When Rick McLean, our pastor over Special Ministries, agreed to team teach a class on disabilities at The Master’s College last fall, he knew what his biggest challenge would be. How could he teach a course on suffering and physical affliction to a group of young, healthy college students and still make the course personal? How could he make it about more than reading assignments and final exams?
McLean, along with Gene Newman, his co-teacher and the man who founded Grace Church’s ministry to the disabled in the 1970s, came up with an unorthodox answer: require students to become disabled—at least for a time.
And so if you visited TMC last fall, you might have seen an unusual number of students trying to navigate the hillside campus in wheelchairs. That was an assignment. If you visited the classroom during any of its Monday evening sessions, you might have seen students attempting to eat dinner in the dark. Another assignment.
“We wanted to teach these kids what disabled people go through,” McLean says. “One of our goals was to make them more sensitive to their suffering.”
Josiah Neeley, a sophomore from Ripon, California, believes the assignments easily met that objective. They taught him lessons he couldn’t have learned any other way.
“Being in a wheelchair was as hard as I expected it to be physically,” he says. “But it was much more difficult on the emotional side. It was more humbling than I expected—to always have to ask for help was tough. It really helped us to realize how hard it is to be disabled.”
McLean and Newman divided each of the three-hour classes into three sections. During the first hour they taught on the theology of suffering, learning the biblical perspective on disabilities and the disabled. The second hour featured a guest speaker and the third hour was for discussing practical ways the church can serve this mostly underserved component of the population.
McLean says Newman, who serves in the Wheels Around the World ministry of Joni and Friends, came up with the course direction.
“Gene is an amazing guy—a real expert on the subject,” McLean says. “He started our Special Ministries program 36 years ago. It has been a joy for me to work with him in this class.”
The idea for the course came from Dr. Tom Halstead, chairman of the college’s Department of Biblical Studies. Once he decided to add a disabilities emphasisto the school’s offerings, contacting the Special Ministries office at Grace Church was an obvious next step. McLean and Newman got to work on a curriculum and the course was added to the fall semester schedule.
Neeley, who is majoring in Liberal Studies with an emphasis in teacher education, enrolled because he hopes to teach special education. The course has affirmed that direction.
“It’s hard to learn about suffering, but the more you do the more you know about how merciful God is,” Neeley says. “You learn how homesick we should be for heaven. I can’t wait to get there and see the disabled people I’ve met—people who will no longer have disabilities.”
Neeley was particularly struck by the course’s guest speakers, who included parents of autistic children, children with Down’s Syndrome, and people with physical disabilities such as Joni Eareckson Tada of Joni and Friends.
“When Joni came in to class, the first thing she said was, ‘I’m so blessed. I have my health except for breast cancer and chronic pain.’ And she was being serious,” Neeley says.
Neeley has already begun to put what’s he’s learned to use here at Grace Church. He’s begun teaching in our Sunday School class for the mentally disabled.
“He was really excited about putting together a message,” McLean says. “We’ve had several students visit the ministry. Our desire was to educate students about disabilities and what the Bible has to say about the subject, how to minister to the disabled, and how a church can minister and encourage these people that God loves.”
The message is sinking in, obviously. Students are embracing the opportunity to serve the disabled and their families—and not because they comprehend the facts, but because they feel the need. For a semester at least, they tasted it for themselves.
“Biblical Perspective on Suffering and Disability”is offered annually at The Master’s College. To register or audit the course, contact the Registrar’s Office at 661-259-3540. For information about serving in Special Ministries at Grace Church, contact Rick McLean at 818-909-5500.