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
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.
Over time, David felt called by God to leave his job and start a mission
field—a video version of Christian radio. The Steccas began DVC in 1983 in
their basement with a home camera and a vcr. Today the ministry has a
broadcast-quality production studio, a conference center, and $300,000 worth
of video equipment. With the help of volunteer deaf actors and paid, mostly
hearing production professionals, DVC has produced almost 500 videos of
Bible stories, sermons, dramas, marriage counseling sessions, and children’s
programs—all in ASL.
A free lending library sends out hundreds of copies of videos by mail each
week. In 27 years, DVC has fulfilled 55,000 requests for videos from deaf
churches, schools, and individuals worldwide. Donations from supporting
churches, foundations, and individuals cover shipping costs and the rest of
the $300,000 budget of the organization, approved by the Evangelical Council
for Financial Accountability.
More than an Interpreter
DVC meets a need that many churches don’t realize exists. “The hearing
church often does not understand the deaf,” said Stecca. “Putting an
interpreter in front of the church is not the answer. If reaching the deaf
were that easy, we’d have more deaf in the church.”
Churches that treat deaf attendees as a ministry to the disabled fail to
recognize the language barriers that prevent the deaf from accessing
Christian teaching. Stecca discovered this when he began translating sermons
into ASL.
“It was a waste of time, because the way the sermon was presented was not
understandable to the deaf,” said Stecca. Hearing pastors tend to deliver
non-linear messages at a tenth grade reading level, while most deaf best
comprehend linear messages at lower reading levels. In Stecca’s experience,
deaf Christians often understand less than 40 percent of an interpreted
sermon.
DVC knows its videos are meeting a need long unmet. Many groups have
requested—and watched—every single video in the catalogue. Hundreds of deaf
Christians have approached the Steccas at deaf conferences over the years,
many crying with thanks for how DVC introduced them to God through its
videos.
Stecca tells the story of one church in northern Michigan that hosted a
movie night for the deaf using DVC videos, where 10 attendees accepted
Christ. One convert happened to be the president of the local deaf club—the
social nexus of the heavily secular deaf community. The president later
showed DVC videos at a club meeting, where another 10 deaf came to faith.
Focusing on Children
DVC has recently focused on children’s programming. Recently a young mother
approached Stecca at a conference and asked if he had any videos she could
use to tell her daughter about God. “She had taken her deaf child faithfully
to church for nearly ten years,” said Stecca. “But no one was able to tell
her daughter about Jesus.”
Stecca says many hearing parents are ill-equipped to share faith with their
kids. Churches have media resources for hearing children, but most such
resources are not accessible.
“It’s not like we’re saying that [media resources are] going to be the
salvation of these kids, but there are relatively few resources to help
them,” said Marshall Lawrence, who founded Silent Blessings Deaf Ministries
near Indianapolis in 1996 after his daughter Rachel was born deaf. He
learned ASL, but couldn’t find any Christian resources to help him teach
Rachel about Jesus.
“Ninety-five percent of deaf children are born into hearing families, but
only 10 percent of parents learn enough ASL to have a conversation beyond
‘pass the salt’ and ‘be quiet,'” said Lawrence. “When parents have limited
signing skills, it’s daunting for them to teach their children about Jesus
or Moses.”
Lawrence tells of a 6-year-old deaf girl who long refused to participate in
dinnertime prayers despite her mother’s ASL translation. After the girl saw
a deaf boy signing his prayers on a deaf ministry video, she excitedly
signed to her mother, “Mommy, Jesus knows sign language!” Now she
insists on praying at every meal.
“If children get the idea that Jesus can’t know them because he’s ‘hearing,’
and virtually none of the hearing adults in their lives know sign language,
it will be very difficult for them to know they have access to God,” said
Lawrence. “We have to find creative ways to communicate to these children
that Jesus and God are relevant to their lives.”
A Series Just for Kids
One of those ways is Dr. Wonder’s Workshop, the first Christian tv series
for children made in ASL. It’s a colorful blend of Sesame Street-like
educational segments with VeggieTales’ moral lessons. Each episode teaches a
Christian theme reinforced by skits, songs, animations, and interviews, all
conducted in ASL by deaf actors. Voices and music are later added in English
and captions in English and Spanish so that hearing family members can
follow along.
DVC partnered with Silent Blessings and a third ministry, Deaf Missions,
located in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to produce the first season of Dr. Wonder’s
Workshop. The first 13 episodes aired in the fall of 2008 on seven Christian
networks, including Trinity Broadcasting Network and Daystar, reaching an
estimated 300 million homes in the U.S. and Canada. The show is currently
editing its third season, taping its fourth, and writing its fifth, though
DVC was forced to leave the partnership in June 2009 after losing promised
foundation grants (producing 13 episodes costs about $300,000) due to the
economic downturn.
DVC’s current focus is expanding its reach through an Internet channel that
streams or offers downloads of more than 160 of its ASL programs. The site
averages 2,000 downloads per week from around the globe. Said Stecca, “There
has never been a better opportunity to reach the deaf around the world with
biblical truth.”
An e-mail from a 12-year-old in Texas says it all: “I was really giving up
hope, because I am the only deaf girl in my area and no one knows how to
talk to me but my parents. I [was] wondering … whether God really loved me.
If he does, why am I deaf and no one else here is deaf like me? But you guys
help me out a lot. Thank you. Now I am living a happy life and studying the
Bible again.”
Source:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/march/30.46.html