EBOOK

Disability and the Church

A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion

Lamar Hardwick
(0)
Pages
208
Year
2021
Language
English

About

Lamar Hardwick was thirty-six years old when he found out he was on the autism spectrum. While this revelation helped him understand and process his own experience, it also prompted a difficult re-evaluation of who he was as a person. And as a pastor, it started him on a new path of considering the way disabled people are treated in the church.
Disability and the Church is a practical and theological reconsideration of the church's responsibilities to the disabled community. Too often disabled persons are pushed away from the church or made to feel unwelcome in any number of ways. As Hardwick writes, "This should not be." He insists that the good news of Jesus affirms God's image in all people, and he offers practical steps and strategies to build stronger, truly inclusive communities of faith.

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Reviews

"In a time when first-person disability narratives remain hard to come by, Disability and the Church presents a marvelous example of the power of disabled voices in the church. Rev. Dr. Hardwick provides his readers with a powerful message about not only accepting people with disabilities but including them as church leaders. Masterfully interweaving his personal narrative with Scripture and the h
Devan Stahl, Baylor University
"A disability is not a sickness or even necessarily a weakness. It is just a limitation, a uniqueness, that enables a person to make a vitally important and distinctive contribution to life and to the Christian community. At the same time, to some in the church a person with a disability could appear to seem 'the weakest and least important' member of the Jesus community, but instead they are to b
Larry K. Asplund, Regent University School of Divinity
"Lamar Hardwick was designed by God to write this resource for the church. Lamar perfectly weaves together his personal experience, the history of the church, and today's much-needed conversation on diversity to lay a blueprint for inclusion in the local church."
Ryan Wolfe, president and executive director of Ability Ministry

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