I can’t go anywhere, so I decided I might as well use the time to get ready for Sunday.

This Sunday I’m leading worship for Disability Awareness Sunday. This year’s theme from Through the Roof is One Body, Many Parts, based around 1 Corinthians 12:12–27. They’ve produced their own set of free resources, including material for worship, videos and activities, and I’d encourage people to have a look at those first.

I’ve also put together some resources of my own, drawing on work I’ve done over the last few years on disability, worship and belonging. There’s a complete order of service, prayers, hymn suggestions, as well as a separate reflection which can be used or adapted.

Part of the reflection began life as a video written as a letter:

“To the church in the United Kingdom, from Paul. Sorry, not that one…”

It came out of an assignment I wrote for Queen’s on formation and was intended as a resource other people could use. The letter format gave me a way of talking about the Church as a body with a shared life and shared responsibility, rather than simply talking about individual Christians. One of the questions in the video is very simple.

Who is not here?

Around one in four people in the UK live with some form of disability, although even that’s probably an underestimate. Disabled people remain underrepresented in congregational life. There’ll also be disabled people already in our churches who’ve never talked about it, or who’ve never asked for the adaptations that would make participation easier. These are statistics I’ve become very familiar with over the last few years, but they never cease to shock me.

Some of the barriers are fairly obvious. There are still churches where wheelchair users can’t easily get into the building. There are hearing loops which don’t work. Sometimes access means finding somebody who knows where the ramp is, or using a completely different entrance. Other things are easier to miss.

A lot of Sunday worship assumes people can sit still for an hour, cope with unpredictable noise, process a lot of spoken information, move between sitting and standing, and then manage the social demands of the peace, coffee and conversation afterwards. For some neurodivergent people that can be exhausting. Sometimes it can make worship almost impossible. I know from my own experience how much difference the environment makes to whether I can concentrate, listen and actually take part. This was one of the areas I explored in the original assignment alongside physical access.

There’s also the language we use, particularly in hymns. I’ve written about this before.

• I once was blind but now I see.
• Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
• He walks with me.

I’m not suggesting we stop singing every hymn that uses this kind of imagery. Some of them are hymns I love. But blindness is repeatedly used to portray ignorance, while sight is linked with understanding. Standing can signify commitment and walking becomes a metaphor for discipleship.

When we keep using the same language in worship it becomes part of the way we understand faith, bodies and one another, often without us really thinking about it.

John 9 is also part of the reflection. The disciples encounter a man who’s been blind from birth and immediately want an explanation. They don’t see a person, they see a theological issue, a problem to be solved.

Who sinned?

Him or his parents?

Someone must be responsible.

But Jesus refuses to answer the question.

Disability is still often talked about as something which needs an explanation. A battle to be won. Something which must have a purpose. A lesson somebody has been given to teach the rest of us. A problem waiting for a solution. I’ve encountered enough of that kind of theology over the years to know how damaging it can be.

This Sunday, though, the main reading is 1 Corinthians 12.

Paul says that the parts of the body which seem weaker are indispensable. Our ideas about strength and weakness are often tied up with independence. Being able to manage on your own is seen as a good thing. Needing other people can feel like failure.

I’ve heard people say many times that they don’t want to be a burden. I’ve probably said it myself. Yet the body Paul describes can’t work independently. Every part relies on other parts.

This ties in with a lot of my thoughts about the way our faith can become individualistic, particularly in worship music. There’s a lot of I, me and my in some of the songs we sing. My faith. My relationship with God. What Jesus has done for me. My response.

None of that is necessarily wrong, but it can leave us with a picture of Christian faith which is largely about God and me.

Paul is talking about us.

We’re a body. We belong to one another and we rely on one another. Sometimes I’ll need somebody else. Sometimes they’ll need me. Quite often both things will be happening at the same time. That changes through our lives as well. There’ll be times when we can do things which we can’t do later, and times when someone else can do something that we can’t.

Perhaps this is especially difficult because we’ve become so used to treating reliance on other people as something undesirable. We worry about losing our independence. We worry about becoming a burden. But interdependence is already part of what it means to be human, and it’s built into Paul’s description of the Church.

This changes the way we talk about disability and belonging. Disabled people don’t belong because the rest of the Church has kindly made space for us. We’re already part of the body. If some people can’t participate in worship, leadership or the common life of the Church, the whole body is affected. Paul’s description of the Church depends on all its members being part of its life.

That’s some of what I’ll be exploring on Sunday, and some of what sits behind the resources I’ve put together. If they’d be useful in your own church, please use them, adapt them and change them for your own context.

Download or view the Disability Awareness Sunday resources