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One Body, One Spirit with Jason Epps and Paul Pettit: Podcast Episode 116

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Sandra Peoples interviews Jason Epps and Paul Pettit about their book, One Body, One Spirit: Disability & Community in the Church. Hear about their friendship and how Jason's challenges with church accessibility led to them writing this book together. 

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Sandra Peoples: Hi friends. I'm Sandra Peoples, one of the co-host for Key Ministry, The Podcast. This is episode 116, and during our time together today, I'm excited to interview Jason Epps and Paul Pettit authors of the book One Body, one Spirit, Disability and Community in the Church. Jason and Paul, thank you so much for joining me today, and let's start out by both of you introducing yourselves, telling us a little bit about you. So Jason, do you want to go first?

Jason Epps: Sure, sure. So I originally am from Florida, moved to Chicago to do my undergrad at Moody Bible Institute. Then I went to Texas. Now I'm at Midwestern getting my PhD. I'm currently in the writing phase, so it's a lot of hurry up and wait, but I'm enjoying it. I also teach Part-time as an adjunct at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and it's a fantastic school and I'm really enjoying it, and I just love that God gave us the opportunity to work together and do this book. I've lived with cerebral palsy all my life, and as your listeners might be able to tell, I'm more on the high functioning side of disability, which is kind of left me feeling like almost a third-culture kid, not really fitting in with the culture with disabilities because I'm too high-functioning, not really for the longest time fitting in with my peers because I couldn't really do the high impact sports and things that they would do. I mean, the dorm that I was in at Moody was known as the sports dorm, if that doesn't jive well… Which interestingly enough, Paul and I were in opposite dorms. Obviously we weren't there at the same time, but it's like I was in Dryer, he was in Colby. So there's a fun rivalry between the two. That is fun. I'm glad we didn't let that stop us.

Sandra Peoples: No, no, me either.

Paul Pettit: Dr. Paul Pettit. I am from Kansas, and I came to Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas in 1992 and just stayed on, I've been here ever since. So I worked on the THM degree and then the Doctor of Ministry degree, and now I serve here in career services where we help graduates figure out what they're going to do when they graduate, and then they let me teach a couple of classes as well. So thanks for having us on, Sandra.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah. And you guys met because you, Paul taught one of Jason's classes, is that right?

Paul Pettit: Yeah, exactly.

Jason Epps: First semester preaching one.

Paul Pettit: Homiletics. Yeah, everybody was ready to go, and we heard this knock on the door. We had these huge wooden doors, heavy doors here at Dallas Seminary, and we opened the door and there was Jason and his power chair, and we were like, wow, sorry about that. And then you go into the classroom and there's a stage up there and we're all thinking, oh, how's Jason going to get up on the stage? And we hand up the podium, the pulpit, and it's way over his head. And I just began to look at the seminary through Jason's eyes, and that's really impacted me as I was writing.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, yeah, that's clear in the book what you guys both learned from that experience.

Jason Epps: Paul actually missed the most important part of the story, which was first day he said, “Hey, I've written several books. If any of you have an idea, I'll help you.” And for years, people have been telling me I should write this information in a book, but nobody would actually help me take the next step. And I raised my hand and thinking, oh, I don't know if this is going to be a nicety or if this is actually going to happen. And lo and behold, with much blood, sweat, tears, crying, banging on the table, banging our head against the wall, it finally happened!

Sandra Peoples: Well, I'm glad he took you up on that offer, Paul. I bet lots of students think they can write a book, but to actually go through with it is, that's usually a longer process than most people are prepared for, so…

Paul Pettit: That's right. I usually say, bring me the first chapter, and 90% of the students never come back. So when Jason said, “Hey, I have a five-step plan, I've already written the rough draft,” I knew this guy's serious. We're going to go forward with this project with the Lord's help.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, that's awesome. That's really cool. And Kriegel is your publisher?

Paul Pettit: Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah. I think they do a great job. They bring a lot of really helpful books that add to the conversations that we're having, so I hope they were good to work with because they seem like they would be.

