The Silent Holocron

It is with great joy that I welcome to the blogosphere my comrade-in-faith, Steve Dye! And I didn’t even have to “shame” the guy into blogging.

I have worked with Steve either directly or indirectly for 4 years now. We initially met through my wife shortly after we began dating back in 2003. We ministered together in Deaf Teen Quest – Louisville and later through Deaf Cafe – Louisville before both of us resigned in order to focus more on our home churches. Last year Steve left his home church to take a position as Minster to the Deaf at Southeast Christian Church.

Steve and I are alike in many ways. We both like many of the same things (Star Wars, college football, Tennessee Titans football, etc.), we’re big kids most of the time (okay, Steve is usually the big kid “most of the time” ), we’re former baseball players, we golf, we both think our wives are the hottest women alive, and we are both stubborn mules when we want to be. Soon I’ll be able to add another similarity: we’ll both be dads.

We try to regularly meet up for fellowship and encouragement, though lately I must confess we haven’t done a good job of it. Ever since Steve resigned from Deaf Cafe we both have been on our own ministry paths, which brings about different schedules and busy-ness that we have regrettably allowed to dictate our relationship. We will certainly do better with that in the future!

I’m going to try and get Steve to start a blogging dialogue with me in the near future regarding Deaf ministry and possibly help re-start the Deaf ministry series I have been wanting to do. In the meantime, take a peek at his blog here and leave some encouragement for him to be a regular blogger!

Gone to KBCD. All you hearing guys can go to the other one, the “hearing” one. Let’s compare notes when we get back. If you’re wondering about the theme for this year, here’s the design made by an enterprising Deaf artist in my church:

Yes, I know, it’s supposed to say “Every Christian’s Battle,” but somehow we misplaced the original and I only got to scan the second draft. The original has the possessive.

Those of you staying home, don’t forget to spend the Lord’s day in His own house with His own people. We’ll talk about this “battle” stuff as well as the church starting on Monday, with a sermon or two sprinkled in for seasoning throughout the week.

I am Oral Deaf.

This is the plea of my heart. I pray it pierces yours.

I am Oral Deaf.

What does that mean? It means that I am “Oral.” I can talk, and quite well at that. I can talk clearly and understandably. You would not know I am Deaf simply from my ability to speak well. As an “Oral” person, I can function almost exclusively as a hearing person. I can carry on a conversation without needing aids such as writing back and forth or interpreters. I can, because of this gift, embrace hearing culture and ways. I feel “at home” with hearing people. As an “Oral” person, I can blend in with the hearing world almost seamlessly.

I am Oral Deaf.

What does that mean? It means that I am “Deaf.” I cannot hear. Many things that are accessible to my hearing counterparts are unavailable to me. I cannot hear the radio. I cannot hear the voices on television. I cannot hear the laughter of an audience at a comedy club. I cannot hear the melodies of music. I cannot hear the waves on the beach, the songs of the birds, the rolling of the thunder.

I am Oral Deaf.

I can function almost exclusively as a “Deaf” individual. I use Sign Language to communicate with other Deaf people. I embrace the culture that gave me this language. I embrace the people that make this language their first language. I can carry on a conversation with other Deaf people without needing aids such as writing back and forth or interpreters. I can, because of this gift, embrace Deaf culture and ways. I feel “at home” with those who have struggled just as I struggle. I feel brotherhood with those who bear the burdens I bear. I experience unity with those who make a way of life around their Deafness. As a “Deaf” person, I can blend in with the Deaf world almost seamlessly.

I am Oral Deaf.

You say, “You could wear a hearing aid!” Hearing aids do not fill this gap completely. I can hear spoken voices, but I do not necessarily understand everything they are saying. I can hear songs, but I cannot distinguish the lyrics unless I have memorized them first. Mechanical sounds are impossible. I can hear the actors on the television, but I cannot understand them. I can hear the lyrics from the radio, but I cannot understand them. I can hear the voice through a telephone, but I cannot understand a word. Sometimes, I need you to write things down for me. Sometimes, I need you to repeat what you said so I can be sure I understand. Sometimes, I need an interpreter to make your words clear to me. Listening is a task of Herculean proportions. I am forced to spend the majority of my time listening. But, by necessity, it has become second nature to me.

I am Oral Deaf.

I am unique in my own setting. I have a foot in two worlds, hearing and Deaf. I am part of both worlds, but I do not belong to either world 100%. Do not ask me to live by “hearing” rules. Do not ask me to live by “Deaf” rules. Your rules are crowded and suffocating. I don’t want to hear just because you can. I don’t want to be “Deaf” just because I can’t hear. I do not belong to the hearing. I do not belong to the Deaf. I belong to God alone. I want to be the person God made me. I want to be the person that God wants. I want to be myself. That is all.

