The Forgotten Billion | Missio Nexus

EMQ » Oct – Dec 2024 » Volume 60 Issue 4

Summary: More than a billion people worldwide have disabilities, and most have never heard the gospel. However, mission agencies often overlook this community in their mobilization and ministry strategies.

By Heather Pubols

In his book, Adam, God’s Beloved, Henri Nouwen wrote extensively about his friendship with Adam Arnette. Adam was a resident at L’Arche Daybreak, a community of people with disabilities and their caregivers in Toronto, Canada. He could not speak and could only move with help from others. During Nouwen’s first year as pastor of the community, he helped Adam bathe, dress, and eat every morning.

While some may label Adam as a burden to society, Nouwen described him as his friend, teacher, and guide who “… more than any book or professor led me to the person of Jesus.”[i] He further said Adam, “connected me with my inner self, my community, and my God.”[ii]

Nouwen had observed the imprint of the imago Dei in Adam – an imprint that reveals the belovedness and value of every human being whether abled or disabled. However, people with disabilities face significant challenges that are exponentially bigger in the majority world.

Mission agencies rarely offer ways for people with disabilities to engage, and mission strategies seldom focus on them. Yet, Kim Kargbo points out that only 5–10% of the world’s more than 1 billion people with disabilities have ever heard the gospel.[iii] She says this makes them the largest unreached people group on earth.

This issue includes contributors who have disabilities and those who work alongside this community. Both groups offer theological and practical reflections on how missions can be done for and with people with disabilities worldwide.

Andrew Opie shares why it’s important for mission agencies to “make room for more than just the right kind of people.” Jackie Kimani explains why the harm of prosperity gospel theology to Africans with disabilities can no longer be ignored. And Mitch Tani and Mary Esther Penner reveal how a wheelchair ministry in Japan is making a global difference.

Our extras section contains two articles. Christi Timbler explores missional communitas – the kinship unity that comes from diverse members who are grafted together. John DeValve details the lessons he learned developing a contextualized naming ceremony with a group of new believers in West Africa.

Read this issue of EMQ →

Heather Pubols
Editorial Director

[i] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Adam: God’s Beloved, Anniversary edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 16, Kindle.

[ii] Nouwen, Adam, 101.

[iii] Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, “Ministry Among People with Disabilities,” Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 35B (Pattaya, Thailand: Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 2004), https://lausanne.org/content/ministry-among-people-disabilities-lop-35b. World Health Organization, “Fact Sheet on Disability” (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2023), https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health.

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