Challenged AND Chosen: Discipling Christians with Chronic Conditions Towards Kingdom Identity and Purpose

The purpose for this DMIN action research project was to create an eight-week discipleship program and accompanying workbook to help Christians diagnosed with chronic medical conditions to rediscover their identity in God. Because of the limitations and physical changes that often accompany chronic diagnoses, members of Living Chronic Faith (a faith-first nonprofit organization that serves believers with chronic diagnoses) felt incapable of serving on the same level as their physiotypical counterparts. Marginalized by their faith community and hesitant to engage in their ministry contexts, eleven LCF members participated in this online focus group. This project’s surveys, interviews, journal entries, and focus group meetings addressed the stigma associated with chronic medical conditions, traced the biblical roots of those polarizing perceptions, examined how those perceptions have been adopted into the participants’ self-image, and explored ways in which God’s Word identifies them. The results indicated that members recognized the misconceptions they held about themselves and began replacing them with biblical truths, understanding themselves to be essential and purposeful members of Christ’s body and several of them have begun serving and engaging in their respective communities of faith, whether in person or virtually. The implications of this work are that stigma around chronic conditions plays a major role in the way diagnosed people see themselves, that disproving erroneous assumptions and embracing God’s perceptions can help restore their connection to community, and that ministry leaders and members have a responsibility to embrace and engage those who live with chronic diagnoses as fellow image bearers of God.