Paul Pettit: Absolutely.

Sandra Peoples: That's awesome. Okay, well, I read the book last week. I read it pretty quickly. I really enjoyed it. And so I have picked out four or five questions to talk through with you guys. Hopefully it kind of gives a good overview. I tried to pick what I thought were really the strengths of the book, and there's lots of them, but just my favorite parts, but I wanted to just hear more from you about, and so we will jump into those.

The first one, in the introduction of the book, you say that your goal is to encourage readers to fully integrate people with disabilities into faith communities. You point out that with Jason's experience as a person with a physical disability, the book has a more narrow focus primarily on those with physical disabilities. There are both functional or physical barriers and social barriers that exist in our churches. You guys kind of touched on that just as Jason was trying to get into the classroom. So explain to our listeners the difference between functional and social barriers that would exist in churches today.

Jason Epps: So, I think physical barriers are the easiest to explain because they're the ones that people often think of. It's like, is there stairs? Is there a need for an elevator? Is there a ramp? Is there 15 million steps to get up to the choir loft, or is the stage accessible or are the classrooms physically accessible? Are they upstairs? Do they have wide enough doorways? Are the bathrooms accessible? Things of that nature.

Social barriers are a little bit harder to pin down. It's more of a feeling. It's like, is everybody, I like to term it clotting. So is everybody physically in a group facing into each other where the person with a disability can't physically get to them? Is everybody crowded in an area where they physically can't get to, or are they almost practically ignored? They're invisible. They could physically be where the conversation is, but they're practically ignored and there's no way to get into the conversation, or they're unable to do the activities that everybody else is doing. So there's more of the, it's honestly harder to pin down. It's like it you know it when you see it, but it's actually describe, and it varies from, as we point out in the book, disability affects everybody differently. So it's like what is considered one for one person is not really that for another person. So it's lot more fluid, I guess you would say.

Paul Pettit: And also just building a culture of hospitality and welcoming and being open. “Hey, we're glad you're here. We look forward to serving you.” I know I learned from Jason that he would visit churches sometimes and they would say, “Oh, you're disabled. You're Tuesday nights at 7:00 PM.” And he would say, well, I want to teach a class, or I want to write curriculum. And they would say, “Oh, you're Tuesday nights at 7:00 PM.”

And then the question that he asked me that really set this book in motion for me was, “Paul, do you think a church would hire me as their senior pastor?” And in my mind, I'm thinking, well, your sermons were good. You're a thinker, you know the Bible, you know theology. But something inside of me was like, I don't know. I didn't want to lie to him. I didn't want to sugarcoat it and say, “Oh, don't worry. Lots of churches will want to hire you as their senior pastor.” And so I just bumped up against that social barrier that you talked about.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, yeah. So many churches think disability ministry is a place or a classroom, or like you said, Tuesday nights instead of an attitude of acceptance and hospitality. I think that's a great word to use it to use. Go ahead, Jason.

Jason Epps: It's more of a mindset.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, a mindset.

Jason Epps: And so many books in the disability world are just focused on how to build a program and kind of shelters it, not shelters, silos it. Like you were talking about, it's only in this compartment or worse, a lot of, well-meaning disability books that we found are mainly focused on the caregivers who are important. I wouldn't have made it half as far as I did if it wasn't for my parents behind me, but it's just, it's weird when you've got books on disability ministry and almost none of them are actually dealing with the individual person with a disability. It'll be like doing a Hispanic ministry, but none of the books materials are geared towards Hispanics. It's almost unthinkable.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.

You have chapters in the book that cover passages from the Old Testament and passages from the New Testament that talk about disability. I thought that was a great strength of the book to be able to do that in your chapter on disability in the Old Testament, you give the example of Naomi and Ruth too, and I'm quoting from the book here, “showcase what it looks like for those of their social status and physical abilities to fully seek out security.”

This was one of my favorite parts of the book because I had not thought of Naomi as a person with maybe a physical disability or at least some kind of limitations that kept her from being able to glean for herself and how Ruth is almost kind of a caregiver and then the relationship that they have. So I found your treatment of this passage to just be really compelling and encouraging. So can you talk about what you see in this passage that we can apply to our relationships with people with disabilities?

