Theology Of Ministry To People With Disabilities

People with developmental disabilities are typically devalued by society. The Christian church, however, needs not only to reflect on what it means to be created in the image of God in relation to ministries and the developmentally disabled. In addition, it also needs to reflect on the meaning and implications of what it professes in its liturgy. For example, how does becoming part of Christ's body through baptism relate to ministries and the developmentally disabled? The following article will explain the theology of and the implications of liturgy to the church's ministries and the developmentally disabled.

To be developmentally disabled in the United States is to be marginalized and devalued. The more serious and numerous the disabilities are, the more extreme the marginalization and devaluation. Current legal and social policies notwithstanding, there is much pressure to merely warehouse persons with developmental disabilities. We as the authors make these claims categorically, but not without cause. We have worked with such persons in residential settings. And we know how easy it is to forget them. They are always last in line for all things, save one. When it comes to budget cuts, they lead the parade. "?They?" are the severely and profoundly disabled. They have mental retardation plus cerebral palsy; plus hearing, vision, and speech defects; and plus numerous other disabilities. Here we shall refer to them as persons with developmental disabilities, an awkward term, but one that avoids most of the negative pitfalls of other labels. Both of us operate from an unabashed Christian worldview. We invite non-Christian readers to accept our writing as a stimulus to their own thinking, knowing that we cannot possibly know how to assess the issues from the viewpoint of another faith. The questions raised here, however, are universal. Most work that discusses the theology and ethics of ministry with persons with developmental disabilities begins with some type of discourse on what it means to be a human being. What does it mean that all of humanity is created in the image of God? Our consideration of the problem proceeds from this question. However, it is important to understand that this is only a beginning point. We as Christians need to be able to move from this type of discussion to realize that, in the church, we are called to evaluate who we are in relationship to those who are devalued by their mental disabilities. This call can be explored through the liturgy of the church, as an ethical statement of our faith and Christian lives. In other words, while the basic premise that all human beings are created in God's image is an extremely important issue and must be discussed, the place where we as Christians must operate is from within liturgy, the "?work of the people.?" How do we carry the symbols of Christ and his church into the world? How do we live those ethical acts that we claim within the liturgy of our church? What do we really claim, mean, and understand when we gather as God's people? What do we say, mean, and believe when we talk about baptism, the Holy Eucharist, confession, proclamation, intercession, and offering? These are the questions that must be asked and discussed if we are to understand the moral dilemma presented by Christian ministry and the mentally disabled. Reflecting on Christian Beliefs Focusing our attention on the religious needs of persons with developmental disabilities requires that we reexamine some of the beliefs we might have taken for granted. The general public, including deeply religious people within the Christian community, usually gets away with believing it has done everything possible for persons with serious disabilities when it has provided them with food, clothing, and shelter. Advances made in recent decades indicate how inadequate that belief really is. We will better serve persons with developmental disabilities, those who are devalued, and our Creator if we take time to reflect on those beliefs which underpin our actions. Let us look at four areas of concern: (1) our beliefs about human beings; (2) the meaning of serving others; (3) the nature of religious bodies; and (4) the peculiar nature of our own faith communities. First, what do we really believe concerning the nature of humankind. One of the cornerstones of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief that humankind is created in the image of God. But to believe that every human being is God's image is to fly in the face of some powerful beliefs of the modern age. For we are told over and over again by powerful agents of belief, notably the entertainment media, that those who are beautiful are the most favored of all people. Another message, sometimes promoted by persons recognized by many as Christian leaders, is that we know we are blessed of God when we are successful. Beauty and success are modern marks of God's favor! What are we saying about God, and about ourselves, when we define the pretty and the successful as God's chosen few? Certainly, those of us whose lives are lived in relationship with persons with disability have no excuse for succumbing to the heresy. We do have great reason to protest against forces that seek to further alienate persons, who struggle on the margins of acceptance by others every moment of their lives. Second, what we believe about service as part of our calling is equally as revealing as what we believe about humankind. One of the great weaknesses of the worldwide missionary efforts of evangelical Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the seductive way, in which congregations could ease their collective conscience by sending money and personnel to the far reaches of the world, while they ignored the needs of alienated persons nearer their homes. The same phenomenon occurs in disability ministries. A congregation can easily delegate a small group to assume responsibility for a disability ministry, while most of the congregation does not even know such a ministry exists. It is much more difficult for the entire congregation to become actively involved in service to persons with disabilities. Yet, at the heart of the Christian experience is the command to care for those who cannot care for themselves. Personal involvement is at the heart of the issue. What is our mission to persons, who are at a disadvantage in the world? When is that mission best accomplished by mutual activity? When should someone else do it? And when must I personally become the servant of those in need? Even in the midst of a servant ministry, the needs, the options, and the commitments are vague. This alone calls us to stop and examine our own sense of service and mission to others. Third, it is helpful to reexamine what we think about the institutional church. If we believe that the church is irrelevant, weak, or outdated, then we will have no difficulty allowing the needy in our midst to be cared for through government programs. If on the other hand, we believe the church is the living extension of God in the world, offering hope and comfort to those who need it, then we will become the instruments of that hope and comfort to those who need it, for in doing so our hands become the instruments of God's love for all persons. Fourth and finally, we must consider our belief. There is a desperate need for ministry to persons with developmental disabilities which grows out of a centered faith. We need to know both what we believe as individuals and as congregations affiliated with a given religious body. There is a relationship between learning more and more about our own religious roots and the ability to minister with persons who are different from us. The more clearly we understand the differences, the sooner we can get on with the mutual ministry we, the Christian community, must claim as ours. On Being Human What does it mean to be "?created in the image of God?"? We must approach this issue with caution and care. We need to heed the words of Stanley Hauerwas.

