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Videos Give Churches Personal Insights into Disabilities Concerns

August 27, 2014

Michael Feir, a member of Meadowvale Community Church of Mississauga, Ontario, has been blind since birth.

But his blindness is not a deterrent to leading a full life that is filled with grace and joy, he says on one of several new videos recently posted by the Christian Reformed Church’s Office of Disability Concerns.

Disability Concerns posted the new videos for churches to use for disability awareness worship services, discussion starters, or small groups.

“We wanted to create videos on various topics that could be used by churches in a variety of settings including worship and Sunday school,” said Rev. Mark Stephenson, director of the CRC’s Office of Disability Concerns. “The three videos available cover vocation, church support, and disability discrimination. We have a number of additional videos in the works.”

These videos were created so that they can be branded both for CRC and for Reformed Church in America Disability Concerns ministries.

Coming soon, the website will have videos from all the presentations from the office’s conference on Aug. 8 titled "Doing Ministry with Youth on the Margins."

The current video featuring Feir takes a look at disability and vocation. In it, he speaks of having technology skills that he uses in various ways to help people, as well as talks about how much support he has gotten from his church.

“My days range from days of absorbing information — reading, podcasts, documentaries, books,” he says.

“I help people learn and use their technology, be it computers or the Internet, and I help people who need a person to help them think clearly.”

Many of those he helps are friends who attend his church, which he says has a special gift for reaching out to people such as himself and making them feel included.

Another video focuses on the Pot family and how much support they, too, have received from their church, in this case Jubilee Fellowship CRC of St. Catherine’s, Ontario, following the birth of their daughters, Rachel and Janneke who have disabilities.

“Rachel and Janneke remind us of the brokenness that exists in everyone,” says  Ralph Pot in the video.

If a family has a disability in it, it can be much easier to simply walk away from the church, he says.

But they didn’t do that and their church has been a support. Ralph Pot says a good example was how church members pledged their support through prayer and in other important ways when Rachel and Janneke were baptized.

“The church has done well in facing this challenge,” he says.

A third video features Francine Bell, a member of Pullman CRC in Chicago, who speaks about disability discrimination.

“Many times  people with disabilities are judged on their appearance before you get a chance to know them,” she says.

“Before you give people a chance to do what they can do … You’ve already  decided (what they can do). This makes me want to see people  from the inside out and that is the way I want to be seen as well.”

In addition, there is a video clip of an awards ceremony for Nella Uivlugt, the late Friendship Ministries director,  posthumously receiving the Henri Nouwen Award from the Religion and Spirituality Division of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Finally, links to several other videos include:

  • a recording of the presentation that the CRC/Reformed Church in America joint disability concerns ministry made this summer to Synod 2014
  • Stephenson being interviewed on the television program  “Crossroad Connection”
  • a popular and touching video of people with various disabilities reading sections of Psalm 139.