20th Anniversary Celebration Service
We invite you to join us at a special Celebration Service on Saturday 9th September 2017, as we give thanks to God for His faithfulness, goodness and provision throughout twenty years of Through the Roof.
The service starts at 3.00pm and we are blessed to welcome Rev Jonathan Edwards as our main speaker. Jonathan will share his wisdom and experience as a former leader of the Baptist Union, church minister and Dad to an adult son with autism. He’ll inspire, encourage and challenge us to see the value of every person created by God
Blind worship leader, Thuy Mallalieu, will sensitively lead us into God’s presence through times of sung worship.
Light refreshments and a TTR Anniversary cake will be served from 4.30pm when you can catch up with old friends and meet new ones and everyone who attends will receive a souvenir booklet and pen.
The service takes place at St George’s Christian Centre, Barnett Wood Lane, Ashtead, KT21 2DA. Follow this link for the answers to many Frequently Asked Questions, and register your interest on margaret@throughtheroof.org or 01372 749955.
20th Anniversary Celebration Service – Frequently Asked Questions
Can I bring a friend?
Yes
Is it suitable for young children?
We welcome all ages, however, we can't provide any creche facilities.
What time does it finish?
The event should be finished by 4.45, to be followed by birthday cake and drinks.
Where can I get a meal – before or after?
The Woodman serves a wide variety of food: Follow this link to find out more about the Woodman
Does the event cost anything?
No – but there will be an opportunity to donate towards the ongoing work of the charity.
I’m coming by train. How long a walk is it?
Exiting the station turn right and take the diagonal path across Ashtead Common towards the main road. The pub and Christian Centre will be visible. It’s about a 5 minute walk.
Is there blue badge parking?
There are 3 spaces at the back of St George's Christian Centre (accessed from Oakfield Road), also in front of The Woodman pub.
What sort of refreshments will there be?
TTR Birthday Cake plus other cakes, tea, coffee and cold drinks.
What about dietary requirements?
There will be gluten/dairy free alternatives but please request in advance.
Is the building accessible to wheelchair users?
Yes, there is a ramp, wide doors and an accessible toilet.
I am a disabled person – will I be able to participate?
Please tell us your needs and we will certainly do our best to accommodate them.
I can’t come but I would like to donate.
Thank you! The quickest way is to phone 01372 749955 with your card, post a cheque (payable to Through the Roof) to PO Box 353, Epsom, KT18 5WS or visit www.justgiving.com/TTR.
Who is Rev Jonathan Edwards?
Jonathan is a former leader of the Baptist Union of GB. He has personal experience of disability through his adult son who has autism.
How far is it from Junction 9 of the M25?
About 5 -7 minutes by car. Follow signs to Epsom and Ashtead, which will bring you on to the A24. Turn left by the Brewery Inn, opposite the Leg of Mutton and Cauliflower, into Woodfield Lane. At the bottom turn left towards the pond and the venue is on the left. Park at the far end of The Woodman car park (the landlady has given permission).
What is the dress code?
Whatever you feel comfortable wearing
What form will the service take?
Mixture of worship songs - led by blind worship leader, Thuy Mallieu, and short presentations about the work of TTR; 2 readings, prayers, 2 short DVDs (one from Joni and one new one about TTR); guest speaker Jonathan Edwards, collection for TTR, then cake!
All the Way My Saviour Leads Me (Ros' Blog)
Those of you who receive Through the Roof’s weekly prayer email will be aware that my mother was recently called home to Heaven at the ripe old age of 87. As we met to plan her funeral, my brothers and I naturally had many things about which to reminisce from childhood upwards.
My mother’s physical health was devastated by rheumatoid arthritis from the age of 33. Despite this, she would have been astonished if anyone had applied the label 'disabled' to her, even on the many days when we watched her crawl backwards down the stairs on her elbows and knees because her legs were too unsteady to walk down.
My father was away a great deal with his job, sometimes for weeks on end, and my mother carried on caring for three small children on her own with no outside help at all. Over the years she won two cancer battles and had knees and a hip replaced. Nothing ever defeated her indomitable spirit or her close relationship with and deep faith in the Lord Jesus. In her later years I often stayed with her and her sister to take care of them (by then they were both widowed and living together) and the amount of time they spent in Bible study and prayer together – at least an hour every day – has left a lasting impression on me. If they promised to pray for you, you could be sure that they did, regularly and faithfully.