I am Oral Deaf.

I love who I am. I would not change myself. Why should I sin against God by changing myself? He thought about me long before I was born. He planned my life before I had done anything. He decided that I would be “Deaf.” He decided that I would be “Oral.” I should not reject what God has made me. Instead, I should praise Him and give Him glory for being Deaf. I should praise Him and give Him glory for being Oral.

I am Oral Deaf.

I am between two worlds. Call out to me, and I will speak with my voice to you. Touch my shoulder, and I will sign with my hands to you. Alone, in my world between worlds, I will lift up my hands and my voice and shout to the Lord.

I am Oral Deaf.

This is the plea of my heart. I pray it pierces yours.

I am Oral Deaf.

I have suggested to our church’s Ministry Team that we needed to consider possibly selecting one Bible translation for our church to use. We would encourage our members to purchase this translation, Sunday School and discipleship classes would use it, and the pastoral staff would commit to preaching from this translation. This would reduce the amount of time we are spending explaining the differences in translations, because our members use a variety of translations.

For example, I tend to use the English Standard Version (ESV) to study and prepare, while preaching from the Contemporary English Version (CEV). When putting together Scripture for my sermon outlines (which are printed and handed out), I have tended to cross-read a mixture of the ESV and CEV, which to me has allowed me to be accurate while rendering the passage readable. Our senior pastor tends to use the New American Standard Bible. He has recently begun to move towards the New Century Version (NCV). However, many of our church members use the New International Version, New International Reader’s Version (NIRV), New Living Translation, or Today’s New International Version. There is even a King James Version Only-ist among our members.

Given that most of our members have low-level reading grades (about elementary or middle school for most), you can understand the need for us to select a readable translation to use across the board. When someone pops up their hand to say they don’t understand what a verse says, or that their Bible version says something else, that is valuable discipleship time wasted just to explain the difference.

Our senior pastor suggested that we immediately begin a discipleship series on Bible translations for the next month. We will be explaining the differences between various translations as well as how to pick a translation to use. We might examine several translations individually. Ultimately we want to come to a decision as a church on which translation to use. This will allow us to be deliberate about which Bibles we purchase for our pews and to give away.

So far, what are our candidates? We have the NIRV, the NCV, and the CEV. All are eminently readable at a low reading grade (they avoid words like “eminently” ), our Deaf have little difficulty understanding these versions, and they carry a good degree of accuracy. The problem with each, however, is that in some places they sacrifice the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew in favor of making a verse readable. It changes (whether intentionally or unintentionally) the meaning of a verse in order to make the verse understandable to a low-level reader. And if we try to spend time explaining this we run the risk of confusing our members.

Pastor Tim (our senior pastor) is partial to the NCV and before this suggestion was encouraging our members to use it. I went out and purchased my own copy of the NCV for study and comparison, and I found it to be more accurate and usable than the CEV. Which is funny to me, because the CEV is more “preachable.” I don’t yet own an NIRV, so I cannot yet make any comparisons.

It has just occurred to me as I write this that many of you are looking at me weird. A “preachable” Bible version? See, I have to preach in an entirely different language from the one read in the Bible. It is extremely difficult to preach the ESV in American Sign Language. I can do it, but I don’t think I do it very well. There are no signs for many of the concepts packed in “regular” ESV words. You can’t just sign words like predestination, justification, imputation, and so on. They have to be spelled out. That is what a version like the CEV tries to do, spell it out. For example, the average Deaf person is not going to understand the word justification, but if you simply say “made right with God,” how much easier is that to understand? Hey, I got signs for those words, so why not use that Bible? If you substitute the KJV and make your language that of postmodernism, you get a pretty good idea of what I mean.

What I will be doing over this next month is posting our lessons from the discipleship class. I taught a brief introductory yesterday in preparation for Pastor Tim to lead the main thrust of the class. Please pray for us as we develop these lessons and for our church as we prayerfully seek a good “church” Bible.

In my previous post on this topic, I began to examine the “numbers are important” fallacy in describing the health of a church. Let me recap what brought this about.

Recently I talked with one of my church members (hereafter CM for “church member”) about a group discussion in which CM took part. CM was telling me about an issue they were discussing, in which apparently “church growth factors” or some such nonsense was being discussed.

