wfn.org | Persons with disabilities worship and study at Stony Point Center

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Note #6260 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

10-November-2000
00401

Persons with disabilities worship and study at Stony Point Center

Attitudes as well as accessibility must change, conference-goers told

by Norman W. Minard

Stony Point, N.Y. -- From California to Massachusetts, 41 persons with
disabilities flocked to Stony Point Center in New York -- one of three
national Presbyterian conference centers -- the weekend of Oct. 27-29, for a
conference entitled "Being Whole in the Eyes of God."

	Designed by and for persons with disabilities, the conference sought
participation and leadership from all conferees.  The intent was fulfilled.
Ministers with mobility problems and an elder who is blind preached. Elders
with disabilities served communion, including a man who has been a
wheelchair user for 30 years and an elder for nine years who served
communion for the first time in his life.

	Participants ranged in age from 15 to 87.   

 	Co-keynote speakers for the conference were the Rev. Howard L. Rice Jr.,
moderator of the 191st General Assembly (1979) and retired professor of
ministry at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and Ginny Thornburgh,
religion director of the National Organization on Disability.

	Rice was honored during the conference with the first Howard L. Rice Jr.
Award for Providing Leadership and Personal Witness within  the church on
behalf of persons with disabilities.

	Rice spoke about the ways he considers his disability a gift. He has been a
wheelchair user for more than 25 years. He also progress made in recent
years to make church facilities increasingly accessible to their members.

	Thornburgh stressed, however, that architectural improvements, while
valuable, are not enough.  Just as important were attitudinal changes of
welcome and inclusion within the church.  Children and adults with
disabilities have gifts and talents to bring to the church, she said, and
people with disabilities, like all people, have a right to a full life of
faith -- including worship, study, service and leadership.
	The church is a place, she insisted, where pain, difficulties and weakness
can be revealed, where all people are honored and where no one is treated
like a "nuisance" or "troublemaker."

	The conference challenged the resources of Stony Point. Though some
functional improvements had been made years agoin some of its buildings,
still other modifications were still being made on the eve of the
conference.

	To make the site and conference even more user friendly, eight volunteers,
a family of five from Central Presbyterian Church in New York City, the
conscientious and hospitable Stony Point staff and a rented golf cart were
present to ease many difficult moments.

	The Rev. William Pindar, Stony Point's director, said he will review
closely the evaluations of the site that were made by conference
participants.

	"At the present time there is probably no site owned by the Presbyterian
Church that could have properly hosted this particular event," said the Rev.
Norman W. Minard of  Long Island, New York, chair of the planning committee.
"If we waited until the ideal site was constructed before holding it, we'd
wait forever.  Although we don't like it, we with disabilities are used to
making sacrificial adjustments so as to live within society and the church. 
We are grateful that Bill Pindar not only welcomed us, but did so with
eagerness, preparation and love."

	The conference was subsidized with grants from the Synod of the Northeast,
several presbyteries within the synod, Presbyterians for Disability Concerns
(a constituent network of the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare
Association) and  the Office of Social Welfare Organizations of the National
Ministries Division in Louisville.

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