Jason Epps: So I think one of the things that really stood out to me, and this was kind of because of the Hebrew professor that I had at the time at Moody, it's the fact that Ruth, sorry, Naomi, me repeatedly tries to push Ruth away. Doesn't want to be a burden, and at least I can't speak for everyone, but the people that we've talked to, that's a primary concern. “I'm dragging everybody down. I'm worthless. I'm not worthy to be helped”. It is a wonderful life syndrome that it's kind of like that thought process that it would be better for me not to be born, that kind of thing. And that kind of thought process is, at least in my experience, spurred on a lot by the church that say, “Oh, we want you to be here. We love you being here but go over there in the corner. Don't do anything. You're messing everything up.”

And part of the purpose of the main core of the book, the five-step plan is to help the person with a disability, the asset, overcome those hesitancy and feelings of lack of value. So that's one of its main purposes, is to help the person with a disability feel like they're actually valued, that they're actually loved. Because for the longest time, I was told that by so many Christian groups, but they didn't act that out. So it was the hardest thing for me to actually come to and functionally realize, because I'm like, what does that practically look like? It's a difference between almost a head and heart knowledge situation. So that honestly was something with Naomi that I really connected to. And Paul might want to go into this a bit, but it kind of touches on the phrase that he likes of temporary able-bodied. So Paul, do you want to talk about that? Because

Paul Pettit: We found this phrase temporarily able-bodied, which describes everyone, each one of us that we're all temporarily able-bodied, I could get in a car wreck this afternoon and be fully disabled. I could go to a military skirmish and step on a landmine and become disabled. And even when I'm 80 years old, Lord willing, 90 years old, I'll definitely be partially disabled, maybe trouble with walking, hearing, seeing.

So sometimes we put this binary category together, oh, I'm able bodied, I'm fine. It's these poor disabled people that I'm here to help. But we're all temporarily able-bodied by God's grace. And just for a second to talk about Naomi, Naomi was really in a queen's position. She had a husband, she had two sons and a patriarchal culture. She was set for life. Her husband could take care of her, two sons could take care of her, and then they were taken, they were lost, and she was alone.

And she said to her girlfriends, don't call me sweetie anymore. The word Naomi means sweetness. She said, don't call me sweetie. Call me bitter. I mean, her mindset was, I have nothing now. I have no future. I'm just, as Jason mentioned, I'm a burden. I don't have anyone to help me glean. And then the other thing about Ruth is she's considered “other”. She's from another country. She wasn't an Israelite. She didn't yet worship Yahweh. And a lot of our research we found that persons with a disability feel othered. They feel like I'm not normal, or I'm not part of this normal crowd. I'm other. And so that was a big part of our research.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, that's interesting. Then we can relate both to Naomi and to Ruth in different ways in this story. And that's really good. I have a husband and two sons, and so I think of that if I lost them, I would feel like I lost everything. And so I could see what a spiral that would be for Naomi and what a burden she would feel like.

Paul Pettit: The blessing of the turnaround in the book is that she meets Boaz, this kinsman redeemer, and God provides for her even in her deepest darkest time of need, God meets her in amazing ways and provides for her, and she ends up becoming in the line of our savior, Jesus the Christ. So when we think about Ruth and Naomi, we need to remember that God meets us even in our difficulties

Sandra Peoples: As both a person in need, which we all are and in caregiving roles. And both of those roles I think are so well represented, and the temporariness of being the one who can meet needs and understanding the temporary able-bodied life that we live and how that could change really quickly.

Paul Pettit: Absolutely.

Sandra Peoples: That was really good. In the chapter on the New Testament, Jason writes, “I want to experience the sense that there are no barriers to community even in the best possible situation here on earth, there is always going to be some sort of barrier.”

