Baylor workshop focuses on faith, disability and culture

WACO—Amy Julia Becker, author and speaker on faith, disability and culture, challenged ministry leaders, volunteers and education professionals to think differently about disabilities and the church.

Becker addressed reimagining family life and church life with disability at the Sept. 17-18 conference sponsored by the Baylor Center for Developmental Disabilities.

In one presentation, Becker highlighted Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast and the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14.

“He’s not saying you should do this for the sake of charity or justice. He’s saying you should do this because you will be blessed if you do,” Becker added.

“And I think just as that first part of the parable is giving us a different way of thinking, Jesus here again is giving us a different way of thinking and being, a different posture of the heart towards one another. And it’s one that is a way of blessing instead of a way of hate.”

Disability is a natural aspect of the human condition, Becker said. Humans are limited, vulnerable, needy, dependent creatures, but humans also are gifted, filled with possibility, inherently valuable and beloved by God, she asserted.

“What we get consistently throughout Scripture is this proclamation that we are gifts that God has created for his purpose,” Becker said.

“We are invited to understand and live out a different anthropology than what we get in our world, which is all about status and hierarchy and who is on top and who is not.”

Becker—author of To Be Made Well, White Picket Fences, Small Talk and A Good and Perfect Gift—created the “Reimagining Family Life with Disability” workshops. She also hosts a podcast, “Reimagining the Good Life.”

“It has been such a delight to be here,” Becker said.

“I have always loved speaking and writing and reading about theology and about the Bible. And yet, the disability piece was completely foreign to me until I was two years into seminary, and our oldest daughter was born and diagnosed with Down syndrome, which really just caused a personal, spiritual crisis for me,” she said.

She called her first book, A Good and Perfect Gift, “a spiritual memoir about what it took to receive my daughter as a gift and to see her that way.”

“That not only transformed the way I saw people with disabilities, but the way I saw humans,” she said. “Instead of seeing humans as separate people—some of whom are gifted and some of whom are needy—expands my world into all the humans I encounter having something to offer and something they might need from me.”

While on campus at Baylor, Becker took questions from attendees that spanned how to engage churches in inclusivity towards disabled individuals and ways to invite individuals with special needs to speak up and engage in church activities.

She provided resources for churches such as Baylor Collaborative on Faith and Disability, WITH Ministries, Hope Heals, Disability Ministry Network, and Western: Center for Disability and Ministry to assist in outreach and learning about people who are disabled.

Jason Le Shana, program director for Baylor Collaborative on Faith & Disability, said Becker’s presentations on the church and disability helped those attending understand how to see disabilities from a biblical perspective.

Families were invited during workshops to reimagine their family lives to see disability as a blessing and something to celebrate, to make room for lament where needed and to take delight in family members who have disabilities.

“Amy Julia Becker is a thought leader and a trusted resource on these topics of disability and family life and church,” Le Shana said.

“She talked about acknowledging the scripts and picture of disability society gives us and invites us to a more gospel-centered reality around disability—to imagine disability, not according to the scripts of the world as tragic or somehow a burden or inspiration only, but as humanity and as people who are loved by God and have a lot to contribute.”

The center is continuing research in the intersection of faith, culture and disability to serve churches and leaders.

“Our center has been doing this kind of faith and disability work for about a year and a half, Le Shana said.

“Our goal is to be a hub for new research on congregational life and disability, on theological perspectives around disability and in doing that in a space where there’s not a lot of work out there.”

Research examining pastoral perspectives on disability and disabled adults and faith also is ongoing.

“Our dream and our vision is to become a trusted resource for congregations, for families in the intersection of disability and faith,” she said.