Many Parts, One Body: Introduction

On Tuesday, I posted my personal and ministry testimony from the opening worship of the Bifrost Arts Cry of the Poor conference. It was truly a unique gathering, as worship leaders and pastors and others brought our minds and hearts together to explore the intersection of worship, community, and mercy. 

Here is the way that the director of Bifrost Arts described it:

Conversations about worship in the church often focus on the style of our music, or on the formality of our aesthetics, or on the content of our lyrics. In many churches, conversations about worship can become completely centered around the congregation’s priorities, so much so that they can even lose sight of God’s priorities for our worship.

Throughout the Bible, God tells His people time and time again that if they are disobedient to His Word that He will not accept their worship. In His Word, He commands His people to worship Him alone and to obey His commands to serve the poor and needy. In fact, God specifically admonishes His people “whoever closes His ear to the cry of the poor will himself cry out and not be answered” (Proverbs 21:13).

This April, Bifrost Arts presents a worship conference entitled “The Cry of the Poor: worship, mercy, and community.” At this event we will focus on two things: First, we will make a theological case, specifically from Isaiah 55-61 for the connection between worship and obedience. Secondly, we will have a series of practical workshops about how local congregations can better serve the least of these in our midst and in our communities. We will have conversations about worshiping with those with disabilities, worshiping in a multilingual context, worship and the elderly, forming our children for mercy, and the formation of communities through the arts.

See what I mean? I am so thankful to have been part of such an amazing conference. If I didn't worship a sovereign God, I would say it happened by accident.

You see, I had decided to take a break from speaking engagements as we adjusted to life with Zoe and life with Robbie's epilepsy. If I hadn't, I would have submitted a presentation proposal for the Accessibility Summit, which ended just a couple days before Cry of the Poor. If I had been planning to attend the Accessibility Summit, I wouldn't have been free to say yes when Isaac called from Bifrost Arts. 

Below is my session title and description, and over the next several days, I'll share the five major points I made:

Title:
Many Parts, One Body

Description: 

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 lays out God's intent for diversity in the body of Christ and in the gifts of her members. In this session, we'll talk through 5 practical ways to live out God's design for the church, specifically considering ways that people with and without disabilities can engage together in worship and Christian community.

Many thanks to the Bifrost Arts team for their hospitality and exceptional event vision and planning. It was a privilege to take part in it. 

our Trend Setter

My biggest concern about sending Jocelyn to kindergarten?

I worried that she would lose her independent streak. I didn't want her flair and precociousness to be replaced with conformity.

Well, here she is at the start of the year. 

Check out the end of year shots below.

Anyone wonder why her teachers chose "Trend Setter" as her kindergarten superlative? 

In case you're wondering, I didn't ask her to pose. This is just what she did all on her own when I took the camera out.

Conformity? Not for this girl.

Dr. Floyd on mental illness to the Southern Baptist Convention

Yesterday, Dr. Ronnie Floyd of Arkansas made a passionate - and needed - plea from the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention in Houston, Texas. I am thankful for his leadership. 

Here is the text of his statement:

Mr. President and Messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention, I wanted to appeal to you for your overwhelming support of this motion. Jesus called us to care for the suffering, “the least of these.”

We often overlook them. At times, their lives are so disrupted and severe they require intervention. These people and their families are often isolated, stigmatized, and rejected. They are referred to as “the mentally ill.”

Our churches and communities are filled with people who need us to minister to them and their families. 58 million Americans and 450 million people globally meet criteria for a mental disorder. These are often chronic conditions that must be managed, not cured. One million of these individuals around the world die as the result of suicide annually.

In recent years and days, we have seen mass shootings and disturbing events that have left us stunned. Even some of our well-known Southern Baptist families have lost loved ones due to mental health challenges. Southern Baptist Pastor, Rick Warren tweeted recently: “Why is it...if any other organ in your body breaks you get sympathy, but if your brain breaks, you get secrecy and shame?”

The church must answer this question. We can no longer be silent about this issue and we must cease with stigmatizing those with mental health challenges. Pastors, church leaders, and all of our churches must become equipped to care for the least of these.

When that horrific EF5 tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma, our Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers were on the scene immediately. Baptist Press reported a powerful testimony of a woman who was led to Christ by one of our chaplains. She stated, “I was going to take my life today. But now I know God cares for me and people care.”