I feel that too. I have some social anxiety. So even at church events and different things, I feel those barriers that you're talking about. So I know we can all relate to that on some level. So even though the temptation would be for this to kind of discourage those of us in advocacy roles, if we can only see barriers, then why are we doing so much work to overcome these barriers? But how are you encouraged by this instead or the movement that you see in churches? Or how do you hold onto optimism in the face of these barriers that we can sometimes feel overwhelmed by?

Jason Epps: Well, I think it is several things. It's acknowledging that nothing is ever going to be perfect this side of heaven, this side of eternity. Things are always going to… there’s always going to be barriers. There's always going to be problems. And I would just say, I know it's a cliche, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I've told this to Paul multiple times, and friendship, which is the main desire of this book, can really overcome any barrier. So it's like the focus needs to shift from churches of we need a plan for every contingency to we need to generate a genuine friendship. I mentioned this in the book, but there were several times when I was in the men's choir, back at Moody, when the stage would be completely inaccessible. There was this one church with like, oh, I didn't count it, but five flights of stairs to get up to the main choir lot.

And there was no way that that was going to be made ADA because they didn't have the money to do it. I don't begrudge them. But because I had a relationship and because the guys were willing to help, they were able to finagle me up there through basically arc of the coveting up the several flights of stairs. So I find that churches are almost unhelpfully obsessed with making a building and such physically accessible, and they kind of almost instantly write it off because they're like, we can't make this accessible. It's too expensive, and therefore we tried. So there's no reason to make it accessible. And I'm like, friendship is free. It doesn't cost anything but your time. So that's the real important thought here. And going back to the distinction between physical and social barriers, it's like a place can be completely physically accessible, but if you're not really connecting with the community, it can feel worse because you can think to yourself, I should feel like I am physically present. I'm here physically present, but I'm still, it's almost like I'm not, which at least if it's a physical barrier, you can continue yourself well into physical barrier. But social barriers are almost, at least for me, it feels worse. So that's why friendship and genuine friendship, which is what we advocate for in the book, is almost paramount and key. So I don't know if that was the answer to the question that you were looking for, but..

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, no, that's great. That's a great answer

Paul Pettit: For research, Sandra, we found out that one in five struggle with a disability. So there's so many families that probably visit a church or inquire about a church or parish, and they're asking, would I fit in here? Is there anybody on stage that looks like me? Would I be able to build friendships here? So I think this impact that we can have in the church, because the title of the book,  One Body, One Spirit, that's what we're going for with God's church, Jesus's church, his heartbeat is for those of us that are hurting, Jesus went out of his way to heal and to show people the power of the kingdom. So we are advocating for friendships because an authentic, genuine friendship. I was talking to Jason about a fear I have sometimes, “Hey, I want to help you get into the van, but I don't know where to grab you. I don't want to hurt you.”

And he said to me, well, you might just stop and say, “Hey, Jason, how do you best to be helped into the van?” It was so obvious, and my fear was so unfounded. I was like, oh, yeah, that would be a good question. “Hey, do you want me to help you to get into the van?” Or one time we were down here on the corner lawn and the sprinklers went off. And for me, I just jumped out of the way and I was like, whoa, sprinklers. And he was just getting soaked, and I am going, “Wow, does this happen often?” And he's like, “Oh. Occasionally” I began to look at the whole campus through his eyes because we were building a friendship. And then later I'd be in an elevator or I'd be in a lunch line, and not with Jason, but thinking, if Jason was with me right now, would we be able to get through this lunch line? If we were at this Texas Rangers baseball game, how would I get him up to this third level where I pay for the inexpensive seats? So the friendship is what helped me see life through his eyes more than just now. We love Tuesday nights at 7pm. I'm not trying to disparage that, but a friendship, an authentic, organic growing friendship, which we write about in our book, can be even more powerful.