Long story short, once it was disclosed to the group that our church (Louisville Baptist Deaf Church) has a membership of about 35, with an average attendance of 25, CM was in no uncertain terms immediately told by CM’s peers (all of whom were hearing), “Your church is dying! It may already be dead!”

Needless to say, CM was upset by such an assertion. This was, quite honestly, an assertion made from ignorance. Moreover, this assertion assumed that numbers is a valid judge of the “health” of a church.

In my first post, I began deconstructing this assertion by showing that those who made the assertion failed to understand the unique ministry setting of the church. They failed to understand that Deaf churches tend to be small groups of less than 50, with the average Deaf church having at least 15-25 members. Very few Deaf churches have memberships greater than 30-50. Larger than this, you have a “Deaf megachurch.”

Today, let us continue by examining a second mistake made in this discussion.

Second, CM’s peers failed to consider the spiritual health of the church. This is the more dangerous failure of the two, even though it is difficult if not impossible to assess the spiritual health of the church without first understanding the unique setting of the church. But even having done this, you cannot determine the health of a church by the number of people in membership or attending.

In other words, numbers are not an accurate gauge of the health of a church. Numbers mean absolutely nothing. Even though the verse is usually applied to church discipline, Matthew 18:20 promises believers that “wherever two or more are together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” A church could consist of no more than two and still be healthy. In fact, some church plants begin with little more than two people! No, health must be measured by means other than numerical.

In our church, the Word is preached forcefully, the Gospel is proclaimed shamelessly, Scripture is exegeted and applied carefully and expectantly. Our people are hungry to understand Scripture. Our people want to know and understand the Bible. To my knowledge, all of our members currently “on the roll” are believers. And that is a lot more than can be said for many hearing Southern Baptist churches.

Are we a healthy church? By no means, if by that you mean a church bucking the current (hearing) denominational trends. But comparative to those denominational trends, we are healthier than many of the hearing churches with 300+ members, including mega churches! Comparative to Deaf ministry trends, we are healthier than the vast majority of Deaf ministries.

That said, we still have a ways to go before our bill of health is “clean.” Like many of our hearing counterparts, our church does not evangelize. Many of our members seem to believe “that’s the pastor’s job.” Yet our members are enthusiastic and supportive of missions. They do not understand that missions and evangelism are synonymous; that is, they are one and the same. Our church does not make a habit of working out their salvation (Philippians 2:12). Discipleship to many of them is nothing more than Bible study, Bible study, and more Bible study. Some have been taught all their lives that “real Christianity” consists of going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, praying when you need to, and studying your Bible. Changing their lives, Christian service, and other evidences of faith are strange to many of them. Our church does not make a habit of prayer. That is either “the pastor’s job” or it is “boring.” The only times many of them pray is when there are sicknesses or needs. Again, many of them have been taught this all their lives.

But a church of regenerate members hungry for Scripture can be transformed. In fact, I believe such a church is actively being transformed by the Holy Spirit. Can we say the same of a church of mostly regenerate members or a church half-full or less-than-half full of regenerate members with little or no desire for Scripture? In my less-than-enlightened opinion (because not only am I a fallible man, but Deaf on top of it), there is no way that is possible outside of a work of God. A true revival is necessary for such a church.

All this is to say that a church, especially a Deaf church, cannot be considered “healthy” unless, at the very minimum, all of its members are regenerate. Numbers do not equate saved church members or saved attenders. A church will not grow when its members are lost. A church will only grow when its members are saved and seeking Scripture. Beyond that, a church can only grow when that saved, Scripture-hungry church begins to be transformed by what it is learning. They will be pleased with the church because they have learned to please God and be pleased with Him.

But if you try to grow a church numerically, you will not really have saved, Scripture-hungry, transformed (and transforming) people in your church. You will have a crowd that looks like it showed up for a Saturday college football game — only happy and content so long as you are pleasing them.

Or The “Numbers Are Important” Fallacy

Recently I talked with one of my church members (hereafter CM for “church member”) about a group discussion in which CM took part. CM was telling me about an issue they were discussing, in which apparently “church growth factors” or some such nonsense was being discussed.

Long story short, once it was disclosed to the group that our church (Louisville Baptist Deaf Church) has a membership of about 35, with an average attendance of 25, CM was in no uncertain terms immediately told by CM’s peers (all of whom were hearing), “Your church is dying! It may already be dead!”

Needless to say, CM was upset by such an assertion. This was, quite honestly, an assertion made from ignorance. Moreover, this assertion assumed that numbers is a valid judge of the “health” of a church.

