Congratulations Myles! Our first Luke 5 Award

Congratulations to Myles Pilling – the first recipient of our new ‘Luke 5 Award’.  

The new award is for churches, ministries, or individuals, who are nominated by a disabled person to recognise the difference they have made in enabling true inclusion in Christian life. 

Luke 5 is the chapter in the Bible where the four men lower their paralysed friend through the roof to meet Jesus. This passage gives our charity its name, and also our ‘Roofbreaker’ Project. It is a fitting name for an award to celebrate Christian disability inclusion. 

Myles was nominated for the award by ‘Frenchie’ who is Deaf and uses British Sign Language and is also partially sighted. Frenchie wanted to take part in the recent series of online events held on Zoom, but was unable to see well enough to select the correct screen to see the sign language interpreters. Myles stepped in to help.  

After a lot of thought, Myles set up a separate video link with Frenchie so that he could display the sign language interpreter’s screen large on his own laptop, and send the images directly to Frenchie, who then had both a connection to the Zoom event and also a separate screen highlighting just the sign language interpreter. When the interpreters changed over, Myles ensured the right screen was displayed for Frenchie.  

Myles literally made the difference between Frenchie feeling completely excluded and being able to fully take part – able to follow the whole content of the events and to contribute herself to discussions as well. 

Here is what Frenchie said in her nomination about the difference this experience made for her: 

“I never looked at myself as an anybody, I looked at myself as a nobody in the past, I didn’t think much of myself because people didn’t have much patience with me. But now all this has happened I’ve started to look in the mirror and not feel like punching myself for being useless, I’ve started finding identity which I never had before… it’s helped me totally accept myself for the first time. You have given me a voice that a lot of people can understand.” 

We look forward to more disabled people nominating churches, ministries or individuals for this award. We are hoping that the stories the award highlights will encourage others to see the life-changing impact of true disability inclusion. We want to celebrate this and pray that it causes others to be inspired. 

If you are a disabled person and would like to nominate a church or ministry, please see the Luke 5 Award page, call us on 01372 74995, or email Janet.