Sandra Peoples: Which takes vulnerability from both of you. Paul had to be vulnerable and say, I may ask this question in the wrong way, and Jason had to be vulnerable and say, well, here's what I need, which all best friendships are built on vulnerability, but there's just always, I mean, there's even barriers that keep us back from vulnerability

Jason Epps: And even more than vulnerability, which you're right, it's time. And in today's fast paced world, I kind of feel like the church views people with disability in a cost benefit analysis of it's too much work. And I've even had ministry leaders who I will not mention say this to me and RAs and other people, it's too much work to make it so that you could be a part of this. It is just not, the juice isn't worth the proverbial squeeze, which that again drives the person with a disability more into this spiral of depression and feeling of worthlessness. And I honestly, I don't know if Paul is eventually going to mention this, so I will.

When we did our research, it was amazing that the vast majority of Jesus' ministry was to people with disabilities. If you think about the people who are blind, people who are mute, and not even just people with disabilities, people that were the dregs of societies, the tax collectors and sinners, he didn't really primarily minister to the upper-class. He ministered to the down run. And I wouldn't say, I'm not advocating that we don't minister to the upper-class, but it's just something to think about that it's not always the looks. The person who looks like the most well to do is the best person to pursue, but that's not how we think.

Paul Pettit: Oftentimes in our churches, we go for efficiency. “Hey, who's going to do the announcements? Well, we couldn't have Jason. He might talk too slow, but we got to have somebody that's slick” or like Jason mentioned, “beautiful” But I think if we had more of a representation on the stage, those in the audience would go, “Hey, this looks more like my neighborhood.” This more looks more like my school. So sometimes we get into the Celebrity Pastor Syndrome, and that's really dangerous.

Jason Epps: And Paul's right. The flip side to that is we also don't want it to be a token situation that a person is just up on the stage as kind of like a DEI hire of, “Oh, we got the person with a disability check. We've got the Hispanic person check.” I mean, I talk about this in my book that it's kind of annoying, but occasionally I've been given tasks that they didn't want me to really be doing just so that I would actually have something to do. I spent a good 30-45 minutes trying to change a column, and 5 seconds after all my energy was expended, somebody came by me and basically painted over what I just did because I couldn't physically do a good job. And I thought, what was the purpose of me doing that? So we're very much an advocate of use people with disabilities, like everyone in the roles that God have fitted them for, find what they're actually geared toward, what they're good at.

I mean, obviously you wouldn't want me on the cleanup crew, you know. But it's difficult because a lot of churches have a pay your dues mentality, of you have to show yourself to be dedicated and valuable to the church. And a lot of those activities are physical activities cleaning up and things of that nature that I couldn't physically do. So you're kind of stuck in a holding pattern. And Lord help you if you self-identify what your interests are! The people in the church are like, you can't do that. That sounds spiritual. And I'm like, why can't I? I've been with the Lord for years. I should be able to know what my gifting is. Why is that unspiritual for me to let you know what I'm interested in doing? I don't understand that.

Paul Pettit: And for me, building a friendship with Jason, as you said, it took both ways because in my pride, I was like, “Oh, I'll help Jason. I'll allow Jason to learn from me.” But halfway through our extended friendships and studying and researching and writing, I'm like, I'm learning way more from Jason than he's learning from me. I started realizing, wow, that was a great insight. Or how did he see that? Or how did he know that? Or sometimes I would be struggling with, “Hey, we got to do this by tomorrow.” And he would say, well, it'll work out. In his lifestyle, he realizes I sat here for two hours waiting for the bus, which was on the schedule, but the bus never showed up. For me, I would've started walking or got out of there. And he's like, no, in this lifestyle, I've learned, take it patient, take it slow. We might miss a deadline. That's going to be okay, Paul.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah.

Jason Epps: And one of the things that I really enjoyed about the process of writing is this is so internalized to me that I often didn't really see the practical objections that somebody would say, because for me, it's a no-brainer. What Paul really brought to the occasion beyond just his expertise was the whole, well, what about this exception? What should we do in those instances?

So I found that immensely helpful, and we hope that that comes through in the book because Paul helped. I joked with him. I'm like, you're helping me make this so that it seems reasonable to the average person where Paul can say, yeah, I hear what Jason is saying. It sounds crazy, sounds impossible, but it's actually worth it. It can be done. And really, we talked about this in the book. The church that I'm going now really embodies that in the culture of thinking.