First of all, these people failed to understand the unique ministry setting of the church. They failed to understand that not all churches are the same. Deaf ministry is a totally different paradigm from hearing ministry. Ed Stetzer (author of Planting Missional Churches and Breaking the Missional Code) would say that CM’s classmates failed to break the missional code. In Deaf ministry, numbers is the #1 most insignificant factor. A Deaf ministry which focuses on numbers will soon die.

Why? Because numbers are dangerous in a Deaf church. For example, when a certain number of Deaf people begin congregating regularly, gossip will not be far behind. It is difficult to convey the impact of such a concept to a hearing person. Usually such a person dismisses this phenomenon without taking the time to understand it. The most common dismissal I have been met with is “Oh, every church has to deal with gossip!” Gossip destroys Deaf churches faster and more destructively than just about anything. For a person to fail to take the issue of gossip seriously in Deaf culture is to immediately remove any hint of credibility from that person.

Not only that, a Deaf ministry focused on numbers makes a ministry’s true health irrelevant. Deaf people tend to be guilty of this error more egregiously than their hearing counterparts. (Another way of saying egregious is the common Deaf expression, “Deaf FAMOUS for.”) Often you will find Deaf people asking the question, “How many?” regarding social and church events, wanting to know the numbers that showed. If the number is “disappointing,” it will not matter if that event/ministry/etc. is exactly what that Deaf person needs.

The reality is that very few Deaf churches have memberships greater than 30 to 50. Ours is pretty large, comparatively. Deaf “mega churches” like Brentwood Baptist Deaf Church in Nashville, TN (membership reportedly about 150) are rare. The average Deaf church likely has 15 to 25 members. Why don’t more Deaf attend Deaf churches? Probably because, as a rule, many like to go to interpreted ministries. They want to go to the local mega church or to a church with an interpreted ministry located close to their homes, or close to their social network. Or they may go to church with their hearing families, especially if their church has an interpreted ministry. They like being around numbers. Deaf-led churches are more commonly the exception to the rule. Our church could be considered a “Deaf mega church” here in Kentucky. Would that were the case!

A Deaf church focused on numbers is — as was skillfully put by a Deaf minister friend — “an inch deep and a mile wide.” In other words, numbers are unhealthy.

Last time, I promised to provide some statistics about Deaf ministry that would, quite frankly, shock you. I will not give a lot of introduction to these facts; instead, I will let them speak for themselves.

1. There are an estimated 250 million Deaf individuals worldwide.
2. The U.S. Census Bureau reports 35 million Americans have hearing trouble. Of this number, at least 1 million (or more, estimates vary) are what we would call Deaf in the sense in which I am a minister.
3. In Louisville/Jefferson County alone, Census figures estimate 14,000 deaf individuals. Add the “hard of hearing,” and this number jumps to over 69,000. Many of these, however, are older people who have lost their hearing. The actual number of Deaf individuals is more likely between 7,000 – 8,000, according to estimates given to me by the local Department of Vocational Rehabilitation.
4. Many of these Deaf individuals cannot be found. A canvassing survey undertaken by my church, Louisville Baptist Deaf Church, in the 1990s was only able to uncover about 400 names.
5. Of the worldwide and American numbers, according to the organization Deaf Missions, less than two percent (2%) of Deaf individuals claim to be Christians. This means that, percentage wise, there are less than 200 Deaf Christians in Louisville. The actual number, to my knowledge, is at or slightly greater than this percentage.
6. The majority of these Christians either do not regularly attend church, “church hop” in order to be with friends as much as possible, or are not active in the churches of which they are members.
7. Bob Rhoads of Campus Crusade for Christ reports that in 2005, 42 out of the 65 Deaf churches in the U.S. did not have a pastor.
8. In Louisville, there is only one Deaf church, and it is blessed to have two pastors, myself and our Senior Pastor Tim Bender.

In contrast, there are hundreds of interpreting ministries in hearing churches all over America and the world. They are little more than gateways for many Deaf; that is, they are little more than seed-planters. It is the Christian Deaf community and those hearing who have dedicated themselves to Deaf ministry that typically are used by God to water and harvest.

Why is this? Culturally, Deaf people have responded, generally, that hearing churches have tried to make Deaf ministry fit a hearing mold. I will give an example that truly rankles me these days to illustrate this point.