For her funeral one of my brothers chose the old hymn All the Way My Saviour Leads Me, which we had also sung at my grandmother’s funeral 44 years previously. I have been reflecting on the words of this hymn, and how fitting it is as an encouragement to people living with disabilities and impairments of any kind.
For my mother, the final verse has now been realised:
When my spirit, clothed immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day,
This my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way!
But for those of us who still have more of our earthly pilgrimage stretching before us, the second verse is full of heartening encouragement:
All the way my Saviour leads me,
Cheers each winding path I tread,
Gives me grace for every trial,
Feeds me with the living Bread.
Though my weary steps may falter
And my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! A spring of joy I see.
I am convinced that the secret to a joy-filled Christian life is contained in John 4. The Samaritan woman – empty, disillusioned and loveless – came to the well expecting nothing more than to satisfy her physical need for water. She expected to lower her water jar, fill it, draw it up again and slink away unnoticed before the village women began to gather. But when she encountered an unexpected stranger and got into conversation with Him, she lingered by the well and by the time she left, she knew that she had encountered the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, and had a new, perpetual source of living water within her as a result of the encounter with Him.
Somehow I doubt whether her life became much easier after that. It’s true she was no longer despised by the villagers to the same extent. But she was still a woman with no means of support, deserted by five husbands and not knowing where her next meal would come from. There is a Church tradition that she was imprisoned and eventually executed during the persecution under the Roman Emperor Nero. And yet her life had a whole new dimension, a perpetual source of strength and joy, so that her spiritual thirst was permanently quenched.
I am convinced that this is the secret for us as Christians, especially those who go through life with the additional difficulties and challenges of disability. If we can but find our 'well', the place where we can encounter Jesus and linger in His presence, receiving fresh supplies of living water, then, as the hymn says,
Though my weary steps may falter
And my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! A spring of joy I see.
Life Will be Different Now (Ros' Blog)
A disabled man sits in a back room, overlooked by all the world, visited a few times a day by a staff member with food, but ignored the rest of the time. Confined to a couch by legs that will not bear his weight, his circumstances chip away at his self-worth until he no longer esteems himself to any degree.
Then one day the staff member enters his stifling room where the hot air stagnates with nowhere to circulate, and tells him he’s going on an outing. Does she explain what the outing is for? Does she offer him a choice? Or is he simply placed on a stretcher and carried out with no say in the matter and no idea where he’s going? Who knows?
A huge surprise awaits him. It is no less than the king who has sent for him! This would be beyond the wildest dreams of any ordinary citizen, let alone one condemned to languish out of sight in a fetid room day after day. The stretcher is lowered before the King and the man bows as best he can. The king explains that he wants to show him kindness and restore his family’s wealth out of respect for his dead father and grandfather.
He is so astonished that he exclaims, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” Such is his view of himself after a lifetime of being shut away and overlooked.
Fast forward to another dark, stifling back room, another disabled man confined to a bed. The neighbours are unaware of his existence, and his family never mention him. From the day he was born he has brought shame to this family, and if the villagers knew of his existence, they would regard the family as cursed. Yet his mother has never stopped loving him, and she feeds him every day as tenderly as when he was a baby.
One day he finds himself being hauled from his bed. His older brother heaves him onto his back and sets off down the road with him. They enter the compound of the local church, but of course the man doesn’t know this since he can’t read the signboard at the entrance. He has never been to school or learned to read. He is laid gently on the ground and finds himself looking at many other people who can’t walk and some unfamiliar people who don’t speak his language.
One of the strangers selects a chair with wheels. His brother helps to lift him into it. Some others cut pieces of foam to the right size and shape, and use them to adjust his sitting position until he looks comfortable. Now he can sit up and look people in the eye! He can leave the isolation of his bed and enjoy the fresh air. From now on his life will be different; he will be able to join family meals, go outside and meet people, make friends, perhaps even work.
You can find the first of these stories in 2 Samuel 9. You can find many more stories like the second one by following this link. Through our international mission trips, we at Through the Roof are continuing something started by King David in the Old Testament, showing disabled people how loved they are by God and by us, and showing communities how valued and welcome disabled people are, and how our lives and our society are enriched when they are given their rightful place alongside everyone else. Could you join in the story? Contact us to find out how to use your skills on a mission trip next year.