Ideally, we want the entire church body or whatever the organization structure to have this mindset and it permeated. So everybody is thinking this, so the burden is not carried by one singular person or by two people, but it's just everybody is working together and mutually benefiting off each other. No one person is getting burned out because sometimes there's only one person is willing to step up. And honestly, eventually they get burned out. And then one, it ruins the relationship between the person with a disability and the person who's able bodied. And two, the person with a disability is kind of left in the lurch with nothing to do now, which unfortunately for me, that happened more times than I care to admit.

Paul Pettit: I know, for example, some of my weird fears were, well, what if you have some kind of medical episode? What am I supposed to do? I'm not a doctor. And Jason was like, well, we could call 911 or I'm sure someone here could help us, but it was just an unfounded fear. I was like, well, what if I give you a ride? Then you're going to want to ride every Monday morning. I don't want to commit to some two-year ride sharing program with you. If I give you a ride, then I'm going to be your permanent Uber driver. And he said, well, you might ask the person, “Hey, I can't do it very often, but do you need a ride next Friday?”

He just kept breaking it down into smaller parts and daily chores so that I realized my fears were selfish, and if I build a friendship with this guy, am I going to go a 100% into the disability world and never come back out? And he would just laugh and say, “no, I'm just asking could we hang out? Can we have a cup of coffee? Could I get to know you a little better?” And so it really freed me up to be myself and get rid of some of these unnecessary fears.

Jason Epps: Yeah, the key there, and Paul kind of hit on it, is just asking questions and being honest in any relationship, being honest from the get-go for a person's availability. And again, our hope is that it won't just affect one person, but it'll affect the entire community. So there can kind of be this when needed on again, off again, situation, but still have that genuine friendship. Because if a person just is like, “Oh, it's not my week, I'm going to avoid this person and not interact with them,” is that genuine friendship? No, I mean, just in general, think of what you would look for in a friend.

In fact, what's funny is a friend of mine, when I was originally crafting this idea and going through, we were talking about, and he was saying, “Oh, this is so easy. It's just friendship!” And basically, this is really funny. So he's like, you could just go onto the stage at Moody and just say, “Be a friend!!” and then roll off the stage. And what he thought was just go off the stage, but then I thought, roll off the stage, go forward and fall down the stage. And they got sidetracked in this long discussion of how would the different majors interact?

Paul Pettit: Falling off the stage is not a good idea, Jason,

Jason Epps: We're glad you didn't do that.

Paul Pettit: Even if you were doing that to recruit volunteers, that's not a good plan.

Jason Epps: No, it's not. But it's funny to think about how there's a bit of a double-entendre there.

Sandra Peoples: That is funny. All right, so our last question, it really gets to the five steps that you present throughout the book, but this model of inclusion, the five steps are notice, engage, research, incorporate, and advocate. And so you want to talk a little bit more about each step and how church, I mean, I feel like that's been woven through this whole conversation we've had, just like it's woven through the whole book. So maybe if there's a step that you feel like we really haven't hit yet, or a place that a church can start, anything that has to do with those five steps. Let me read 'em again so our listeners understand what they are, so that way you can pick and choose which one you want to talk about. The first one is notice, then engage, then research, incorporate and advocate.

Jason Epps: So I kind of want to hit on a couple key elements. Notice is extremely important because if you're not noticing the environment, if you're not noticing that the person is actually there where they physically are, then you can't do anything else. So all these steps are kind of sequentially built into each other. There's really no way of skipping over one.

Research, as Paul kind of hinted at, is kind of both a passive and an active situation. What do I mean passive in the sense of you're noticing areas where you would go, whether or not they would be accessible. Active is, I'm thinking that we're wanting to go to the Royals game or the Dallas Cowboys game. Can this be accessible? So the handler, the person without a disability goes through the path that the asset, the person with a disability would go down to see if it would be accessible.

