“If I let disabilities stop me, they can, but I don’t want them to. I change the way I do some things, and others I simply can’t do but try first,” Nancy Phipps, 2005 UCC DM Awardee, told Rich Curby, K-O Conference Accessibility Task Force Chair. His nomination led her to the UCC Disabilities Ministries 2005 Award for exceptional church service.
Always coming forward at Whitewater Federated UCC, KS, her folks primed her for volunteering. “We grew up knowing that when the community gives something to you, you give back to the community. That is part of who I am. If you can help, you help.”
Steve and Nancy live in a century-old farm house where, “I can hobble around a little bit, not for very far or very long, but a little bit. I just sort of putt around in my wheelchair, doing what has to be done.”
Federated pastor, Scott Martin, said, “It is safe to say that the major mobility problem Nancy Phipps has known the last several years has not slowed her in the least!”
Her “putt-ing around” expanded upon answering a hankering to attend Annual Fall Women’s Assembly. With conference participation, it all “sort of snowballed — fun, supportive friendships,” she said.
The K-O Conference Lay School of Theology student’s voice perks with enthusiasm when she mentions the area she feels she is best suited for, working with other women, “movers and shakers who do whatever needs to be done.”
“Since I have been in my wheelchair, things have changed a lot in my church,” she said. Most of her activities are now held in the sanctuary. “We put an accessible bathroom on the main floor the year before I had ankle surgery. We do things as we can — widening doors, switching handles, little tiny steps at a time.”
Sitting on council, she knows small church finances. She manages as long as “the guys are willing to carry my wheelchair up and down the basement stairs.” However, when others, sometimes forgetting about her mobility changes, ask why she did not attend an event downstairs, she does exercise awareness-raising, “Well, one, have you remembered that I am in a wheelchair and cannot get into the basement by myself?”
“Most of us don’t think about how others deal with things or what they have to do.”
She asked her church, “If I have to pay for it myself, may I slice up some of these pews, make them shorter, and, taking out only one pew leaves no room to maneuver.” A friend joins her up front now, but that does not preclude anybody else using a wheelchair.
Something that has not changed, however, is singing in Federated’s women’s chorus. “I was born totally deaf in one ear. I cannot hear well enough any more to pick a tune off of a piano or organ, but you put Jackie to my left and I can sing any note she can.”
Nancy joins the other Accessibility Task Force members of the five geographically distant associations of K-O Conference for Yahoo chat room meetings. They encourage accessibility with information sheets in conference mailings.
“It’s the small things that make a difference,” the lay ministerial student says, like her “Yippee! No pinched fingers” call home from her accessible room with space to navigate. Whether rolling among duties as Synod delegate or with local, association or conference women, she exercises role modeling in many unimagined ways “just because,” as Nancy Phipps says, “there’s stuff to be done.”
Written by Dee Brauninger