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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3519 notes).

Note 3517 by UMNS on March 26, 1997 at 16:38 Eastern (3536 characters).

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT: Linda Green                          163(10-21-71B){3517}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470            March 26, 1997

Deaf pastor to be appointed 
to Baltimore deaf ministry

                          A UMNS Feature
                          by Linda Green*

     The Baltimore-Washington United Methodist Annual (regional)
Conference will make history this summer when a deaf pastor is
ordained and appointed to serve in a deaf ministry.
     During the conference session, June 20-22, Kirk A. VanGilder
will be appointed to serve half-time as campus chaplain at
Washington's Galluadet University, the only liberal arts
institution of higher education for deaf people, and half-time at
Christ United Methodist Church of the Deaf in Baltimore.
     According to the Rev. Peggy A. Johnson, pastor at Christ
Church and VanGilder's mentor, with his ordination and appointment
"history has been made" and a "deaf person is in a key leadership
role with deaf people." 
     Johnson said that assigning a deaf pastor to serve in a deaf
ministry is a rarity in the United Methodist Church. The last time 
a deaf minister was ordained was in the Methodist Episcopal Church
at the turn of the century. 
     She said typically deaf ministries in the denomination are
led by hearing people who are interested in ministry with the
deaf. 
     The hearing world generally views deaf people "as a community
that needs the ministry of hearing people," Johnson said, but,
deaf people are a "gifted community" who feel that they do not
need the hearing world to "help" them as much as it needs the
hearing world to "empower" them for service and ministry. "With a
deaf person as the clergy, empowerment has reached a new high,"
she said.
     Described as "a culturally deaf person," VanGilder chooses to
use sign language as his major avenue of communicating and
identifies with the ethos of the "deaf world." The "culturally
deaf" community sees itself as a "unique" culture group," not a
group of people who are "disabled," Johnson said. Culturally deaf
people use American Sign Language as their primary means of
communication and English as a second language.  
     There have been very few ordinations of "culturally deaf"
people in the United Methodist Church, she said. Pastors who
suffer a hearing loss usually accommodate by using hearing aids or
by lipreading. They also "identify with the hearing world." Not
everyone with a hearing loss, no matter how big or small,
considers themselves to be "culturally deaf," Johnson said.
     A native of Fort Wayne, Ind., VanGilder was a ministerial
candidate in the North Indiana Annual Conference, but transferred
his candidacy to the Baltimore-Washington Conference in 1995 and
entered into a nine-month internship at Christ Church. The
internship was funded by an Advance Special Grant from the
churchwide Board of Global Ministries.
     He will graduate from Iliff School of Theology, Denver,
Colo., in May with a master's of divinity degree. He already is
serving the United Methodist Church in two capacities. He is a
member of the denomination's Board of Higher Education and
Ministry and is the historian for the United Methodist Congress of
the Deaf. 
                              #  #  #
     
     * Green is the director of the Nashville, Tenn., office of
United Methodist News Service.

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