Fire Hazards

I'm really thankful for the churches I have been a part of for the past few years - Gospel Community and Triad Christian Fellowship. They are both relatively small churches, which I like because I prefer ministry through intimate community rather than through big programs. I also notice, as a person in a wheelchair, how the people notice things and are more real and sensitive about things that affect me. They both have made their facilities more accessible since I've been there, and people are always willing to do things like pour some coffee, open the door, or ask me to take some form of leadership. It's very cool when people treat you with dignity, equality, and compassion.

When you visit other churches, are there things you look for? Maybe you pay close attention to the racial dynamics, or if there is an altar, or the instruments played in the praise and worship time, or if the ladies cover their heads. Well, I notice the seating. I've noticed that most of the big churches I've visited have designated sections for wheelchairs - usually in the very back or the very front. I visited one church with a group of friends, and politely ignored their directions to the wheelchair section, and pulled up on the end of the pew halfway back where all my friends were sitting. "I'm sorry ma'am, but you can't sit here, it's a fire hazard," an usher came up to me and said. He repeated the directions for me to sit in the back with the other wheelchairs. And I said, "But I'm visiting and would like to sit with my friends." He said that I could have one friend sit with me in the back. End of discussion. Oh good grief. The aisle was twice the width of my chair, and it is very hard to not be offended by being called a "fire hazard" by a complete stranger. Cigarettes and coffins are fire hazards, too. And anyway, if there was a fire, don't you think the girl in the wheelchair would want to get out ASAP too??

At GC and TCF the aisles are wide enough that it's never an issue. And anyway, the chairs are moveable, so I can have the ushers move any chair I want so I can sit wherever I want. This freedom makes me feel like a true member of the Body. Those special wheelchair sections may have been created with good intentions (though ignorant), but what they really do is cause more segregation within the Church.

So pay attention to the seating arrangements at your church this week. Is there a designated wheelchair section? How wide are the aisles? Are the chairs moveable? Are there any wheelchair-bound people in your congregation? And if not, maybe start to wonder why....

Throwback Thursday: Svante the Swedish wheelchair

(I plan to post "Throwback Thursday" every two weeks, remembering great moments in my life with a disability...)

It was the end of June, 2012, when I found myself sipping a celebratory iced raspberry mocha at my favorite coffee shop, and do you know why? Because I was the proud parent of Svante the Svedish veelchair! 

I had originally planned to name him James Bond - not for the dashing action-packed 007, but for the stout wheelchair man who first took measurements and detailed notes to create him way back in January. I also considered a green-based name like Kermit, because I ordered a green frame. But today the green frame proved to be really too dark and subtle to be worthy of an iconic green name, and James Bond was absent in the delivery room, and I learned he actually had very little to do with its development. 

Do you know who was responsible for the development and deep green-ness? The Swedes! And so, since the Swedes get overlooked and underappreciated so much, I decided to pay tribute to their excellence in wheelchair building by giving my chair a Swedish name. "Svante" is a common Swedish boy name, and it means "holy." I had not planned on my first adopted international child to be green and have six wheels, nor for him to be from extreme Northern Europe, but of course, God's plans are often not my own. 

Here is the prayer from Ephesians 3 that Svante and I chose to strive to live out fully together: 

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."