When disasters occur, we do a phenomenal job as Southern Baptists in the middle of material and physical rubble.

Now it is time that we do as great of a job in our churches and our communities, demonstrating compassion in the emotional rubble that can be piled high in the people and their families who deal with mental health challenges. It is time NOW that the Southern Baptist Convention is on the FRONT LINES of the mental health challenges.

Therefore, I call upon the Southern Baptist Convention to rise up with compassion, letting America and the world know, that we will be there to walk with them, minister to them, and encourage them in the mental health challenge that plagues their lives and traps their families from the needed love and support they long for from the body of Christ.

Where did their names come from?

NOTE: A few months after this post, we found out that Patricia's name is pronounced just like our pronunciation of Patricia. I'm leaving this post up because we still share the sentiment that we want to keep their names and heritage intact as much as possible, but her name is PATRICIA not Patreesa. 

~+~

I don't know.

Sorry! We can't post unaltered pictures yet.

Maybe we'll learn that detail, the same way we learned who gave Zoe Amanda's original first name to her. We kept ChiehHsi as a middle name, and I'm thankful our contacts in her country could tell us where the name came from.

Maybe we'll never know who gifted Patience, Philip, and Patreesa with their names. 

Either way, we're keeping them.

Some people opt to rename their children who arrive via adoption. Given Zoe's name and the difficulty pronouncing ChiehHsi with an American tongue, we made that choice last time.

We always planned to keep the given names of older adopted kiddos, though. And we are. 

{So thankful that we really do like each of their names!}

Well, we're keeping the names with one change: the spelling of Patricia. 

In Uganda, the pronunciation is different from what we're accustomed to here. Instead of sounding like -isha, it rhymes with Lisa. From now on, we'll be spelling it to match that pronunciation: Patreesa.

If you write a note or have something else with "Patricia" on it - now or in the future - don't feel bad. The blankie I sent to her in Uganda has that spelling in my script, written with a Sharpie in the corner.

The official spelling of her name will be Patreesa once the court paperwork is said and done, but an accepted spelling will always be Patricia. 

We just won't use it as the official spelling, because no one here will pronounce Patricia in

the way her first parents did. 

the way her siblings do. 

the way everyone in her native culture does. 

the way she learned to.

Patreesa.

I can't take away the losses in her life. 

But I can keep her from the loss of the name she's always known.

My name is Shannon, but I want to tell you about Christian.

I shared this as part of the opening worship at Bifrost Arts' Cry of the Poor conference on April 22, 2013. I'll be sharing more later this week from the notes used in my April 23 session, but this? This demands a post of its own. 


My name is Shannon, but I want to tell you about Christian. 

Christian was seven years old, had autism, and was diagnosed in the fall of 2012 with an aggressive brain tumor. On April 16, 2013, God brought Christian’s earthly life to an end.

I miss him.

While I have comfort in knowing that Christian’s bodily function is no longer being choked by his tumor and he is no longer limited by an inability to communicate in a typical way or by any of those other things about autism that made him a visitor and stranger in this world, I loved him and, selfishly, I miss him.

Christian was so much more than his diagnoses. Christian exuded joy. He loved music, and he shared gifts of authenticity and love and laughter and lack of pretense and so much more. He was as whole and complete and beautiful as I am, and now by God’s glory he is more whole and complete and beautiful than any of us. 

How I long for the day when I will worship with Christian before the King!

You see, I love Christian and my other friends with and without disabilities who I've met through my church’s inclusive ministry because I, too, am a visitor here. I may not have autism or a brain tumor, but I am handicapped daily by my sin. As God calls me not to conform to this world, He sets me apart as a stranger and sojourner in this land. Since my husband and I began leading our church’s inclusive special needs ministry, our youngest daughter Zoe joined our family via special needs adoption from Taiwan due to cerebral palsy; then our son Robbie was diagnosed with epilepsy; and now we’re in the process of adopting again.

I love being a part of a church that welcomes Christians and Shannons and Zoes and Robbies and Philips and all the hard questions our lives pose, especially in the face of trite or cliché theology. I cherish the church that includes all its parts, as laid out in 1 Corinthians 12, and allows, in the words of John 9:3, the works of God to be displayed in disability. I am thankful for the community God has created in my midst, a community that – along with me – loves God and misses Christian.