council to develop a CRLC comprised of diverse leaders to “reconsider the statements of purpose for each of the expressions of this church, the principles of its organizational structure, and all matters pertaining thereunto, being particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism, and will present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a possible reconstituting convention to be called under the rules for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly.” More information about the CRLC can be found here: https://elca.org/crlc

As a foundation for its work, the CRLC is hosting various listening sessions collecting data from a wide range of constituents in order to inform next steps. During this listening session, members of the ELCA disability community, and parents of children/youth with disabilities, are invited to participate in a group discussion, facilitated by member(s) of the CRLC, addressing questions prepared by the CRLC and asked at all listening sessions. Your input will help inform the work of the commission.

The listening session will be held via Zoom on Friday, March 15, 2024 from 2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. To register to participate, please go to the following Google Form: https://bit.ly/RegCRLCListeningSessionDisabilityCommunity. The Zoom link will be emailed to people who register. We look forward to your participation!

Top 10 List of Accommodations

A lot of the questions we get from individuals and congregations are about cost-friendly resources, or being asked where a ministry can start with improving their accessibility beyond physical structure. So when members of the Disability Ministries advisory team met last month, we put together a “Top 10 list” of sorts that offers ideas, resources, and our thoughts on accommodations that can give a place to start.

This is not an all-encompassing list by any means, but we hope it can give you some ideas, many of which are low cost, on where you can begin the holy work of becoming more accessible in your Christian education programs.

 

Our Top 10 List of Accommodations A Congregation Can Make:

  1. Website Design: The way a website is laid out or the fonts chosen for a site can make it difficult, or impossible, for a blind person or a person with low vision to navigate. Here are some articles and resources on website design:

 

  1. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services Captioning Resources | NCRA: CART displays captioning in real time and can be used with screen readers and Braille displays and can be displayed with scalable font. CART can be a great resource in worship for Deaf, Blind, and Deaf/Blind communities.

 

  1. Adaptive art supplies for Christian Education: Our friends with disabilities can feel singled out because we sometimes need different or specialized writing and creative tools or items for adapted games that may be locally unavailable. Fortunately, you can find many easy things to have on hand!

These are just a few starter examples, but please note that some things that are helpful to disabled people are the same type of items used in preschools. If at all possible, do not purchase only the items intended for preschoolers. People of all ages benefit from these materials, and age-appropriate ones may be available.

 

UNO Braille 

Low Vision Playing Cards

 

 

 

 

Loop Scissors

Crayola Tripod Grip Markers

 

  1. Use a variety of Bibles: Large print options and the use of multiple translations of scripture can make worship and Bible study more accessible to different people.

 

  1. 5 Steps to Make Your Congregation More Autism Friendly (wearesparkhouse.org)

 

  1. Resources for Blind or Visually-Impaired People: Hadley is a free education resource to help newly Blind and Blind people at all stages of life, offering courses from academic to basic life skills.

 

  1. Gluten-free Options for Holy Communion

 

  1. Update language/images used in worship, prayer, Bible study, etc.: The most common questions we get are related to language and how we speak about disability in worship and prayer or showing hospitality to people with disabilities. These articles can help guide you as you consider what is means to do away with ableist language in the life of a ministry or congregation:

 

  1. What large print REALLY is!

 

  1. Broadening your leadership: Learn to appreciate the giftedness of ALL your people—disabled and nondisabled— and use their gifts!

We hope this list of resources can be helpful to many of you! There are so many things out there a congregation or ministry site can do for accessibility and inclusion of the disability community. We pray that you will review this list and find other amazing resources as well.

Book Review: “The Difference that Disability Makes”

Book review by the Rev. Peter Heide

Michalko begins the difference that disability makes (Temple University Press, Mar 2002) in narrative conversation with a number of observations, ex. noting that throughout history people have put greater value on minerals and substances that are limited. Gold’s value comes from its scarcity; the same is true of diamonds and natural pearls. At one time salt was so valuable that it was used as a means of exchange. Michalko reminds us that salary comes from the practice of Rome paying its soldiers with salt.

