Belonging in the Body: Disability, Discipleship, and the Church (Module 5 of 7)

Christian discipleship has too often been imagined in overly cognitive terms, as though maturity in Christ were measured chiefly by conceptual mastery, verbal articulation, or doctrinal fluency. The module offers a different account. It presents spiritual formation as participation in the life of God through embodied, relational, habitual, devotional, and communal practices in which disabled persons are not peripheral recipients of ministry but full disciples whose lives disclose something vital about the church, communion, and belonging.

The module treats disability not merely as a pastoral concern to be managed, but as a theological site from which the church may recover a thicker understanding of formation. Persons with intellectual disabilities invite the church to reconsider what it means to know God, to belong to Christ, and to participate in the body of Christ. In this way, the course moves beyond token inclusion and asks how churches might become communities of shared discipleship, mutual dependence, and faithful presence.

Learning Outcomes

• Articulate a broader biblical and theological vision of discipleship rooted in participation in Christ rather than intellectual mastery alone.
• Identify five interrelated modes of spiritual formation accessible to disabled persons: embodied, imitative, habitual, devotional, and communal.
• Explain several ways persons with disabilities may nurture relationship with God through prayer, worship, sacramental life, faithful routines, and congregational belonging.
• Explore how congregations may better accompany disabled persons and their families through practical, pastoral, and ecclesial forms of support.

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