Don’t Just Do Something – Sit There! (Ros' Blog)
I think that Brenda from Bristol spoke for many, if not most, of us when she was told that our Prime Minister has called a snap election. You have probably seen her on TV or social media, exclaiming, “You’re joking! Not another one!” Suddenly as well as the uncertainty of what Brexit is going to entail, we find ourselves plunged into the turmoil of another general election (just 35 days after a local election, for many of us!). Add to this the number of volatile and unpredictable national leaders around the world, and it could accurately be described as a time of transition and insecurity. Rather like the time the young prophet Isaiah found himself in.
It had been a long reign. Uzziah had been only sixteen when he came to the throne, and now he was sixty-eight. He was soon to die, and his son Jotham to succeed him. His life was cut short by leprosy, or his reign might have been longer. Nevertheless there were many people well into adulthood who had never known life under any other king, just as people of my generation and younger have never known any monarch but Elizabeth II (although after the onset of his leprosy, Uzziah’s son Jotham ruled as co-regent with him, as he had done with his own father for the first twenty-four years of his reign).
This time of transition, with the death of Uzziah and accession of Jotham, coincided with the expansion of the Assyrian empire, which was a real and present threat to the nation of Israel. No wonder, then, that Isaiah found himself drawn to the temple at this time of national turmoil, to seek some divine counsel and assurance for the nation’s future.
In the year that King Uzziah died, the young prophet Isaiah was in the temple. And the encounter which he had there forced him to confront his own sin and frailty. There is no evidence that he was an especially wicked person – on the contrary, he was a godly prophet, in the temple because he wanted to seek God. And yet by contrast with God’s holiness he became acutely conscious of his own inner uncleanness and the impurity both of his own life and speech and that of his nation, which had strayed from God. As a result of this encounter, Isaiah’s life took on a new direction which was to change not only the course of his future, but that of his nation and the generations that followed him.
Whether or not you share Brenda’s reaction to news of another election, you might view it with despondency if you are prevented from getting out and voting because you live in one of the 67% of wards where the polling station has significant access barriers. Scope’s survey of polling stations heard complaints from voters of: access ramps with a drop off the end leading to doors too narrow for a wheelchair; voters having to mark their ballot papers outdoors in full view of other voters; and blind people anxious about inadvertently spoiling their ballot papers because of being unable to see where to place their mark. One man described being left sitting out in the rain while a portable ramp was moved into place, and then being asked if his wife would be voting on his behalf.
Postal and proxy voting is available to those unable to access polling stations, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future we will have online voting too. But whatever your intentions about voting, whatever the access barriers you have to overcome, and no matter which party or candidate you favour, can I encourage you to take a leaf out of Isaiah’s book at this time of national transition?
Voting is important, of course – especially, I think, if you are a woman; women made great sacrifices for us to have the right to vote. But far more important is to be in the place of worship seeking God both for ourselves as individuals and for our nation. Like the Israelites of Isaiah’s time, we live in a nation that no longer puts God first and does not consult His will before national policy is enacted. Listening to debates from the House of Lords in the past couple of years it has often seemed as if the Archbishop of Canterbury has become the nation’s 'Jiminy Cricket' – the one voice of godly conscience reminding our nation and parliament of our moral obligations above and beyond party politics. Praise God for him and his courage in speaking out for what is right.
Isaiah’s encounter with God led him to a place of deep contrition, and from there to a new abandonment to the will of God, ready to go anywhere and do anything that God had in store for him. It became a personal repentance, a personal challenge and a personal adventure. I doubt very much whether he had any idea at the outset of the extent to which it would change the nation and the world. Yet just two short chapters later we have him announcing the coming of Messiah, God with us: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
So I would like to encourage you: don’t just do something - sit there! Don’t just vote, or campaign, or whatever you do during an election, but sit there, in the quiet, and spend some time, like Isaiah, seeking God. Perhaps – and I say this to myself as much as to anyone reading this – if we spend as much time seeking a face-to-face encounter with God over the next six weeks as we do engaging in political debate or in deciding how to vote, the difference to our nation could be far greater than the one decided at the ballot box.
Join our Crew
We are looking for people to join our crew for the Dragon Boat Challenge on Sunday 16 July on the Thames at Canbury Gardens, Kingston-Upon-Thames (KT2 5AU), pulling together and raising money to help keep Through the Roof afloat.
We need 12 volunteer crew members to take a punt on this great fun day - no previous experience necessary, as training will be provided before you set off. It’s open to men and women, aged 12 and over and of mixed abilities. Races will take place from 9.30am with eight boats making it into the final at about 4pm. Please do ask your family and friends, and follow this link to find out more.