Yet, when society regards the relative scarcity of people living with disabilities, the world chooses to devalue their lives thus depriving itself of the gifts that people who live with disability in daily living have to offer their societies and the world. “Therefore, [disability] has nothing to do with the individual. The disabled person is strictly a biological deviation from the normal body.

“…From this, follows [Mike] Oliver’s [social model] understanding of disability. Disability…is all the things that impose restrictions on disabled people, ranging from individual prejudice to institutional discrimination, from inaccessible public buildings to unusable transport systems, from segregated education to excluding work arrangements, and so on.

“…The simulacrum of disability paints it with the brush of misfortune, pity and victimage, yielding a number of contemporary assumptions about disability.” Society presumes the lives of people living with disabilities are perpetual suffering and therefore to be avoided in all circumstances.

The social model of disability does not refute that there is suffering, but it relocates where the suffering takes place. “Suffering then is an essential aspect…, but…we do not suffer the condition of our impairments as medicine and the rest of society would have it. We suffer our society. (emphasis mine) We suffer what our society makes of our impairments and this, according to the social model, is oppressive.”

It is only within the medical model of disability that individuals with a disability are seen as “suffering and incurable and thus unalterable biological conditions”. In turn we are then treated “with pity or even with scorn but [also]…with admiration if we adjust well within non-disabled standards. All with the understanding that, like everyone else, we hate being disabled.

“…Contemporary society understands disability as lack and subsequently treats [disability] as lack, particularly the lack of ability, figuring it within the frame of instrumental relations. The lack of the ability, to see, to hear, or to walk, is framed within the inability to do things that ordinarily and naturally adhere to these abilities.”

When this view of lacking is shifted from the individual to society, the identity of the person who lives with a disability regains personhood and the process of public accommodation can be addressed. Michalko presses the point that when consideration is made for accommodations, it is rarely the disability that influences society’s willingness to make change. It is always cost.

The question throughout this book continues to be how valued and valuable people who live with disability are to the societies they live in. It is past the time for society to think about people living with disabilities and think about the future with them.

There were so many times that, as a blind reader, I wanted to get up and shout, “YES!” Finally, someone is speaking for me.” I highly recommend this book to any who would like a deeper understanding of the difference between the medical (curative) model of disability and the social (accommodations) model of disability. As a church and society, we can only benefit from Michalko’s work and come to appreciate the difference disability makes.

 

Biography—Rod Michalko is retired. He formerly taught Disability Studies at University of Toronto, OISE, and York University. Some of his other books include:

The Mystery of the Eye and the Shadow of Blindness March 1998

The Two-In-One (Part of the Animals, Culture, and Society Series) December 1998

Rethinking Normalcy: A Disability Studies Reader (with Tanya Titchkosky)  May 2009

Things Are Different Here July 2017
Letters with Smokie: Blindness and More-Than-Human Relations (with Dan Goodley)  September 2023

The tAble

by Rev. Jonathan Vehar

Every three years in the days leading up to the ELCA Youth Gathering a unique event takes place that gathers young people together for worship, service, and fellowship. And if you’re thinking, “isn’t that what the Youth Gathering does?”, you’d be right. But what makes The tAble exceptional is that it brings together youth who have a shared experience of living with a disability. We know that every youth who comes to The tAble brings their own story, struggles, triumphs, and ways that they experience the world around them. But they also share an identity as a child of God who has created them to be fully themselves. They discover a sense of belonging, knowing that others who are there get the part of their story that isn’t translatable to the able-bodied world.

The biggest challenge that the tAble faces is that only a fraction of the young people in our churches who live with a disability even know about it. But you can help by spreading the word that such a community exists. And then being creative to make it possible to be at the tAble, where a place is waiting. Find out more at www.elca.org/gathering.

ELCA Disability Grants 2023

Congratulations to the five recipients of the ELCA Disability Ministries grants for 2023! We have invited each to offer a snapshot of the project their grant will be fun, ding.

