Learning from and Enhancing Disabled People’s Christian Leadership

Traditionally, disabled people have not been seen as leaders in faith communities. In two past research projects with disabled Christians in US and UK contexts, we found that participants had distinctive insights to offer about how churches can benefit from and support disabled people’s leadership and ministry (Raffety 2022Jacobs and Richardson 2022). This project will allow us to explore those findings in more depth with disabled people and share them with faith communities.

We will begin with secondary analysis of our past research projects. In workshops, we will collaborate with a research advisory group of disabled Christian ministers and lay leaders in the US and the UK, who will help us analyse our findings about what leadership means to disabled Christians and how churches can support disabled leaders. Together, we aim to:

  • Develop models of disabled people’s leadership in Christian communities
  • Create resources for churches (to help them develop and support disabled leaders
  • Write a peer-reviewed article on disability and Christian leadership.

We hope the project will contribute to a growing understanding of how disabled people’s experiences can change the way we think about leadership in society and faith communities. Workshops will involve representatives from disabled-led and self-advocacy groups in church contexts, including people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

This research is a collaboration with Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, and is funded by a Calvin Teacher-Scholar grant (TS25A-11).