I think we should feel more the oddness of trying to determine this or that as the criterion that makes us human. The conditions of being human form a far too complex pattern to ever be reduced to something like criteria. Too quick appeals to the mystery of being human can be but excuses for cloudy and sloppy thinking that attempts to evade some of the hard issues we are confronting, but they may also be profound responses to the human sense that ultimately we are not our own creators. To be human is to be open to the call of what we are not, and there is therefore no chance that our humanity will be enhanced by excluding from our ranks those who do not understand as we. We must therefore approach the attempt to develop criteria of the human with the humility that recognizes that we would be less than human if we did not recognize that there are limits to what can be brought under our control. (Stanley Hauerwas, Truthfulness and Tragedy [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977], 162–63.)

It comes as no shock to some of us that whole classes of people were treated as nonpersons in the past. Women, children, slaves, and peasants have been treated as chattel. We do not have to go back very far into North American history to find Africans and Native Americans being treated as less than human. Yet, we profess that all are created in the image of God.

Creation in the image of God does not merely refer to the possession of special human faculties, such as the mind, the emotions, or the will, though these are essential to humanity's being. To be created in the image of God does not refer to the possession of the special characteristics of humans, though these are part of human life. To be created in the image of God means that humans have the possibility of relating to God and to other human beings as persons. The Creation account first of all states, "?God created human beings in God's own image, in the image of God, God created them?"(Gen. 1:27–28). The account then spells out what it means to be created in the image of God and what it means to be fully human. David Schroeder has written:

To be fully human is to receive affirmation from others. It is important for us as humans to be accepted as persons, to receive love and acceptance from others, to receive from others feeling of worth. Not to receive this is both physically and emotionally damaging. Without this acceptance none of us functions properly; without it we feel assaulted, rejected and diminished in worth or esteem. (Alfred H. Neufeldt, ed., Celebrating Differences [Newton, Kans.: Faith and Life Press, 1984], 2.)

