After serving twenty-five years in parish ministry, Dave was called as minister for the Eastern Association, Minnesota Conference UCC, in 1995.
I have lived with aggressive Crohn’s Disease all my adult life. Some manage to control it without surgery and achieve long periods of remission from active symptoms. Others lose their entire intestinal track and must receive all fluids and nutrients intravenously.
To date, I have had eleven major surgeries and about a hundred hospitalizations. At age 32, I had my first colostomy surgery. I now have an ileostomy, which has been revised several times.
In my twenties with still much bowel remaining, I enjoyed remission and resumed distance running. Some years even later, I could compete in a dozen road races some years. In between, flare-ups brought me close to death.
In recent years because of the loss of most intestine, I struggle to avoid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Twice,, I have been denied admission to public events. One event was at a 1993 General Synod session.
Long ago, I decided not to hand over to this fierce disease *my life, identity, and deep * sense of calling to ordained ministry. A defining moment happened shortly after my first colostomy surgery. While registering at a United Ostomy Association meeting, I noticed the pre-registration name tags of Sue Smith, “ileostomate;” Ray Jones, “urostomate;” Nat Doe, “colostomate.” I crossed out “colostomate” on mine and added in tiny print, “Child of God, son, husband, father, brother, minister.” Some thought I was just being cute. For me, it was then and remains a deeply important issue. Persons with disabilities should not be defined by what does not work. We are people first.
During a recent sabbatical, I started writing a book, tentatively titled, “Laughing at the Devil: Spiritual Resources for Living with Chronic Illness.” I began to think systematically about how, despite its great liability, living with Crohn’s has become a gift for ministry and how those same gifts might be discovered by others in unique circumstances.
We develop these competencies in response to a personal need. Most spiritual resources do not show up ready to use but require considerable shaping and refining. When first emerging, they may collide with something else already in place.
Part of my ministry is to assist persons in the course of pastoral conversation to find their own way to one or more of these spiritual resources:
- Finding voice in the midst of a powerful, sophisticated medical culture;
- Discerning how to receive needed help without losing sense of self;
- Listening deeply to others’ voices;
- Praying when tending to pray cautiously;
- Laughing as a medium for experiencing God’s grace and mercy;
- Seeing the life that God has put in us when all the world sees is disability; and
- Recognizing signs of grace and mercy around and within us.
As Eastern Association Minister in the Minnesota Conference, living with this invisible disability also influences how I prepare local church search committees to consider ministerial candidates who may have a disability. Teaching how to read ministerial profiles, I suggest:
“Many pastors who live with a disability will talk about their situation in profile item #13, ‘Special Factors.’ I urge pastors to disclose to search committees a disability that they may have because I think that folks like you will respond well to being trusted with such information.
“Even more, I urge pastors who have a disability to let you know how living with that disability has become a gift for ministry. Sometimes pastors who have a disability are afraid to mention it in their profiles for fear that search committees will stop reading, immediately rejecting them.
“I encourage you not to do that but rather to focus on each pastor’s gifts for ministry. You may find someone with a disability who has discovered and developed incredibly great gifts for ministry out of that disability. Those may be exactly the cluster of gifts for ministry that your church needs.”
Most search committees take this to heart and genuinely open themselves to considering these gifts for ministry.
People will ask questions from spiritual struggles that they suspect I also have encountered. The most common, “Don’t you ever wonder why God allowed a disease like this that can be so physically painful and debilitating and socially isolating to happen to you?”
I just do not blame God or connect God with the onset of this crummy disease. What does amaze me is the abundance of God’s grace and blessing. Over and over it lifts me out of despair, giving me the capacity to see what a blessing my life is by God’s grace and to laugh at the devil.
From UCC DM Newsletter Archive