Recently, I visited with Jeff McNair, an old friend from
Redlands, CA. For over ten years, Jeff
and I participated in a group of four guys who met every other Tuesday morning
at IHOP to eat a short stack of pancakes and encourage each other in our
personal and professional growth.
During those years, we watched Jeff’s commitment for the
disabled grow from a teaching job at Cal State San Bernardino into a passion
for promoting a Christian view of disability on a worldwide scale. Today, Jeff is
a tenured professor at California Baptist University in Riverside, CA and one of the
world’s leading voices of hope for thousands around the world who have been ostracized
from society due to being physically or mentally handicapped.
It began 20 years ago when he and his wife, Kathi, started the Power
& Light Sunday School class at our church to reach out to the
needs of the disabled in our community. That
class grew into having a weekly attendance of sixty to eighty. Next, Jeff
launched a website focused on helping other churches understand their role in
serving the disabled. That, in turn, led him to writing books and articles on
the subject leading to extensive speaking engagements at conferences and
national events.
Now, I’ve learned
that Jeff is significantly involved as an advisor with Joni and Friends, the ministry to handicapped people developed by Joni
Eareckson Tada. Together with several other renowned authors, including Chuck
Colson and John MacArthur, Jeff helped create an outstanding study course
called Beyond Suffering, A Christian View of Disability Ministry and is
one of the master trainers teaching the course throughout the US and around the
world. Whether in Seattle or Serbia, Jeff is finding church leaders absolutely
stunned by all that the Bible has to say about a theology of suffering and
disability.
When we met a few weeks ago for a delicious chicken
dinner at the home of another one of our famous Tuesday morning pancake guys, Jeff informed me that Joni and Friends
had been approached by top officials in the Chinese religious bureau, asking if
training on disability ministry could be extended to the church in China. So,
for the past several weeks, Jeff has been part of a delegation hosted by national
leaders of the Chinese Three Self Church, conducting training workshops on the
subject all across that country.
What a thrill it is to see how God has taken a guy who
is fond of blueberry pancake syrup and thrust him into a worldwide ministry of such
significant challenge and encouragement for His people.
Here are links to Jeff’s personal website: http://jeffmcnair.com/ and the Beyond
Suffering course:
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