One of the church's difficulties with ministering to persons with developmental disabilities and their families relates to the creation and the image of God, and also with the creation's image of God. In other words, we as Christians create preconceived notions of what God is and what God looks like before giving it any serious thought. In this dilemma, one of the points of liberation theology needs to be heard by the church. Frederick Herzog writes:

This peculiar thing about Messiah Jesus is that for the church the new thought about God did not emerge via pure thought. In Messiah Jesus, God acted out of a way of being God unheard of before. (Frederick Herzog, Justice Church [New York: Orbis Books, 1981], 3.)

This quote reminds us that we need to be careful, for, as it was in the person of Christ Incarnate, God may be different than what we often expect. Christ is the one who taught us that if we walk with the poor, the hungry, the lame, the downtrodden, the outcast, and the developmentally disabled, we walk with him. These people are the images of Christ; these people are the images of God.

The Liturgy for and Ministry to the Mentally Disabled: Greeting and Gathering The most basis question we can ask at this point is why does the Christian community gather. Why is it that the Christian community comes together and what does it propose to do? It seems obvious that the Christian community comes together to worship God. However, it is also true that Christians gather in order that they give some evidence of who they are. Therefore, Christians gather so that they may know who they are. This is why the liturgy is so important to Christian ethics. Stanley Hauerwas writes the following:

Christian ethics involves the extraordinary claim that by learning to be faithful to the way of life inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth we have, in fact, become part of the shared history that God intends for his whole creation. [W]e as Christians have been given the means to recognize ourselves for what we are—historic beings who must begin our ethical reflection in the midst of history. For Christian ethics begins in a community that carries the story of the God who wills us to participate in a kingdom established in and through Jesus of Nazareth. No matter where it begins theologically, if it tries to do more or less than remind us of the significance of that story it has lost its way. (Stanley Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 61–62.)

Because Christian ethics begins in a community that has a common story, we as Christians should be able to observe ourselves when we gather as a church community. In doing this, it becomes important to be able to identify who we are. This process should not be a new concept in the ethical manner in which we relate to others. An example of this step in the ethical process can be seen in Moses facing God at the burning bush. God makes himself known by saying, "?I am who I am,?" and thereby promising the presence of God. In much the same way we, as the church, need to pay attention to the need to let others see us as who we are. We are a particular people because we are called to be imitators of Christ. This concept applies directly to the issue of the church and the developmentally disabled. If we identify ourselves as Christians and invite others to be a part of the body of Christ, we can not exclude anyone, especially devalued persons. Historically, those people who have gathered around Christ were a diverse people. These people included the healthy and the lame, the rich and the poor, and tax collectors and publicans. All gathered together to see and hear the Christ. This fact is difficult for a homogeneous church to see. This fact significantly addresses the issue of the church's ministry to the developmentally disabled population. Because we as Christians have no direct experience of gathering with those with disabilities, we think they must not exist. The familiar phrase, "?out of sight, out of mind,?" applies here. Because of the exclusion of the disabled within the institutional church, we must intentionally be inclusive when we gather as Christ's body. Ministry to the developmentally disabled cannot take place without it being intentional. Therefore. when we gather together as worshipers in Christ Jesus, let us gather because of our differences, rather than in spite of them. Let the church gather and bid others who are "?different?" to come and be a part of Christ's body. Confession From time to time, we need to address the place of confession in the Christian church, particularly as it relates to ministries to the disabled. Confession qualifies the moral life because when we prepare to confess our sin, we first must discover what sin is. We cannot confess our sins if we do not know them. Sins are identifiable and particular. We confess our sin so that we may be reconciled to God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We must understand confession as a redemptive act, as an act that reminds us of the broken state that exists in the community. David Steinmetz, in his book Memory and Mission, gives a clear example of confession as a redemptive act:

