Julian 360
by Rev. Justin Hancock

Hello friends and companions of The MWF Dispersed Community. I am excited to tell you about a new initiative from the Julian Way. 

Beginning in November, The Julian Way will unveil a blog and community forum based around disabled identity and culture. This undertaking is being done in partnership with the Rev. Stephen Taylor, a friend and United Methodist clergy colleague from the North Georgia conference of the UMC. Stephen has done wonderful ministry with the deaf and hard of hearing community in the greater Atlanta Metro area. Rev. Taylor and I found each other through our shared work within the disability community of the UMC. After meeting last June we began to dream about how we could collaborate to empower those with disabilities within the UMC and around the country. As we began to talk we noticed that the two of us were having very similar conversations with several different groups of people, mainly around how it was becoming more difficult to express a cultural identity of disability in the United States today because of the nature and aggressiveness often found within conversations around social issues and identity politics. Rev. Taylor and I hope that the blog space will serve as a place for the collective wisdom of disabled experience to help others discover their own identity and the blog community space will give people a safe haven to begin to have those conversations that are unique to the disabled experience. We are not seeking to be a community built around isolation and separation, but rather peace and safety for those who have not felt able to express or come to terms with their own sense of disabled embodiment. 

The blog will be entitled, “Julian 360,” to honor aspects from both the Julian Way and Stephen’s nonprofit, S&S 360. Julian 360 will be housed on the Julian Way page of the Missional Wisdom Foundation's website - be watching for it! 

I would ask you, the people of Wisdom For the Way, to join us in prayer that we would be a voice that reaches out to those who really need our help and that we would help as many people as we can to discover their own sense of self and their own place in God's greater kingdom

Grace and blessings,
Rev. Justin Hancock