One element that I don't think anybody's really doing, and it's really important is incorporate. Now the incorporate step is interesting because it takes all the information from the previous steps, the building, the relationship, learning the person with disabilities likes and dislikes, which you would gain from the engage stage, the information from the research stage, and you're trying to get buy-in from the larger group. And this is really turning on the head of what is normally done. Because what is normally done by, well-meaning people is they come to the person with a disability and say, we want you to be involved. You have any ideas?

There's two problems with that, I guess you would say. One is, often the person with a disability doesn't have any ideas because they've never really done anything in a large group because they've been marginalized and excluded all their lives, so they have no ideas.

And two, even if they do have an idea, if the group isn't regularly doing it, they feel like if they make a suggestion, they'd be limiting everybody's fun because they would just be doing it to check off a box. So this whole idea of once the research is done, the handler would go to the larger group and say, would we want to do this? Jason would be able to do this, do we want to do it? And then once the group hopefully would say, yes, they would come to the person and say, we want to do this as a group. We know you can do this because of this, this, this, and this. Do you want to do it? Again, putting the ball back into the person with disabilities court. And nine times out of 10, I would say they would say yes, because one, we don't have a lot of options for things to do.

On the flip side, when I tried doing this myself and nobody would show up to the activities that I were trying to do, it kind of further solidifies the person's thought of feelings of nobody really cares. I'm invisible, I'm worthless, I'm pointless. All these thoughts. So of all the steps when it's done well, incorporate overcomes those sort of feelings. And it honestly takes the most work. Notice and Engage, and even Research can all be done with minimal effort.

But I would say Incorporate of all the steps is kind of like it's in a positive sense, the point of no return. It's where the rubber meets the road of, is this going to be a genuine friendship? Is the person willing to put in the effort? And Advocate is important, and it's kind of a step that's naturally flowing after that where you're basically standing up for the person with the disability.

And it really depends on the person, whether or not you're making sure that they're included in the physical conversation or they're just, you're helping them navigate the red tape. But honestly, I would say when it's done well, Incorporate is the key cornerstone to this entire process. And it's the one thing that I would say that churches aren't really doing well. I mean, one can say that churches are doing the Notice and Engage step and maybe the Research step well because it's part of the natural element of greeting. But in a lot of instances, churches aren't really, that's the one area where they need to improve. And to realize that, I've had a lot of churches that I've been a part of where they have had this mindset of we're going to make the big trip, the big whatever, the church would have accessible. But the fact of the matter is, it is kind of like how Jesus said, if you're faithful in the little things.

So if you're not regularly making sure that the person is feeling welcome and included in those little things, then the person is really not wanting to go to the big things. For instance, there was this social outing in the college ministry I was a part of when I was back at Moody and regularly in the college ministry. I was ignored. I was actually told repeatedly, you're in the way. Go over here, honestly. And then the College Pastor was like, “Hey, we have this social event coming up. We'll make it accessible. Let's go through all the things that we would need to do to make it accessible for you,” which you would think would be, well-meaning. But when I was thinking through, I'm like, okay, what are all the extra things that I would need to do? I would need to make sure that I bring on a personal care attendant and that they would be okay with coming, or that they would know that I would be back late.

And then beyond all those, I would be like, what's the guarantee that they're not just going to treat me the same that they do every Sunday morning, that they're going to practically ignore me and that I'm going to be off in a corner and that all this effort would be wasted. So it's not, the juice isn't worth the proverbial squeeze because they haven't demonstrated faithfulness and the little things that they actually care enough for me to go through the extra effort to go to the bigger things. So I would say it's a point of encouragement. Start small, because you would need to start small anyway.

If you aim to make the big events super accessible, and honestly, it's not a prison of two ideas. You can work both simultaneously. Don't say, “Oh, we can't work on this because we haven't built the low stuff yet.” No, I would never discourage someone from doing that. But if you can do one thing, focus on the little things first, focus on the natural organic development of the relationship, and just realize that relationships take time. And what you're often dealing with, with people with disabilities is overcoming years and years of trauma, which takes time.

