'Silent Night,' busy days focus on accessibility

BY BILL FENTUM
Special Correspondent

United Methodist Bishop Peggy Johnson kept a secret as a child, telling few people that she was born with an underdeveloped left eye and had to wear a false one. She lost her shyness, though, once she realized God had a plan for her life.

“God used my partial blindness,” she says, “to give me a heart for ministry to people with disabilities.” It led her to serve 20 years as pastor of Christ UMC of the Deaf in Baltimore, MD.

Bishop Johnson, now episcopal leader of the denomination’s Eastern Pennsylvania and Peninsula-Delaware conferences, told her story Oct. 3 during a benefit dinner for Deaf ministries at Lovers Lane UMC, Dallas.

The 6th annual “Silent Night” dinner included a silent auction that raised over $4,000 for interpreters, mission trips and the Lovers Lane Academy for the Deaf, a school the church opened in 2008. Interpretive dancer Sue Harper and a sign choir from Mesquite’s Family Cathedral of Praise served as musical guests. Bishop Johnson, in a keynote speech, shared several memories from her years at the Baltimore church, where she learned to expect occasional miracles.

One member, a Deaf teenager named Sharon, felt angry at the world and hated going to church. “When I tried to talk to her,” Bishop Johnson recalled, “she just closed her eyes so she couldn’t see me signing.”

Sharon had hoped to go to her senior prom, but her family had no money. So the congregation pitched in to pay for a dress and a hair braiding. On the big night Sharon was beautiful, and classmates elected her “prom queen.”

“Her whole attitude changed,” Bishop Johnson said. “That can happen to people, if you pour enough love into them.”

Rev. Tom Hudspeth, Lovers Lane’s pastor for Deaf ministries, has witnessed similar growth in youth and young adults at the Academy. Most of them were previously taught in public schools where special classes often failed to develop their practical and communication skills.

“Our teachers take time to build their self-esteem,” Dr. Hudspeth said. “People who knew the students before say they’ve seen a huge transformation.”

Bishop Johnson and Dr. Hudspeth also took part in “Beyond Disability in Ministry,” an Oct. 5 lunch workshop at the North Texas Conference office in Plano. The event, sponsored by the conference’s Disability Concerns Committee, offered tips on making local churches accessible to everyone.

It doesn’t cost much, Bishop Johnson said at the workshop, to add listening devices, wheelchair ramps and other basic services. It’s too easy, though, to forget that church members with disabilities have their own gifts to share.

“One of my biggest fears,” she said, “is that we’ll look at our accessibility and say, ‘What a wonderful job we’re doing for them.’ It’s not about them and us; it’s about all of us together.”

For instance, Charlotte, a girl with cerebral palsy, visited a Deaf school in Kenya on a mission trip from the Baltimore church. Leaders worried that her special needs might hurt the mission.

“As it turned out,” Bishop Johnson said, “Charlotte was the star. A lot of kids at the school had cerebral palsy, and looked up to her. She taught them to be self-assertive, that they could achieve things just like her.”

Leslie Bledsoe, wife of North Texas Bishop Earl Bledsoe, lost her sight in 2000 after a staph infection damaged her optic nerves. She hopes researchers will fi nd a cure, but she told workshop participants she no longer considers her blindness to be a disability.

“Sometimes we let society tell us we need to step back and let other people do things for us,” she said. “But nobody has a right to tell you fundhow far you can go.”

Mrs. Bledsoe dictates oral notes each day on a cassette recorder, and uses a cell phone equipped with a GPS (Global Positioning System) to guide her movements. “That’s God at work,” she said, “people inventing ways to help other people move through life.”

The Disability Concerns Committee of the NTC posts resources at the Disability Concerns page, to help congregations reach out to the estimated half million people in the region who live with disabilities.

“That’s a big mission field,” said the Rev. Liz Moen, who co-chairs the committee. “But it doesn’t take a large church to make a difference.”
 

Dr. Hudspeth signs at dinner.