Thank you to all applicants! It is amazing to learn about all that is being done across our church for accessibility and inclusion! We were blown away by the number of project applications submitted and all that they entailed for your ministries. We hope those not chosen this time around will consider applying in the future.

I want to offer a special thanks to the advisory team for all their hard work in reviewing the grant applications and proposals. Thank you for all you do!

–Rev. Lisa Heffernan, ELCA Disability Ministries coordinator

2023 Grant Recipients

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport, IA

Located in the heart of the Quad Cities, St. Paul Lutheran Church is a congregation of over one thousand families, many of whom have children and teens who identify as autistic or neurodivergent. Social Spectrum began at St. Paul in the summer of 2022 as a support group for parents and caregivers of neurodivergent individuals to connect and find empathy with one another. The stories, experiences, and needs shared within this group clearly identified several opportunities for growth in the ways the church as a whole welcomes, supports, and empowers neurodivergent children and youth and their families.  The funding from the ELCA Disability Ministries grant will bolster St. Paul’s efforts to address these needs, amplify autism inclusivity and awareness, and hopefully inspire other congregations to do the same.  

Specifically, St. Paul’s Social Spectrum will use grant funding to: 1) launch an inclusive family-learning style Sunday School class; 2) train St. Paul staff and volunteers who work with kids on how best to nurture and support neurodivergent children and youth; 3) construct a sensory-friendly space for faith formation for all ages; and 4) equip neurotypical teens to act as buddies and advocates for their neurodivergent peers. Through these initiatives, St. Paul aims to embrace and raise up an historically under-valued and excluded population in the church, thereby modeling a more inclusive, supportive, and whole community of faith. 

Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Seymour, WI

Park Vision: Working together, Emmanuel will build an inclusive and accessible community park to inspire, support, celebrate, and equip neurodivergent children and adults to fulfill their potential in life.

What is God asking us to do? An inclusive park!

Families with neurodivergent individuals and people dependent on mobility devices face many challenges but enjoying a park shouldn’t be one of them! Inspired by God’s hope and love, Emmanuel will create an inclusive park different from others in the Seymour area and develop accompanying ministries to enrich the lives of families in our community. We celebrate, inspire, and support neurodivergent children, adults, and their caregivers by creating a gathering place for all ages and abilities.

Working together, we reach, teach, and serve by building a community playground where children of all capabilities play side-by-side. This accessible area includes surfaces and ramps for children and adults to engage equipment with or without mobility devices. Emmanuel’s truly inclusive playground is designed for all abilities to participate in various activities at varying difficulty levels within the same space. We share God’s love by respecting and embracing the different ways God has created us. We purposely removed many barriers, so all God’s children feel part of His kingdom and experience the joy of play!

Our faith leads us to establish a community where all feel welcomed and valued. The inclusive park honors this belief by including spaces for multiple uses and all generations. Along with the playground, the complete project consists of bathroom facilities and a pavilion for church gatherings, celebrations, fellowship, and faith formation.

Peace Lutheran Church, Gahanna, OH

 Our goal at Peace Lutheran Church is to move from service ‘for’ people with disabilities to service ‘with’ people with disabilities.  We currently provide a program for adults with disabilities that includes a week-long summer resident camp, a bi-weekly Bible Study/Social Group and a Saturday morning respite.  For a variety of reasons, we struggle with recruiting volunteers.

The goal of our funded project, Friendship Connections, is to empower people to volunteer their services to connect with people with disabilities, to help broaden the scope of our congregation’s current ministry to become a more welcoming and inclusive community.   With education, coaching and hands on experience participants will increase their understanding and confidence.   The project has three components: 1) group sessions targeting education, etiquette and awareness, 2) direct experiences with adults with disabilities and 3) creation of a ‘what’s next’ project for each participant to complete the one-year experience.