But ultimately, at the end of it, both of you, as Paul was kind of hinting at, would be healthier and better for it because one, the person without a disability would realize them growing because of it. And two, the person with a disability would say, “Hey, I'm actually valued. There's some worth that I bring to this. I'm actually part of the body. There's an area in which I can serve. Let me serve in the area where I could be most impactful.”

Paul Pettit: Good answer, Jason. It was a long answer, but it was a good answer. My disability is ADHD. So I forgot the question. That's just a joke. That's a disability joke. I have ADHD, so sometimes I have to pay attention a little closer. For me, the favorite one is Advocate number five. Because what I learned from Jason was I could stick out my chest and go, I'm an advocate. I'm an advocate for the disabled. How do you know that? Because I put a handicap parking spot in here. I'm now an advocate. But what I learned from him was, you don't even know me. You don't even know my likes. You don't even know my interests. How are you presenting yourself as an advocate? You didn't even work through Notice, Engage, Research, Incorporate. We haven't spent hours and hours together. So Advocate is kind of like when someone says, Hey, do you think Jason would want to go to the Dallas Cowboys game? I am such a friend of his now. I would say no, probably not. That's the biggest headache ever. But if they said, do you think Jason would want to go to the Jason Bourne spy movie?

Oh yeah. I mean, in our book, he calls himself the asset, and I'm the handler. Why didn't we turn that around? I wanted to be the asset. He got to name our roles. But I would say, oh yeah, they'll definitely want to go to the Jason movie. He'd roll his power chair through broken glass to go to the James Bond movie coming out. So Advocate is, I know Sandra people so well that this is what she's really going to want to do, not just, oh, Sandra is a incredible podcaster. Yes, she probably wants to do this. So that's why, and we like to call it the five step challenge. Are you willing to build a genuine, authentic friendship with a person with a disability? Are you really willing to take the five step challenge and build an authentic friendship with a person with a disability.

Sandra Peoples: Yeah, that's really good. I love that the themes throughout our conversation have been friendship and hospitality, because that's really at the heart of what you guys are proposing and encouraging, which is not a siloed ministry. It's in every program, in every church. And churches of every size can do this, right? We don't have to leave it to the big churches or the ones with the biggest staffs or a dedicated person on staff to meet needs.

Jason Epps: And sometimes the smaller churches are better at it. Because bigger churches sometimes can be like, oh, we have a program for this. We don't need genuine friendship, which I just think is a total shame. But yeah, and one, it doesn't really cost anything. So cost isn't a factor, because sometimes churches are like, well, we can't afford to do it the right way. And as I've said to Paul, in order to make something accessible, it doesn't have to be done the right way. It just has to be done in a way that works. I've gotten on stages with blocks of wood. Now I know given the current economy and situation, wood is worth its weight in gold, but it's the principle of the thing. So one, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And two, let the person with disability tell you specifically what they need and ask and really mean it. Not the whole how's your day? Oh, I'm asking you, how's your day? But I don't really want to know how your day is.

Sandra Peoples: That's all really helpful though. I really appreciate the time that you guys gave this morning to chat through all of this. I think it's a really important book for ministry leaders and pastors to read and church members who are all a part of this team. I mean, it can change the culture of an entire church and provide bridges to the gospel for people with disabilities before. There's just been so many barriers, and you guys are really knocking those down and then building bridges so that they have access to the gospel and to a gospel centered church family, which we all need on our hardest days and our best days. So thank you for casting a vision for that in this book. I think that's been really helpful.

Jason Epps: It's been a pleasure.

Paul Pettit: Thanks for having us!

Sandra Peoples: So our listeners can find a link to the book in the show notes. The show notes are at keyministry.org/podcast. And so all the links that we talked about to the book and to anything that we feel like would help, other conversations we've had that have been on these similar topics, we include those. And then anything else that we feel like would be helpful for the listeners. And so thank you so much for your time, Paul and Jason, and appreciate it. And just encourage our listeners to go out and buy the book and be changed by it, and just look for those ways that they can take the challenge and go through those five steps and be advocates for the people that they know and have built real friendships with. So thank you guys.