The saying of Jesus that the whole has no need of a physician is a saying that the Church has always had great difficulty in assimilating. It seems so much more reasonable to believe that God will be merciful to those people who meet certain prior expectations: the right ideology, the right sex or race, the right degree of devotion to the cause currently supported by the right elements in society. "?But when we were right,?" Luther observed in one of his earliest writings, "?God laughed at us in our rightness.?" God's quarrel is with the whole human race and not merely with certain factions in it. Judgment falls not only on the theologically heterodox but also on the theologically pure. The one absolutely indispensable precondition for the reception of grace is not to be right—not even in the sense of theological orthodoxy—but to be sick. The gospel is for real sinners. God promises to give God's grace to "?real sinners.?" Real sinners are people who are not merely sinners in fact (everyone, after all, is a sinner in that sense), but who confess that they are sinners. "?Real sinners?" conform their judgment of themselves to the judgment of God over them and by doing so justify God in God's Word of judgment and grace. Paradoxically, it is the "?real sinner?" who is justified by God and who knows both theoretically and experientially what repentance offers and demands. (David C. Steinmetz, Memory and Mission [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988], 39–40.

It is difficult to ignore this type of reasoning when considering the problems that surround the Christian community's lack of intentionality in disability ministries. The church needs to realize the prejudicial nature of the exclusion that exists within its body. Only when the church can realize and confess its prejudice against devalued persons, can it become a healthy community. Stanley Hauerwas and Bonita Raine point out a good example of this type of realization and confession:

The [Catholic] bishops candidly acknowledge that the church's ministry to handicapped people has been sporadic and too often only at the urging of public opinion or circumstances, presumably from outside the church. Such an admission follows the bishops' reflections on the nature of prejudice and its relationship to perceptions of difference. It is not coincidental, we believe, that this observation about the church's activity is likened to the notion that we tend all to often to think of them as somehow apart—not fully "?one of us.?" Our concerns about the nature of community, especially ecclesial community, are also addressed by the bishops. While they affirm Christians' obligations to seek with handicapped people justice in a wider society, the bishops suggest what it is the church should be if it is to retain fidelity to the task to which Christ called it. They suggest that the notion of interdependence is critical and that openness to discovery in diversity or difference is vital. Such a community, they say, will actively work to make modern society. The bishops are nowhere more eloquent, however, than when they describe the warm acceptance with which handicapped people should be gratefully welcomed in the ecclesial community wherein we can all benefit from their spirit-ual gifts and the self-realization they share with the rest of us in the Christian community, namely, that "?we all live in the shadow of the cross.?" That shadow reminds us that we are all "?marginal?" people, and hence our need for mutual integration. (Stanley Hauerwas, Suffering Presence [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981] 187.)

Until this type of confession can be made, the broken nature of God's church cannot be healed through reconciliation and the sharing of the peace. In confession, the church and the people of the church can experience redemption from its own prejudicial practices. Offering The relationship between worship, liturgy, and ethics is a relationship in which we as worshipers share our lives through our worship in the liturgy. When the community of faith teaches us what Christ has offered to us, as well as how it was offered, offering in the liturgy qualifies the moral life. First and foremost, we need to understand this type of offering as one of sacrificial giving. We are called not only to give, but to give ourselves sacrificially. Paul states, "?We are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices.?" We know how we are to give because we are able to see in the Scriptures that Christ loved the world so much that he gave himself as a living sacrifice for us, "?the unlovable?" ones. In considering offering as sacrificial giving of ourselves and of the community of faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a clear statement of the nature of this sacrificial giving:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a person will gladly go and sell all. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "?Ye were bought at a price,?" and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Macmillan, 1961], 47–48.)