We are grateful for the grant and excited about the coming year as we implement our plans.  We hope to open the hearts and minds of the project participants to allow for new and fulfilling relationships with others whom they may otherwise have avoided.

 

 

North Avenue Mission, Baltimore, MD

 North Ave Mission (NAM) is a Synodically Authorized Worshipping Community of the Delaware/ Maryland Synod of the ELCA. NAM is a fellowship of people experiencing homelessness, people who are food and housing insecure, people who use drugs and people in recovery, LGBTQ+, those living with physical disability or mental illness and those with lived experience of trauma, racism and hate along with their supporters, in central Baltimore. Centering the leadership and following the visions of those most directly impacted by structural racism and unjust systems, we walk together as we care for our community and one another. Most people in the NAM community and leadership have disabilities ranging from mobility limitations which require assistive devices, treated and untreated mental illness, substance misuse disorder, significant neurodiversity, and a variety of chronic diseases. The community comes together to encourage and support one another on their journeys, to worship, and to serve the wider community.

Many in the NAM community have remarkable gifts for ministry. Some speak powerfully in testimony, others write and share profound theology and theopoetics, some have the gift of encouragement and building others up, some post daily messages of gratitude and prayer each morning. Others share their perspectives through freestyle and other creative arts. Still others pitch in to make sure Family Life is set up properly, share worship leadership, and ensure that the service runs smoothly. People with disabilities are already and have always been in leadership roles within the NAM community and now some are ready to take the next steps to hone their gifts further so they can be shared beyond the worshipping community.

Building on Leadership Gifts will provide mentoring, hard and soft skill-building, learning opportunities, and enhanced wellbeing supports for three to four specific members of the NAM community for one year so that they can grow as leaders to share their gifts both within and beyond NAM. All four of these individuals will benefit greatly from training and coaching in communications to enable them to write out drafts, workshop with each other’s writing, put into words both faith and the long-term effects of the systemic oppression they have experienced, and grasp the many and varied forms the written and spoken word can take. We are planning a six-month curriculum that will include one-on-one coaching sessions as well as small group workshops for learning, trying out public speaking in safe environments, providing feedback to one another, developing each person’s unique voice, and learning the soft skills of leadership.

Pastor Elazar Zavaletta, Mission Developer at NAM, will identify appropriate ways for these emerging leaders to be connected to settings beyond NAM, while also providing additional leadership opportunities within the NAM community. Experiencing the DE/MD Synod Assembly will increase understanding of the wider church.

Pine Lake Lutheran Camp, Crossways Camping Ministries, WI

Pine Lake Lutheran Camp (part of Crossways Camping Ministries) is excited to extend a wider welcome to faith-filled, camp programming for youth and adults with disabilities! Thanks to the generosity of the ELCA Disability Ministries, Pine Lake Camp will be able to implement new programming and additional supports for campers with disabilities.  Our new Self-Determination Camp Program is welcoming adults with disabilities in the middle of August. Young adults with disabilities will come together to create connections, experience traditional camp elements, and create individualized plans for participation in order to engage in meaningful church and community ministry upon their arrivals home.

Alongside our tailored program, we aim to include a wider community of youth and family program participants throughout the summer by employing an Inclusion Advocate who will serve three primary audiences at three primary times. Our Inclusion Advocate will work with camper families, campers seeking additional support, and the camp staff to provide meaningful supports and needed accessibility.  Our Inclusion Advocate will coordinate needed supports in advance of weekly camp programming.  In addition, support from the Inclusion Advocate to the staff or campers will happen throughout the onsite week.   Finally, Our Inclusion Advocate will record important details after the camp program has completed, in order to plan for future success in other camp programs.

In addition to our new Self-Determination Camp program and Inclusion Advocate staff position, we are investing in other ways to build meaningful relationships and opportunities for our siblings in Christ with disabilities. We are working with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) to train, support and employ a young adult with disabilities on our current camp staff.  In addition, we welcomed a self advocate with an Intellectual and developmental disability, to lead a staff training session on best practices for including and supporting campers with disabilities.