Lamar Hardwick's Blog, page 11
January 14, 2020
Learning From The Disability Community Can Lead To Stronger Faith — Key Ministry
How does the church enter the world of the disabled? By embracing the
stories of disabled people and their experience with God, because their
perspective can provide a profound new understanding of God.
— Read on www.keyministry.org/church4everychild/2020/1/9/learning-from-the-disability-community-can-lead-to-stronger-faith
Milestones Autism Resources National Autism Conference 2020 Keynote Speaker
Milestones Autism Resources is excited to present Dr. Lamar Hardwick as a keynote speaker at the 2020 Milestones National Autism Conference.
Dr. Hardwick is a father, husband, pastor, author, and autism advocate. After years of silently struggling with social anxiety and sensory processing issues, he was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in 2014 at the age of 36. Dr. Hardwick speaks on diversity and inclusion, parenting on the spectrum, relationships and intimacy.
Dr. Hardwick is the author of I Am Strong: The Life and Journey of an Autistic Pastor (2017), holding a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University as well as a Doctor of Ministry degree from Liberty University School of Divinity. In addition, Dr. Hardwick is a graduate of the Yale School of Divinity Clergy Scholar Program.
Dr. Hardwick is a contributing writer to multiple blogs and magazines including The Mighty, Key Ministry, Christianity Today, Huffington Post, and Autism Parenting Magazine. He is the lead pastor of Tri-Cities Church located in Atlanta, GA.
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Learn more about Dr. Lamar Hardwick or register for the 2020 conference today at milestones.org.
September 14, 2019
Your Church Doesn’t Need An Expert To Start A Special Needs Ministry — Key Ministry
When it comes to special needs ministry, what if God isn’t waiting for us
to have all of the answers, but God is waiting on us to simply accept the
assignment of loving our neighbors as ourselves?
— Read on www.keyministry.org/church4everychild/2019/8/29/your-church-doesnt-need-an-expert-to-start-a-special-needs-ministry
August 6, 2019
When God Won’t Comply
I’ve learned that the God that always gives you what you want isn’t really God at all. So why do I keep believing and keep praying?
Click the link below and listen to a recent message that I shared with my church. I think it will be worth your time.
July 17, 2019
Let’s Call It What It Is
“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” Luke 12:56 NRSV
Jesus was a trouble maker. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I love him so much. Jesus was tough and very vocal. Remember that time he called a bunch of religious people snakes? (Matthew 12:34) What about the time he told people who mistreated children to tie a rock around their necks and jump in a lake? (Matthew 18:6) How about the time he flipped over some tables and swung his whip around like a boss? (John 2:15)
Not only was Jesus tough, Jesus himself claimed to be divisive. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51 NRSV)
Apparently Jesus didn’t get the memo about divisiveness. The Jesus in this Lukan passage is far from the flower picking pacifist that we have characterized him as. No, in this passage Jesus says that he came to bring the fire and to force people to actually pick a side. This Jesus wasn’t nice and he wasn’t neutral. This Jesus said what was necessary and then turns to the crowd (the church) and calls us hypocrites because we have failed to do one of the most important tasks of the church, interpretation.
On June 14, I received a very nasty racist email. Warning: The screenshot that I am about to share contains graphic language. It is a real email sent from a real person and rather than cover it up, I want to expose it for what it is and issue a challenge to the Church.[image error]
Ok so now that you’ve read it. Let me say something “divisive”. Racism is real. Racism is not over. Racism is not just about mean people who say mean things to people of color. Racism at its core is the heretical assumption that the power to interpret value is connected to your skin color. Those who believe this live with confidence that they alone have the power to interpret, allocate, and adjust the God given value of others.
After a law enforcement friend did some research, we learned that this man was approximately 55 years old. 55 is the same number of years since segregation was outlawed.
That’s not all that long ago. My parents would have been around the same age as my oldest son when segregation ended. That means that they would have lived around a 1/4 of their lives legally interpreted as less valuable than whites.
