Studying Sardis: Waking up and taking the next step

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Yesterday I wrote about Laodicea; today I’d like to back up a few verses to check out the way the church in Sardis is described.
I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. {Revelation 3:1b-2}
While you ponder that, consider what Dr. Erik W. Carter shares on page 7 of Including People with Disabilities in Faith Communities,
LaRocque and Eigenbrood (2005) surveyed 91 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations about how accessible they were for people with disabilities. Most reported being only in the very early stages of increasing their accessibility. For example, although 71% of congregations said general awareness of barriers to the participation of children and adults existed in their faith community, 69% of congregations reported that they had not yet started or were only getting started at transforming their community “into a place where children and adults with disabilities are welcomed, fully included, and treated with respect” (p. 60). Furthermore, only 53% of congregations said that they were well on their way to increasing the participation of people with disabilities in their congregation and only 28% had explored partnerships with community agencies and organizations serving people with disabilities.
Consider the implications of that. Nearly 30% of religious congregations don’t even have a general awareness of barriers to including people with special needs. More than half were doing nothing about it or just getting started. Less than a third had reached out to those in the community with more expertise.

Granted, that research wasn’t just limited to Christian congregations, but it’s worth considering nonetheless (particularly because so little research is available about religious life and disabilities).
Now look back at Christ’s words to the church in Sardis:
I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. {Revelation 3:1b-2}
What do you think He would have to say about our reputation? Let’s become a church – in the broad sense – that strengthens what remains and is about to die. For some churches, that might mean stepping up our efforts to fully welcome and include people with special needs. For others, it may be starting something new because no efforts have been made yet.

Whatever that next step is, do it. Wake up. Strengthen what remains and is about to die.

Be alive.

Learning from Laodicea: No condescending attitudes

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When I consider the church in Laodicea, the first word that comes to mind usually is “lukewarm.” However, the next verse after Christ calls that church out as neither hot than cold is also worth knowing:
For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. {Revelation 3:17}
Special needs ministry isn’t done with condescension. It isn’t meant to exalt the helpers and pity the helped. It’s not even meant to separate folks into those two groups, because it should be ministry with others not ministry to others.

When I see the prideful attitude of “oh, look at what a good thing I’m doing” in someone involved in this ministry or any other ministry – and when I see that pride in myself – I need the reminder that I’m not serving “the least of these;” I am the least of these. I’m not rich, prosperous, and complete; I am wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I am thankful for the opportunity to serve alongside some sweet friends with disabilities. And I am thankful that God allows me to do so.

Messy advocacy vs. partnerships

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Since I began this blog just over three months ago, I've come across a couple news reports about churches turning away families who have children with special needs. This is a tough topic to address, but it's worth discussing. Before I dive in, though, I want to make a few things clear:
  • I have no first-hand knowledge of any of these instances. I don't even know any of the church leaders or families involved in any of these stories. That is why I am choosing not to link to any news articles.
  • All news has some bias. No two reporters would write the same article in the same way. Bias isn't always a bad thing, but it's wise to remember that the writer's experiences and opinions and culture influence his or her writing. The concept of bias in media is usually frowned upon; meanwhile, I think it's naive to expect any writer to be bias-free.
  • In almost every instance like the ones I'll be discussing, the church usually issues statements while the families sit down for interviews. This set-up lends itself easily to sympathy toward the family, because they are seen as people, and blame toward the church, because it is seen as the big, bad institution. 
  • Sometimes the church has failed. Sometimes the families have perceived insults where none exist. Sometimes it's been a mix of each. And sometimes the whole situation is unclear. Unless we have first-hand knowledge, we can't know what exactly occurred.
 If this post seems more raw than many of my others, that's because I'm still working through the best way to respond. I've held my tongue (or, as a blogger, should I say "held my fingers?") until now, but I feel like it would be timid to avoid the subject altogether, given that I blog about the church's responsibility to welcome individuals with special needs.

As I'm wrestling with this, here are a few takeaways. I'd love to know what else you've taken away from news reports of this nature, so please leave a comment!
  • Churches need to be mindful that families with special needs have often been judged, hurt, looked down on, ignored, mocked, and pitied. Because of that, consider how much compassion you would show any other family in a similar situation, and then dial it up five notches.
  • Good parenting involves advocating for your kids. When a child has special needs, this is even more true. Parents of kids with special needs often have to advocate for health care and social opportunities and education and acceptance and a whole slew of other needs. Advocacy often become a way of life out of necessity. 
  • Effective ministry leaders partner with parents so that their children may hear the gospel and treasure Christ. The best outcomes I've seen involve friendly churches partnering with parents who advocate well for their children with special needs.
  • Advocacy can backfire if it becomes adversarial. In solid church + home partnerships, it's not advocacy against something. It's mutual advocacy for the child and the family and the church. If either side becomes adversarial, the outcome will be messy.
  • God is for the church, and God is for the family. He created both as institutions for his glory and our good. He is an advocate for both. That's why the best scenarios are ones in which the church advocates for the family and the family advocates for the church, with both motivated by the God who created each. That's a true partnership, rather than messy advocacy from either party.
We live in a fallen world. You can find sin in churches and families and media outlets. And thank God that we can find solace from sin in Christ. In Christ, we have hope that we will have a perfect, sinless reality in heaven, one that far exceeds the world in which we live now. But the prayer "thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven" teaches us that we shouldn't just shrug and accept the fallen world as if we can do nothing but hope for the other side of eternity. As we pray "thy kingdom come," what would that look like for the church and the family when a family whose child has special needs arrives at any given church this Sunday?

As I said earlier, I'm still wrestling with what we should learn from all this, and I would love to know your thoughts. Do you agree with what I've put out here? Disagree or think I'm missing something? What have your thoughts been when you've heard news stories about churches turning away people with special needs?

See the person. See the image of God. See the handiwork. See the righteousness.

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When God looks at me, he sees righteousness. I am a sinner but the biblical doctrine of imputed righteousness “teaches that the saving work of Christ includes not only his bearing the penalty for our sins, but also becoming a perfect righteousness for us that is imputed to us through our union with him” (Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ). This is based in large part on Romans 4 if you want to dig a little deeper; see also Genesis 15:6, Philippians 3:8-9, and Romans 5. The verse that speaks this most clearly to me, though, is 2 Corinthians 5:21:
“For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
That’s what I mean when I say that when God looks at us He sees righteousness if we have received it by faith. Is it our own righteousness? Heavens, no! It is Christ’s.

Furthermore, the Bible is clear that we were made in God’s image (beginning in Genesis 1), knitted together by him (Psalm 139) with predetermined purposes (see these verses) before birth.

When we look at one another, we should not, therefore, be so wrapped up in what makes us different that we fail to see each other as Christ did and as God does. If someone has received salvation in Christ through faith, then he has been credited as righteous in Christ. Even those who reject Christ or don't know him yet are still intimately created by him and in his image.

See the person, not just the diagnosis. See the image of God, not just the disability. See the handiwork knitted by God’s own hands, not just the special needs.

We’re able to ignore people if we reduce them to a disability; we can’t do that if we see God in them.