March 2025
By The Revd Holly Newton
Last month members of the White Horse Team Ministry churches, along with others from churches across the community and surrounding areas, gathered to explore the topic of disability justice and church inclusion.
We explored key themes in disability theology, looked at research data outcomes, shared practical suggestions for increasing accessibility and inclusion, had a fantastic time of sharing from Revd Neil Robinson (Chaplain to the Deaf and hard of hearing community in Salisbury Diocese) and joined in a time of inclusive worship.
It seemed particularly appropriate that this event fell on the day after Valentine’s Day – a day we often equate with romantic love. In fact, for the Church, this is a day on which we remember St Valentine – believed to be a 3rd Century Roman priest who dedicated his life to serving persecuted Christians and who was eventually martyred for his beliefs. Valentine’s Day, therefore, is really a day on which we remember love in all its forms – love in the pattern of the self-sacrificial love of Christ.
When we come to explore the topic of inclusion and justice for all those whom society and the Church has over the centuries excluded – what this is really about is Christ-like love for one another. This love impels us to ensure that all are welcomed and valued and encouraged to use our unique gifts and perspectives and experiences within the body of Christ in which the breadth of humanity is embraced and in which each individual enriches the whole (1 Corinthians 12:12-26).
This requires spaces of sincere fellowship and deep trust. Spaces where all feel safe to share, to be honest, to be vulnerable.
As Christians, vulnerability is something we must embrace. We are human, limited, finite – but we are offered eternity by our infinite and relational God in whose image we are made. We must acknowledge that we are dependent upon God and inter-dependent with one another. Jesus Christ came into our humanity to live and die with and for us, taking vulnerability and suffering into God’s very self and rising with the scars of human experience etched into His hands and feet in order to draw us into new life – a life in which the giftedness of relationship and vulnerability are the only way, the Kingdom way. As churches, we need to reclaim this giftedness.
Christ is God made known, God vulnerable, God disabled, God broken for us. As we share in Christ’s brokenness, so we share in Christ’s life (2 Corinthians 4:7-10). We need not shy away from the fullness of life which includes beauty and brokenness, limitation and eternity, strength and vulnerability, suffering and blessing.
May our churches be places where all are welcomed and valued, where all may find a place of belonging, where the fullness of human experience is embraced and celebrated – that we might grow to ever more fully reflect the relational God of inclusive love whom we serve.
Recording of the White Horse Ministry Team Inclusion and Justice day
For a copy of the slides from the day please email Holly at: teamcurate@whtministry.org.uk
The Revd Holly Newton is White Horse Ministry Assistant Team Curate. She graduated from Sarum College in 2022. Her interest in disability and church inclusion developed over many years of living with the long-term chronic health condition ME/CFS, as well as through experience of the access challenges of her neurodivergent daughter. Her passion for this area of ministry has grown throughout her ordination training and curacy. During the past year, she has been conducting research on disability theology, disability justice and church inclusion.
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