Today in our circles there is a growing disdain for contemporary worship methods, particularly images, which extends to Powerpoint and videos. I’m sorry, but in Deaf ministry nothing could be more disastrous. Deaf people are a visual people. They typically learn visually. It is not enough to simply tell a Deaf person something; one must show it to them. The majority of Deaf individuals are not functionally developed enough to grasp abstract thought; these people need to be shown examples, things that can be seen, grasped and understood. Even those who (like myself) are functionally “advanced” require visual representations of concepts from time to time. For an example, I blogged about a theological conversation I had with my wife using condiments as illustration tools in this post.

I am one of the very rare Deaf individuals who essentially function as a hearing person, and am blessed in that respect. It is also a curse in my ministry, because it is very easy for me to forget to be representational in my preaching. I do not use enough examples, enough pictures, enough dramatizations in my teaching. J. I. Packer, in Knowing God, writes that images distort our understanding of God by making the infinite into something finite, the perfect into the imperfect, substituting worship of the Creator for worship of the Created. In Deaf ministry, I have to wholeheartedly distance myself from Packer, as much as I agree with his theology on this issue. It is a practical impossibility to eschew visuals.

But enough of the soapbox. In the next post, I will detail this general response that non-Deaf ministries are “too hearing.”

Over the past two years, I have been blessed to be the associate pastor of Louisville Baptist Deaf Church. I have been involved in this church for a total of 6 years, one under watchcare and three as a full member before becoming associate pastor. I cut my teeth on Deaf ministry here, under the tutelage and mentorship of Rev. Timothy Bender. Pastor Tim continues to mentor me, and I have done nothing but learn under his loving and gracious pastorate.

During my time at LBDC, I have come to have a growing expansion of my world, in both the hearing world and Deaf world. I have been introduced to many “important” people in the world of hearing and Deaf ministry, and have been privileged to interact with many others through the medium of the internet. In a recent casual discussion with a friend, he mentioned a certain pastor with a widely-read blog, and how he had been blessed to have on-going correspondence with him. Later, I realized that I seem to have been placed in such a position that I have no other option but to make people aware about Deaf ministry. I feared, at first, that such thinking was ludicrous. Indeed, as I met certain individuals, it seemed to me that such thoughts meant I was “getting too big for my britches.”

I’ve always been one to keep my head down and my eye on the ball. Denominational involvement with the Southern Baptist Convention (hereafter “the hearing convention”) has never been high on my list of priorities, and what I had been envisioning called for a heavy amount of elbow-rubbing with many of these people and many more I have never met. I felt that it would be enough for me to focus on my church and the Deaf associations we belong to (The Southern Baptist Conference of the Deaf and Kentucky Baptist Conference of the Deaf, hereafter SBCD and KBCD).

Then I had a serious discussion with another friend, who basically started smacking me upside the head! My friend upbraided me like I have not upbraided in some time. Instead of asking whether or not I belonged in such circles of influence, the question I should have been asking was, “What opportunities has Providence placed at my disposal by which I may advance the cause of Christ? If I speak up, will God be pleased to use me?” Furthermore, my friend chided me for being defeatist and negative, and for not trusting that the Lord knew what He was doing by placing me in such circumstances.

Now that I have been properly humbled, and have had a week and a half to think and pray over this, I come to you with a new series, long promised but long in the coming. Over the next month or so I am going to write a series of posts, at least once weekly, describing for you what Deaf ministry is all about. And I am putting all of you on notice. I will not be ignored. I will shout it from the rooftops, sign it in the hallways of the church and seminary, call upon the Lord’s name to make His way straight that His silent people may come to Him. And I believe many of you are standing in that way.

It is my intention to bring you, those in a position to do something about this in your own churches, and perhaps even within our denomination, a first-person perspective of ministry to the largest unreached people group in America and the world. I will not claim “expert” status, but I will rest heavily on the experiences and writings of those who have gone before me in Deaf ministry, and how those experiences have shaped my approach to Deaf ministry. I will welcome you into my world, the world of a believer with a unique perspective on both hearing and Deaf worlds. I will welcome you into the world of Deaf ministry.

It is time for our hearing brothers and sisters in the SBC to understand just what they have overlooked. It is time for our Deaf brothers and sisters to partner with them in the Great Commission. This is my vision. This is my goal. I long for the day when the hearing and deaf conventions join forces to effect the greatest outpouring of God’s grace on the Deaf that the world has ever seen. It is my fervent belief that this is what God desires.

Deaf ministry has been ignored and overlooked for many years. In the next post, I will present you some sobering statistics that will show just how overlooked we are. My mother-in-law calls deafness “The Hidden Handicap.” Once you have seen the stark reality of Deaf ministry in my next post, I pray you will be as brokenhearted as I at the horror of the vast unreached “silent sinners.”