Bill Gaventa

Accompanying Disability

“Topher Endress alternates his down-to-earth and theological reflections on accompanying people with disabilities in supportive relationships with chapters written by one of those persons, his father, John, who describes his own adjustment to quadriplegia caused by a hiking accident. This book highlights both the grittiness and sublime and can be read by anyone.”

Disability and the Way of Jesus

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Bethany McKinney Fox's book is a joy to read. She uses research, exegesis, multidisciplinary perspectives, and her own experience of living with and listening to people with disabilities to produce a book that honestly and boldly looks straight at the healing stories of Jesus in the Gospels. This is a book for any pastor or lay group, not just those committed to inclusive ministries. Her writing is both clear and engaging while creatively stretching our vision, disrupting some of our assumptions, and deepening our understanding of healing. I cannot imagine preaching or writing about these healing stories without pulling this back off my shelf and reminding myself of what Dr. Fox has to say.”

Dutiful Love

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Finding Jesus in the Storm

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“Finding Jesus in the Storm first of all listens deeply, or, as John Swinton says, ‘thickly,’ to people with mental health challenges and helps a reader see, broaden, and reconstruct both the ways that people of faith might walk with people with mental challenges as well as help people with mental health challenges explore the spiritual dimensions of their own journey. As someone who has both worked with others and my own mental health challenges, this felt very real. Using insights from psychology, sociology, theology, and other disciplines, Swinton once again breaks past multiple forms of stigma and unexamined assumptions to help readers enter a space where we can once again see each other as children of God—pilgrims—doing the best we can to live into the embrace of God’s love.”

Forgetting the Former Things

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Special Grace

Bible Studies & Devotionals

“Elrena Evans has done remarkable things with this short volume of Bible verses, vignettes, and prayers related to almost any aspect of being the parent of a child with disabilities. Her authenticity and honesty shine through in ways that feel real—sometimes raw and sometimes funny. Parents can no doubt find themselves in multiple stories and prayers. By offering her family's experiences and feelings in short, poignant prayers, Evans is shining a light on the ways that faith and spirituality permeate the lives of people with disabilities and their families. A pastor or priest seeking to understand families and those dimensions of their lives just might find this an excellent resource that also indirectly points to the ways they and their faith communities might journey with and support these families. It is a book of stories and prayers; it will also preach.”

The Social Contexts of Disability Ministry

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Herzog argues, persuasively, that disability and issues related to disability in our society are ubiquitous and that while initiatives by churches and champions in this area are valiant, they have only begun to tap the breadth and depth of the presence of disability in God’s creation. Just as his subtitle states, he has given us a primer, with the hope and belief that there is much more living water in that well, water that is deeply needed in the lives of people with disabilities and in the wider social discourse about the meaning of disability.”

Toward a Theology of Psychological Disorder

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“This is a head-on engagement with common cultural and religious beliefs about mental illness that harm and isolate rather than help and heal. By providing critiques to those perspectives on the basis of Scripture and theology, and by developing alternative biblical and theological foundations, Dr. Webb provides a guide that can be used time and again by clergy, counselors, people with psychological disorders, their families, and friends. Well done!”

Vulnerable Communion

Theology

“For years, I have thought that the key theological and pastoral issue in ministries with people with disabilities is not disability per se, but vulnerability. Tom Reynolds has taken that premise from his own experience as a father and his own training as a theologian and crafted a theology based on a foundation of vulnerability. I have rarely read a manuscript where I made so many ‘amen’ marks. This book is an amazing integration of Reynolds’s experience in the worlds of disability and theology. This is a wonderful contribution to theological studies—a resource that any clergy interested in understanding vulnerability for ministry will go to again and again—and a theological contribution to the exploding field of disability studies.”

When I Go to Church, I Belong

Children & Youth

“When I Go to Church, I Belong is a terrific social story for children with disabilities that captures both the joys and anxieties of participating in large groups like faith communities. It is simply and respectfully written, beautifully illustrated, with diversity everywhere. I can imagine children with and without disabilities will enjoy it and come back to it.”