Baltimore pastor seeks more resources for ministries with the deaf May 1, 2004 By Melissa Lauber
 | | The Rev. Elke Betz-Schmidt is an associate pastor at Christ UMC for the Deaf in Baltimore. |
PITTSBURGH (UMNS) -- When the Rev. Elke Betz-Schmidt was 5, she stopped hearing music. Then she stopped hearing everything.Today,
Betz-Schmidt, an associate pastor at Christ United Methodist Church for
the Deaf in Baltimore, says she hears with her heart -- and her soul.
She heard the voice of God calling her to ordained ministry, and she’s
listening now for how the church will minister to the deaf community. A
member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference, Betz-Schmidt is
attending General Conference as an advocate for a proposal that would
provide $350,000 for denominational deaf ministries over the next four
years (Petition 40727-IC). There
are 28 million deaf people in the United States. Less than 1 percent of
them identify themselves as Christians, and even fewer attend church.
The reasons for this vary, but at the root of the problem is that the
deaf represent a distinct culture, with their own language and ways of
relating in, and to, the world, Betz-Schmidt said. United
Methodists are not expending more resources to minister to the deaf
community, she said, and that troubles her. No one, she believes, should
be excluded from the family of God. She
worries that the delegates will embrace the spirit of ministering to
the deaf, but fail to back up their good intentions with meaningful
funding. "Do we really want to tell people we can’t afford them?"
Betz-Schmidt asked. She’s
heard stories from the past two General Conferences, when the deaf
delegates had difficulty convincing the General Conference to pay the
several thousand dollars for interpreting and to allow the interpreter
to sit in the bar of the conference. She
applauds places like Wesley Seminary in Washington, which paid for
four-and-a-half years of interpreter services so that she could receive
her master of divinity degree. If she’s ordained, Betz-Schmidt will
become the fifth deaf United Methodist pastor. Working
in ministry with the deaf community, she has learned that church is
never just a Sunday morning phenomenon. Because of language
difficulties, assisting people with simple difficulties often leads her
into a maze of complications. "What takes five minutes, can turn into
hours," she said. She
has also discovered that her preaching and teaching have to be done in a
more hands-on, active manner. American Sign Language, she explains,
does not lend itself to abstract thinking or hypothetical questions, and
so the Gospel must be presented in a simple, experiential and visually
interesting manner. Too much talk in church turns deaf people away in droves, she said. Because
Betz-Schmidt was post-lingually deafened, she speaks well and is able
to read lips easily. In fact, some people are unaware she is deaf. However,
her deafness does define her, she said. She remembers being at a
funeral for a hospice patient with whom she had spent a lot of time. The
pastor asked the congregation to imagine the deceased woman in heaven,
where she was talking to Jesus, because God had given her the ability to
hear. Betz-Schmidt
detests the fact that anyone would hesitate to know that Jesus, in
heaven and anywhere else, speaks fluent American Sign Language. She
now wants the church to provide $350,000 for awareness events, grants
and publications related to ministries with the deaf. She wants the deaf
and hearing communities to recognize each other’s gifts and share them.
"Until that happens," she said, "the body of Christ will not be complete." Lauber is a staff writer for the United Methodist Church’s Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference.
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