Do You Hear What I Hear?
The deaf are virtually an 'unreached people group,' but an Illinois ministry is remedying that one video at a time.
Jeremy Weber | posted 4/08/2010 09:01AM
Christy Ortiz, an interpreter for the deaf at a Texas high school, says most of her students have attended local churches for years. But without interpreters in their congregations, the teenagers were not grasping the fundamentals of the faith.
"The cross, Jesus' death and resurrection—it meant nothing to them," Ortiz said after her students bombed the religion part of a recent exam. "They were shocked to learn that Jesus was a Jew."
Ortiz referred them to some YouTube videos made by Deaf Video Communications (DVC), a Christian ministry to the deaf. The students watched every video over the weekend, and on Monday peppered her with questions about sin, hell, heaven, and Jesus' role in all of it.
Days later, several students came to a See You at the Pole event. One told Ortiz, "You always talk about your God like he's a real live person. This morning, it felt like he was really standing there with us." Ortiz corrected him: "Our God." He replied, "I need to think about it some more, but I think I like that. Our God."
Based in the Chicago suburb of Carol Stream, DVC makes evangelism and discipleship videos for deaf of all ages. But it has a passion for the 70,000 deaf children nationwide who have few if any other ways to learn about God.
Most churches regard the deaf as a benevolence ministry, similar to the elderly or disabled. But experts argue that a different paradigm is desperately needed: seeing deaf ministry as cross-cultural missions.
Language and cultural barriers have left the deaf a veritable unreached people group right in America's midst. Christian deaf ministries estimate that only 1 percent of American deaf children will attend church as adults. Less than 7 percent will ever have the gospel presented to them in a way they can understand.
"If we don't reach deaf children, there won't be deaf adults going to church," said DVC founder David Stecca. "The deaf decide as children that church is something hearing people do, because there is nothing they can understand."
Over 90 percent of deaf children are born into hearing families, yet most of these families never learn enough American Sign Language (ASL) to talk about matters of faith. Deaf children find themselves equally isolated at church.
'Didn't Understand a Single Thing'Lyn Weston went to church every Sunday as a deaf child growing up in Indiana in the 1960s, but had no one to interpret for her. "The whole time I just sat there, twiddled my thumbs, and scribbled on paper," said Weston. "I didn't understand a single thing that was going on."
Weston eventually came to faith at age 15, when she met a Baptist pastor fluent in ASL while attending the state institute for the deaf. Some of her spiritual growth as an adult has come through DVC videos. "In the past, the deaf didn't know about God," said Weston, who now attends Oak Brook Community Deaf Church in Oak Brook, Illinois. "But now hearing pastors [and their churches] can communicate with the deaf"—thanks to ministries such as DVC.
Christianity began to spread first through the spoken and then the written word, but both means have left many deaf on the outside. The printed world is inaccessible to many because over 50 percent of deaf adults read at or below a fourth grade reading level.
Most deaf communicate through ASL, but ASL is not based on English. "The deaf need visual communication," said Stecca. "Not until video has there been a tool to evangelize and spiritually feed the deaf."
Stecca and his wife, Ruby, learned ASL in the late 1970s after David, then a police officer in the Chicago suburbs, responded to a domestic fight between deaf parents—and the only interpreter was the couple's 10-year-old daughter. Stecca and his wife were soon interpreting in churches and leading deaf Sunday school classes and Bible studies.
March 2010, Vol. 54, No. 3
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