While the author raises issues that need to be considered by pastors and other church leaders, I felt that the perspective of the disabled congregant was missing. If a pastor or lay leader were truly concerned about making their place of worship more accessible, they would be better served by having a discussion with the disabled members of their faith community.

I've struggled over the past couple of days with how to review Brian Brock's "Disability: Living Into the Diversity of Christ's Body," an ambitious endeavor continuing Brock's longstanding devotion to the world of disability theology.

As an adult with significant lifelong disabilities and a seminary graduate with a pastoral background, I've long lamented the myriad of ways in which the contemporary Christian church falls short in addressing disability in daily Christian living, in the pews, at the altar, and in faith communities.

In some ways, it simply must be noted that I'm not truly the target audience for "Disability." It's a primer, really, an entry-level course into disability theology yet a book already being recognized for its "new and original ways of thinking about disability."

If this is "new and original," we have so very far to go.

To be fair to myself, I fully expected to embrace "Disability." The author is a leading ethicist and pastoral theologian who parents a child with disabilities. Early on, this academic writer puts forth his effort to make this book more accessible than most of his writings and to make this book a guide for ministers and ministers-in-training in rethinking and reimagining disability to create more vibrantly diverse faith communities.

The truth is, at least from my own personal experiences, I know very few people with disabilities who feel truly welcomed within faith communities. While there are certainly churches that have "special needs" ministries, very few set aside their insatiable to serve in favor of actually inviting those with disabilities to be part of their community.

Interestingly enough, at least for me, it's this failure that largely inspired my own move toward ministry as I sought to become the type of minister I needed as a child and as a young adult trying to deal with my own mental and physical disabilities within the framework of faith and being a Christian.

This does not mean I found "Disability" to be an entirely disappointing experience. Far from it. Brock lays a solid groundwork for rethinking scripture and biblical stories through the lens of Christ's embrace of those who were physically and emotionally disabled in a variety of ways. The culture in which Christ lived on earth was wholly rejecting of disability for the most part, at least for those who survived, and Christ healed not only bodies but cultural divisions. Christ heard what so many ministers today do not hear - while many of us with disabilities embrace a concept of healing, it's more about healing of society than it is body and it's more about healing within communities than it is removal of some perceived limitation.

There is much value to be found within "Disability" for those new to the discussion and for those pastors lacking familiarity with a topic that impacts nearly 20% of all Americans.

For others like myself, however, "Disability" is more a reminder of how frustrating it is to be a person of faith yet simultaneously either treated as a sin, a burden, or a project if not all three.

The language in "Disability" is, at times, disabling itself. Brock speaks to the difficulty of appropriate language, deferring perhaps to the latest trends or seeking to more empower by actions. However, language does matter and a phrase like "special needs," for example, is widely rejected these days precisely because there isn't a single need that Brock writes about in "Disability" that can be deemed as "special." As long as we "other" people with disabilities, we place people with disabilities outside our communities.

This does not mean I fully embrace people first language. Disability is a culture, a fact that Brock wisely touches upon here, and no full immersion in community can be complete without an understanding and embracing of that culture. I don't shy away from calling myself disabled precisely because disability is about far more than my body - it impacts my daily life and how I live and I love and how I experience a God whom I believe embraces me as made in His/Her image.

I also struggled early on, especially within the book's first two chapters, as Brock repeatedly drew a relationship between an injury he obtained and disability. I understood this temptation - trust me, I've lived it my entire life. However, it's an incredibly false comparison that doesn't begin to hold up on closer inspection because, again, disability is about more than our bodies - it's our culture.

In fact, I wish Brock had more embraced his own life experiences as a parent of a child with disabilities. While I knew this going into the book, he mentions it only in a literary reference at book's end. This would have been so rich and valuable to share - his own experiences, his child's experiences, his community's experiences - yet these things aren't found within a single page of "Disability." Instead, we get two chapters with repeated references to an injured finger.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that injured finger DID, in fact, teach Brock lessons about limitation and life but it only scratches the surface of a subject that desperately needs to go so much deeper.

"Disability: Living Into the Diversity of Christ's Body" is at its best when Brock is reminding readers that those with disabilities are, in fact, part of Christ's Body and reinforcing that with scripture and with stories. He does this beautifully and effectively. He leans into the discomfort and confronts familiar theological concepts, for example disability seen as a result of sin, and is willing to rattle the cages and challenge Christians to view things differently. In these ways, "Disability" is of tremendous service.

I will admit, perhaps, that my hopes for "Disability" were perhaps too high. I live every single day of my life in a myriad of ways how the church continues to fall short in truly welcoming those with disabilities into its faith communities, small groups, leadership, and pastoral roles. "Disability" is, at least for this reader/writer, a baby step toward removing the stigmas and embracing those with disabilities as people of faith disabled more by society than by our bodies and able to serve our communities and be present in our communities exactly as we are.

Let the discussion continue.