This costly grace is the grace that calls us to submit to the yoke of Jesus Christ and follow him. This is what it means to offer something to God and our brothers and sisters in the world who are broken and devalued by most of our society. This is the type of offering of ourselves we are called to when we consider the church's ministry and persons with developmental disabilities. When Christ calls us, he bids us, "?come and die.?" Ministry and persons with disabilities can be understood, at least partially, in how we offer ourselves to others whom we consider "?different?" in our society and the church. This means that the church should teach its people to submit to the yoke that Christ has called them to, the servant ministry, and to offer themselves as living sacrifices to those who suffer from the church's own oppression. We can not merely say that Jesus Christ offered himself for each of us personally, but we also need to realize that Christ offered himself for all of God's people. Because of Christ's offering, how much more should we be willing to offer ourselves as a sacrifice in ministry and care to those whom we consider different than ourselves, persons with disabilities. When we, the church, are able to accomplish this type of sacrificial giving of ourselves, we will then learn how to enter the difficult ministry of embracing suffering as we take up our crosses. John Westerhoff shows the meaning of embracing this type of suffering through a story a mother told him of sending her young son to the store. When her son didn't return as soon as she had anticipated, she ran out to look for him and found him skipping up the street singing! "?Where have you been,?" she asked. "?Well,?" he began, "?Susie dropped her doll and it broke.?" His mother interrupted, "?And you had to stay and help her pick it up.?" "?No, mommy,?" he explained, "?I had to stay and help her cry.?" This example illustrates how we should offer ourselves in our ministry to the mentally disabled: we should suffer with them. Scripture and Proclamation In most of American Christian denominations, the reading of Scripture and preaching is central in most worship services. We need not to neglect the developmentally disabled when sharing this part of our liturgy. We often think that there may be too much of a gap between "?us?" and "?them?" in comprehension of the Word. In other words, we feel that preaching and Scripture cannot be understood in ways that many "?normal?" people might. So why should we spend the time to preach? We should preach to persons who are developmentally disabled for any reason that we might preach to any other part of our congregations. First of all, we preach to tell the story of a community of faith and the history of that faith. But, we also proclaim the Scriptures to help shape and form the community of faith, so that as we hear the Word we are moved toward being new and renewed creatures in Christ's body. Our concern should not always be that the proclamation of Scripture is understood, but we should also be concerned that the Word in some way shapes and forms the community as a whole. When this happens, a new bond will hopefully enable the community to live the Christian story in a covenant, or in our case, a new covenant relationship. It is not enough that we concern ourselves with finding ways to minister to the persons with developmental disabilities. Our task is to learn how to share ministry with such persons who live and worship among us. Baptism and the Eucharist Finally, this discussion of the liturgy as an ethical norm of the church cannot conclude without emphasizing that baptism and the Eucharist are the most significant moral activities of Christians. The reasons for the significance of these acts are first of all grounded in the fact that Christ in the Scriptures commanded both of these acts. Second, baptism and the Eucharist are primary to Christian ethics because both acts member or remember the community of faith. Our baptism tells us who we are as individuals, but more importantly, who we are as a community of faith. Baptism states who we are as a particular people; and because of this, we are called to live within a moral community. Baptism and the Eucharist are efficacious because they are both a representation of what Christ does to us and for us. We do very little, if anything, to accomplish these moral acts. Will Willimon indicates this quite clearly:

In contrast to the human-centered, human-conditioned, Enlightenment view of the sacraments, Christian theology has traditionally asserted that God is the actor, and we are the recipients of what God does through the sacraments. The efficacy of the sacraments does not entirely depend upon us, upon our ability to love God or to lead holy lives. In his infinite love, God has not left us alone. God continually, graciously, gives himself to us and makes himself available to us through touched, tasted, experienced, visible means. This God does (thank God) in spite of our best intentions. We do not have to (nor, in the final analysis, can we) make it happen. If we be loved and if we be healed and if we be saved, it is first and forever because of God's own active, self-giving, initiating love. As Calvin said, "?He condescends to lead us to himself by these earthly elements, and to set before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings he imparts spiritual things under visible ones.?" (William Willimon, Worship as Pastoral Care [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979], 150–51.)

