Customer Reviews

Dancing with Disabilities - Opening the Church to All God's Children

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This book opened my eyes.

I guess I just never considered that the church could be sending an "excluding" message to those with disabilities, yet after reading this book, I accept that this is a reality for some with special needs. As a future church leader, I wonder what my ministry will look like, and specificially, how I will work to encourage unity and an open-arms policy to all people, regardless of who they are. This book challenged me to think about the many families in our world who might not be experiencing the freeing love of Christ in a community, such as a church, because a loved-one is excluded because of their disability.

I was completely outraged by the chapter, appropriately titled, "Letters to a disabled church." If you want to read about Christians who are so tied up in the "business" of running the church, then this chapter is for you! How disappointing. YOU MUST READ THIS CHAPTER. It will remind you, that perhaps it is US, the church, who is disabled, NOT the children of God, who happen to have disabilities.

As someone who has a family member (a cousin) with a disability, I have always understood the stresses and demands of a child with special needs. Yet, perhaps I have been naive... I think I almost assumed that the church would provide unconditional love to my cousin and others like him. After reading this book, it is clear to me that the gospel might be preached on a Sunday, but it is not EMBRACED in practice in some churches... It invites an essential challenge -- the church MUST step up.... and remedy the church's disabled state.

A MUST READ for anyone concerned with God's love...and the role of the church is being a mediator of that love!

This is a collection of essays, with some of the unevenness that this will always produce, but it is brilliantly thought and written. Despite the wheelchair dancers on the cover, it is not at all about dancing, but is an intellectual ramble through church history, liturgical styles and thought, inclusiveness as the family of God, and much more. Read and understood, it is a wonderful insight into why the church is impoverished when it marginalizes or excludes, knowingly or unwittingly, persons with disabilities. Again, despite the cover, it is more about learning disabled than mobility disabled, and as someone whose experience was with mobility disabilities, this book was a tremendous insight for me.

This is a "MUST READ" for anyone involved in ministry to people with disabilities. Not only is it a MUST READ, it's a "MUST HAVE" for your personal library: while you're at it, get a copy FOR YOUR CHURCH LIBRARY.