Their parents, my grandparents, would have lived at least 3/4 of their lives legally interpreted as less valuable than whites. My grandparents aren’t some historical figures. I knew them. I sat on their laps. I talked to them. I spent summers living with them. They taught me, trained me, molded and shaped my life while living the majority of theirs being legally told that they did not have the right to interpret their own value.
What happened in that nasty racist email wasn’t just a bunch of words. It was an assessment of value. Besides the fact that he called me worthless, this man who was born at the end of an era where black people where legally considered inferior, carried the legacy of this supremacist attitude into his interaction with a black man in 2019.
If you interpret his words for what they are you understand that his anger is the result of being taught that he is entitled to see me that way. He believes that he is entitled to define my value. He believes that he is entitled to determine how I use my time. He believes that he is entitled to how I use my possessions, namely my phone. He believes he is entitled to how I use my body. He believes that he is entitled to my intellectual property. He believes that he is entitled to my education. He believes that he is entitled to my profession of pastoring. He believes that he is entitled to my mental and emotional health. He believes that he is entitled to my reaction to his racist email because while it was he who pursued me for help and conversation, he believed that treating me like a “worthless fucking porch monkey” would somehow get a reaction out of me.
This is the original sin of our country and this sin still exists and is active today. He was born at the close of an era that made his entitlement legal. His grandparents, and parents spent their entire lives living with laws that promoted and protected their perceived right to interpret the value of the lives of black people. The people who lived this way and loved it are still alive. Their children and grandchildren to whom they passed this heretical ideology are alive and are responsible for leading businesses, governments, schools, and churches and yet we continue to believe that racism isn’t really a problem. The reason he approached me at all was because he viewed me, my time, my experience, my education, and my profession as an asset that he could use to his own advantage. When I did not deliver on his expectation of my usability, I became another non-compliant person of color.
What I experienced isn’t a special case. It’s common. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me personally. To all of my dear friends who mean so well, this is my life and the life of so many other people of color. Civil rights wasn’t just about fighting to put laws in place to protect people of color. It’s not just about criminalizing saying or doing mean things to black people.
Learn how to interpret the times.
It has always been about black people being told who they are, where they can go, what they can do, what they should believe, how much they can earn, who they can marry, what schools they can attend, what place they can live, and what access they can have to anything for any reason.
Racism is a sin. It is satanic at its core. But it is also very much a system that is designed to give the power of interpretation to a select group of people so they can interpret our value and demand at anytime how, where, and when we matter.
To the Christian Church I offer the same challenge that Jesus offers.
Not everything or everyone is racist, but a lot of things that we have been ignoring are rooted in racism. It may not take the form of blatant language like the email I received, but we have to have the courage to interpret the things people do and say for what they really are. The problem is we have relinquished the role and responsibility of interpretation to those who have sinful intentions and their primary tool from discouraging us to speak out and take a stand is the weaponization of the term “divisive.”
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”-Jesus
“You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”-Jesus
July 11, 2019
June 6, 2019
Loving One Another for the Long Haul — Key Ministry
Two of the most important aspects of doing ministry for and with the
disability community are learning how to create long term reciprocal
relationships, and choosing to understand the world through the lens of the
disability community.
— Read on www.keyministry.org/church4everychild/2019/5/29/8cdht8pbtsmih07hdnrfjx4h4hk6wc
April 5, 2019
Dr. Hardwick featured on Brut Media.
April is Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month. Click the link to see what Dr. Hardwick is doing to promote acceptance in the faith community!
April 4, 2019
Disability Doesn’t Stop Me From Giving God My Best. Neither Should The Church. — Key Ministry
If you want to involve disabled people in ministry and leadership,
re-imagine how your current structures, schedules, and systems work. It may
be the church itself that is stopping people with disabilities from giving
God their best.
— Read on www.keyministry.org/church4everychild/2019/3/28/if-disability-doesnt-stop-me-from-giving-god-my-best-then-neither-should-the-church
March 18, 2019
Where Do I Start?
Listen to Dr. Hardwick’s weekly sermons at Tri-Cities Church in East Point GA.
itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/weekly-messages-at-tri-cities-church/id649144167
