Disabling Leadership: A Practical Theology for the Broken Body of Christ
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
People with disabilities are often excluded from full participation in church communities. Accessibility is a key component of the biblical ministry of reconciliation—but it’s not enough. To truly work toward reconciliation, churches must both consider the theological implications of disability and also become places where people with disabilities lead.
Disabling Leadership presents a practical theology of disability for thoughtful church leaders and congregants. Written by practitioners and a scholar-pastor who are engaged in ministry together, this book encompasses cutting-edge theological ethics as well as stories of how such commitments are embodied in a real church community. The authors equip readers to explore key themes such as:
what it means to be human
how to understand suffering and healing
how churches can be welcoming and accessible communities
how to face common challenges and issues in resisting ableism
Disabling Leadership moves beyond paternalistic views of disability that seek to extract “inspiration” from another’s story without engaging in the difficult work of just and dignifying relationships. When we foster genuinely inclusive leadership teams, the authors contend, our churches will be less likely to treat anyone as a “project” and will better reflect God’s love as the body of Christ.
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- Presents a practical theology of disability for thoughtful church leaders and congregants
- Encompasses cutting-edge theological ethics
- Introduction
- 1. A Theology of Leadership and Disability
- 2. Learning from People with Disabilities
- 3. Inclusive Church Leadership
- 4. Creating an Accessible Community
- Conclusion
To what degree has the church in North America been disabling leadership due to its presumptions that people with disabilities are more followers rather than given gifts of leading? Draper, Michele, and Mae here pull back the curtain on their own experiences navigating these questions as such persons called to ministry with other temporarily enabled individuals, and they invite the rest of us into a more welcoming community that envisions and embodies more inclusive ways of following in the footsteps of Jesus the Messiah in the present time.
—Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission at Fuller Seminary
While many books on disability and church focus on welcoming people with disabilities as participants, Disabling Leadership articulates a crucial and distinctively theological framework for welcoming their leadership as well. Helpfully included is concrete guidance for communities who seek to live out the richness of the diversity of the body of Christ—including diversity of abilities and disabilities—in every facet of their communal life. A welcome addition to the disability theology conversation.
—Bethany McKinney Fox, author of Disability and the Way of Jesus: Holistic Healing in the Gospels and the Church
I have had the genuine privilege of seeing the team ministry described in this book in action. For Draper, Michele, and Mae the ministry of the differently abled is not aspiration but reality, and in Disabling Leadership they accessibly show how theologically rich and interpersonally rewarding such ministry can be. This book shifts the goalpost: mere inclusion of disabled people is not what the church needs. What it needs—and needs desperately—is the leadership of differently abled members of Christ's broken and gloriously resurrected body.
—Brian Brock, professor of moral and practical theology at the University of Aberdeen
- Title: Disabling Leadership: A Practical Theology for the Broken Body of Christ
- Authors: Andrew Thomas Draper, Jody Michele, Andrea Mae
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Pastoral theology; Church work with people with disabilities; Disabilities—Religious aspects—Christianity; Christian leadership
- ISBNs: 9781514003367, 9781514003350, 1514003368, 151400335X
- Resource ID: LLS:DSBLNGLDRSHP
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-07T14:33:41Z