Children, Youth and Family Contemporary Issue Course: Medicine and Disability

This Luther Seminary Intensive course is open to pastors, lay leaders and parents as continuing education. This class is part of a John Templeton funded project, Science for Youth Ministry. This year’s children, youth and family contemporary issues class focuses on Medicine and Disability. We will explore how living in a diagnostic culture impacts ministry with children, youth and their parents.

In a diagnostic culture; diagnosing is almost a reflexive action. We often label people with our armchair diagnoses, “Oh, she’s ADHD, for sure.” “He’s got to be on the spectrum.”  In children’s and youth ministry we are as susceptible as anyone to diagnoses, often buttressed in our assumptions by the pill bottles we’re handed by parents for their students to take with them on retreats or trips. But how should we think about this theologically? If every church will meet young people with disabilities (cognitive, physical, emotional, learning, etc.) how should we make our ministries welcoming and open to the working of Holy Spirit? How might labels detract from or contribute to this? These are major questions for the practice of congregational ministry, but they are also questions of faith and science. What makes us human? What does it mean to be human if a pill can change our personality? When should we trust in medicine and when in prayer? In this course you will hear from two of the leading practical theologians in disability theology. They’ll lead us into new ways of understanding community, humanity and wellness, providing help in thinking about how our churches might welcome all people, particularly those with disabilities.

Reduced fee made possible by the John Templeton Foundation Grant for Science and Youth Ministry Project.