Pre-conceived ideas! As someone who was born with a permanent disability and uses a wheelchair, people’s expectations of me as an ordained church leader and preacher often come with pre conceptions. On one occasion when I was a missionary in Malawi, I was being introduced to a group of pastors. My then 8-year-old son was introduced, and then my tall, blonde and blue-eyed late wife was introduced. I could see the pastors looking at me and thinking ‘who is this guy in a wheelchair, and what on earth does he have to offer?’ Finally, the missionary leader introduced me as ‘Pastor John’. You could see the pastors’ image of me move from nothing to sudden elevation – from 0 to 10. I was feeling like I didn’t want to be viewed as ‘0’ but at the same time, as a ‘white pastor’, I also didn’t want to be a ‘10’!
Once, when attending a global church leaders conference in Brazil where I decided to wear my clerical collar, someone came up to me and asked whether I was a church leader. I replied ‘yes’, he then asked if I was paid and again, I replied ‘yes’. He then went on to ask me if the church was just for disabled people, and was it very small? I was amazed at the assumptions and said that the church was for everyone, and within the diocese it was a reasonably large church of around 200+ people. Years earlier, when I did my curacy, one of the members of the congregation asked me how long I had been an invalid, I replied I hadn’t been ‘in-valid’ for many years… She didn’t get the joke!
A part to play in God’s church
When we look at the passage from 1 Corinthians 12 about the body of Christ, it clearly states that ‘we cannot say that I don’t need you’, and that those who are marginalized can’t say ‘I don’t belong to the body’. Sadly, the church has communicated both messages over the years, i.e. that people with disabilities are not needed in the church. This is demonstrated by the lack of motivation we have to make our churches accessible to people with a whole range of disabilities, whether visible or invisible. We can rather naively think of disability as just people who use wheelchairs, and that sticking a ramp into a building is all that needs to be done, and when we can’t, we think that’s it. I have heard so many church leaders saying to me that they don’t have any people with disabilities attending their church, so there is no need to make any adaptations.