Through baptism, we can come to know who we are because the church, as a moral community, can share its history of Christ with the catechumen. This is how we learn who we are as Christians. Baptism as well as the Eucharist brings us into the recognition of the truths of ourselves, of our sins, and the truths of Christ, in a way that we cannot know by any other means. The Eucharist is also primarily a moral act because we are remembered and reconstituted to Christ in such a way that we can know who he really is. This occurs because he has promised, in a covenant relationship, to be present in this moral act; and he has given us the physical signs in order that we can recognize him as who he is, the Christ. This eucharistic promise is the promise that he will be with us. Therefore, baptism and the Eucharist have everything to do with the way we think positively or negatively about our ministry and worship with the disabled. When we are baptized, we become a particular people. This means that we are brought into a particular moral community that says particular things about the moral life. We are all baptized into one body, the body of Christ. Our Christ died for all people, not for just some. If baptism facilitates our recognition of ourselves as a Christian community, then we must be able to distinguish the difference between living a moral Christian life and excluding "?outsiders?" from a Christian community that lives a particular ethic within the liturgy. The issue is one of dissonance between what we say about baptism and how we relate to those whom we devalue as handicapped persons. That is to say, if we are really claiming that baptism is a celebration of the identity of the Christian community, then we must learn to fully accept our Christian response to minister to, minister with, and minister on behalf of persons with developmental disabilities. As Willimon writes, "?In baptism the church is saying to the candidate: '?You are ours, and we are God's.?' … we claim you and … God will make claims upon you. You are now a part of the body.?" (Willimon 157). The challenge to the church is that they remember their baptism as a communal event and begin to claim the persons with developmental disabilities as their own, for baptism calls us to this community. If Christ is present and active in baptism and the Eucharist, then we must also recognize that Christ is present for all in his body and blood for he has certainly promised to be. Therefore, we must all become one though we are many, though we are different, because Christ has reconstituted us all as new beings of one body. This paper grows out of our experience in working with persons with developmental disabilities. From largely our experience, we have concluded that the communal nature of the Christian faith must shape ministry to persons with developmental disabilities. This is to say, we must be able to look at the liturgy of the church and question what it is about the liturgy that shapes and forms a community of faith. However, we must understand that the liturgy calls us to respond to those things we profess. From this perspective, we realize that the liturgy is the ethical norm which calls us to a daily renewal of Christian life and ministry. We are called to rethink what we have said in the past and move on to the pressing present needs of ministry that meets the needs of the total community. John Westerhoff has written in On the Threshold of God's Future:

While the first duty of the church is worship, the primary responsibility of the church is to the world where its people live and work. Unlike other institutions founded for the benefit of their own members, the church is a community founded for the benefit of others. To be Christian is to be baptized and therefore adopted into a community called into life and to bear witness to how God's reign has come, is coming and will come. So everything we receive when we come to take Eucharist is immediately turned into a responsibility to live a eucharistic life. The church is to be a sign of God's forgiving, suffering, reconciling love as represented in this story and a witness to that love in society through the actions and words of its people, whose life stories have been transformed by God's story. The church must never become a place of escape or a sanctuary from the world. The world is God's and is good. It has been corrupted by God's creatures, who in their freedom distort and deny the truth about themselves and God's reign, who obscure the activity of God. Still God loves this world and creatively is acting within it to the end that the divine will is done and the divine reign comes. This same God in the mystery of creation has brought into being a community to be the sign of and witness to the continuing transformation of the world through suffering love. As that called community, we gather to worship God, to place our total dependence upon God and God's ways, to discern God's will, to receive the gift of power, to cooperate in God's saving work, to act with God and thereby illumine and enlighten the world to God's love, and to serve the world by joining God in ministering to its needs—especially those of the weak, estranged, poor, sick, oppressed, and downtrodden. As God has loved the world in Jesus Christ, so we as God's body love the world. To that ministry all of us who have been signed with the cross and marked as Christ's own forever are called and empowered. (John H. Westerhoff and Caroline Hughes, On the Threshold of God's Future [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986], 82.)