“The Spirit of God Hovered Over the Waters; Creation, the loval Church, and the Mentally and Physically Challenged, A Call to Church, and the Mentally and Physically Challenged, A Call to Spirit-led Ministry"
by Steven Fettke
“The Spirit of God Hovered Over the Waters; Creation, the loval Church, and the Mentally and Physically Challenged, A Call to Church, and the Mentally and Physically Challenged, A Call to Spirit-led Ministry” by Steven Fettke explores what It means to be created imago dei. He points the Pentecostal/ Charismatic Church to the responsibility of ministry to all people. This subject matter is personal to the author Steven Fettke as he has a son, Phillip, who is afflicted on the severe side of the Autism Spectrum. Him and his wife have needed and received all kinds of assistance from various groups, government agencies, and support from a local church. But Sadly Pentecostal churches have hardly helped him. It was the government agencies and mainline, non-Pentecostal churches that helped them in a much more “spiritual” and practical way than any Pentecostal church. The Pentecostal Church is known to him in relation to his son as only wanting to cast demons out of him or ignore him. Fettke son does not need demons casted out of him but rather to be treated as a human who “embodies” a unique mark, the image of God. His son his both “minister” and the one in need of ministry. Which as he said “Doesn’t that describe us all?” But rather than give up on the Pentecostal church and its ignorance he offered knowledge and reasoning that provided the necessity of ministry to the disabled. Fettke stated “I think it is possible to begin to view folks we have usually considered disabled and weak as those who both can do ministry and to whom ministry can be directed. In other words they are just people just like the “acceptable” people in our local churches.”
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