Much to my embarrassment, it is only recently that the penny dropped! Over the years I have worked for CCPAS, I have familiarised myself with ‘Through the Roof’ and the excellent work Paul Dicken (Director) has done, and is still doing, in encouraging churches to be inclusive and accessible for children and adults with disabilities. Yet for all the theological training I have undertaken, to my shame, I did not make the connection to the name. I am sure 99% of the Christian fraternity would instantly put two and two together. Sorry Paul.

Paul enlightened me when I went to interview him, and he started by explaining the essence of the organisation he founded in 1997. Of course I am familiar with the biblical account of the paralysed man whose friends dug a hole in the roof of a house and lowered him into a room where Jesus was preaching. The house was packed to the brim and it was the only way this man could get to Jesus.

With tongue in cheek, Paul describes this encounter as the first record in the New Testament of an ‘inaccessible’ church that definitely wasn’t complying with the Disability Discrimination Act! More seriously though, the story has much to say about an important partnership between disabled and non-disabled people, that made it possible for the man to meet Jesus face to face. Through the Roof seeks to do this – to make the gospel and everything it encompasses (i.e. the love, care, concern and compassion) accessible to all those affected by disability.

Just as CCPAS continually speaks out about the need for all those affected by abuse needing pastoral care and support, Through the Roof also recognises the importance of supporting those caring for children and adults with disabilities as well as other family members and friends. This is all the more pertinent when one considers the implications of the new government regulations that now recognise the need to safeguard vulnerable adults against abusive behaviour and practice. In recognition of this, CCPAS is shortly to publish a manual on this along the lines of its child protection manual ‘Guidance to Churches’.

The initial seed for ‘Through the Roof’ was sown many years ago when, not long after Paul became a Christian, he offered to steward at a Billy Graham rally. He was assigned what was known then (though today it would make anyone cringe) as the ‘wheelchair pen’; in other words provide assistance to those coming to the rally with disabilities. Paul was daunted by the prospect because he felt he didn’t have the appropriate skills, but the experience had a life-changing effect. Not only did he make many friends, especially with a man who was a paraplegic (and remains a close friend to this day), but he also sensed a call on his life to work with disabled people.

Paul is not a person disconnected or unable to empathise with suffering. In the early years of his own life he experienced much pain; the death of his father when he was seven and the subsequent sexual abuse perpetrated by relatives and neighbours, due in part to his mother’s inadequacies as a parent. Following his father’s death he was told he was ‘now the man of the house’ and must behave as such. At the age of seven, Paul says with some sadness: ‘from that moment I put my toys away and never played with them again.’

Paul was also plagued by a sense of loss that he could not make sense of. It was not until he had to confront the trauma of his childhood whilst training to be a counsellor and a seemingly innocuous remark made by his wife that the truth came out. One day Paul and his wife were watching a television programme about being a twin and she mentioned something along the lines of how hard it must have been for him to lose his twin in those circumstances. When a shocked Paul had, figuratively speaking, picked himself up off the floor, he realised this was the reason for the sense of loss he had felt for many years. Neither his mother, nor any of his relatives, siblings or family friends had ever told him he’d had a twin brother or sister (Paul didn’t know the gender) who died at birth, though they all knew. His wife had never mentioned it because Paul hadn’t, and she’d assumed he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

2000 was the year Paul was finally able to lay all these things to rest. He had often been emotionally paralysed for days on end and rather than face the issues had, as the saying goes, retreated into his cave. But through this unexpected and shocking revelation, and through appropriate help and support, he was able to receive the healing he desperately needed. Having said this however, it was of some concern to him that he still wasn’t able to completely shake off the sense of loss that had permeated much of his childhood; the early death of his twin, the death of his father and subsequent loss of his childhood, and the loss of his innocence through the abuse. One day, Paul had an overwhelming sense of God speaking directly into his situation, that he would never lose the memory of his loss because it was part of what made him who he is, but the power or hold these experiences had over him was broken through the cross of Christ. This transformed his perceptions of his early life and has now been turned into a positive motivating force behind his work for Through the Roof.

Paul became a Christian in his mid-teens at a Youth for Christ rally in Reading. Although, he could be excused for not having a deep theological understanding of what had happened that day, he nevertheless describes it as a ‘profound transaction’ and he went on to attend a church that welcomed him and showed him the care and kindness that in many ways compensated for the lack within his own family.

Subsequent to his ‘calling’ to work with disabled people at the Billy Graham rally he obtained employment with the British Tourist Authority (responsible for promoting tourism in the UK and overseas) and over the years was able to drive up the standards in hotels and other tourist locations and attractions in terms of facilities and accessibility for people with disabilities. By the time Paul left, he was Head of Policy at the BTA.

More recently Paul has completed training to become a qualified counsellor and for the past 15 years he and his wife have provided respite care for children with disabilities. It is interesting that all the families for whom Paul and his wife have provided care still keep in touch with them.

In 1994 Paul met Joni Eareckson-Tada, who was paralysed in a swimming accident when she was a teenager and has since championed the cause of people with disabilities throughout the world. Paul shared the vision he had of setting up an organisation that would become a one-stop shop to equip places of worship to be inclusive and accessible to people affected by disability. Joni wisely asked Paul to go away and prayerfully consider all the aspects of this vision and come back to her after two years. He did this, during which time he became more assured that this was what God wanted him to do.

In 1996 Paul visited Joni in the USA where her organisation, Joni and Friends, is based, and having shared his vision with them, Paul received their unequivocal support together with a grant of $15,000 to get things underway. All Paul had, apart from the vision and a lot of gritty determination, was a list of 300 names of individuals and organisations that had showed interest in disability issues. From that initial list, Through the Roof has grown into an organisation that has broken ground in radically changing the mindset in churches throughout the UK towards those with disability, as well as providing practical advice and models for making church accessible and welcoming to all.

To give you an example of their effectiveness, over 20,000 copies of the Through the Roof key resource ‘Roofbreaker Guide’ have been distributed to date and they publish several other resources. They took over the work of the Disabled Christian Fellowship in 2000, offering accessible holidays in the UK and abroad for people with disabilities and since 1998 Through the Roof has operated ‘Wheels for the World, a project that restores and distributes previously-used wheelchairs and other mobility aids to hundreds of people in Africa and Eastern Europe.

The ethos behind Through the Roof is firmly grounded in the example Jesus demonstrated during his life on earth. Paul will often draw attention to the 35 miracles of Jesus recorded in the gospels, of which 23 involved disabled people. His favourite account however, is in Luke 14 where Jesus describes a great banquet where a servant is instructed to go into the streets and alleys of the town, the roads and the country lanes and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame, and for those receiving these people there would be blessing and the Father’s house would be full.

As far as Paul’s life is concerned, perhaps some comparison can be drawn with Joseph (of the coat of many colours). Having experienced abuse and rejection by his family early on in his life, Joseph was able to say years later concerning his treatment by them that though their actions were intended for harm,z ‘God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of (helping / providing for) many lives’! (Genesis 50v20) In Paul’s case I would say this probably says it all.

Click here to return to the Articles menu.