The event, run by the local Rotary Club, is a great day out for the family, with market stalls, sideshows and bouncy castles plus rides for the kids. There’s lots of room for supporters to watch the race. To secure your seat on the Through the Roof Dragon Boat, or for more information, please call us on 01372 749955, or email Karen at info@throughtheroof.org.
Once you’re accepted on the team we’ll request a payment of £20 and send you sponsorship forms and details for setting up online sponsorship pages. We hope to raise as much money as possible for Through the Roof and ask that each crew member aims to raise around £200.
Look How Far We've Come (Ros' Blog)
It was an icy winter’s afternoon just before Christmas, and with perfect timing the snow was falling on our outing to the London Emmanuel Choir’s annual Christmas concert at Westminster Central Hall. We had tried to time our arrival at the station so that we wouldn’t have to wait too long on the windy platform. I held my ten year old’s hand and helped her up the steep steps to the bridge that took us across the line to the far platform. My husband picked up our eight year old’s wheelchair and carried her lock, stock and barrel, up the steps, wheeled her across the bridge and carried her down again at the other side. The old train clattered into the station and came to a halt. As the doors opened and people got out, I helped him to lift our daughter in her wheelchair into the unheated guard’s van. I tucked her up as best I could with the blanket I had brought for the purpose, and settled down to squat on the floor beside her in the arctic conditions of the van while my husband went with our older daughter to sit on a “proper seat” in the heated carriage. On the way home we would reverse roles.
What a long way we have come since those days. In time for the 2012 Olympics, our local station was equipped with a wheelchair lift on each platform so wheelchair users no longer have to be carried up the steps or drive and park at a more accessible station further along the line. A guard with a ramp now comes rushing to help us board the train with relative ease, and designated spaces ensure that the whole family can sit together in a heated carriage like everyone else. Journeys to London in the winter are no longer the bone-chilling affair they once were.
And yet in other ways society seems to be regressing. There are countries where Down’s Syndrome has been eliminated, not by medical science but by the killing of unborn babies who have the condition. With the new screening test likely to become widely available in the UK we seem to be following other countries down that route. The so-called “bedroom tax” has disproportionately targeted disabled people and their families (up to 66% of those affected in some parts of the country). Food banks have a high percentage of clients from the disabled community, and disabled people make up over 45% of the homeless population, compared with 19% of the general population. A relentless rhetoric from politicians and the media has painted people too disabled to work as a bunch of skivers. Every few years a bill to allow the killing of terminally ill and severely disabled people is brought back to Parliament again although none has yet been successful, and this week we have heard that Lord Shinkwin’s Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill will not proceed.
At such a time it is vital for the church to be at the forefront of disability equality and inclusion, befriending disabled people and giving them equal access to all levels of the church life and leadership. Jesus said it would be our love that marked us out as His disciples and that how we treat the ones the world views as “the least” is how we are treating Him. It is no longer enough for churches to ask, “How little can we get away with to comply with the minimum requirements of the law?” We should be leading the way, modelling for society the equality and dignity that disabled people deserve. We should not be hearing, as I did again this week, of disabled children being turned away from church because they are too difficult. In the same week I heard from another church considering a change of venue in order to be able to include a young man who currently finds it too difficult to access their meetings – that’s more like it, and is in the spirit of ripping up the roof to bring a friend to Jesus.
Here at Through the Roof we are longing for the day when no disabled person ever has to say, “I wasn’t welcome in church”, and when every time society wants help to be more inclusive they turn to the church as the acknowledged experts. A pipe-dream, you say? Yet consider these words of Jesus: “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” It is His intention that we will be beacons, showing the world how to love.
Twenty Years of God's Goodness - the Spring 2017 Vital Link
The Spring 2017 Vital Link Newsletter is now available for download - this issue contains stories about our upcoming 20th anniversary celebrations, holiday details, fundraising fun, reports from trips away, and plenty more inspiration. There's also an introduction to our new 'Bible Sponsorship' plan - where you can help support wheelchair recipients and Churches Inc trainees in getting their own Bible, in their own language.
- Follow this link to download the Spring 2017 Vital Link (including a Bible Sponsorship form) - right-click and select 'save' to save the file for later
Please get in touch (on 01372 749955 or by following this link to email us) if you have any problems downloading this, or if you’d like to receive future newsletters by post or email.
Time to Celebrate (Ros' Blog)
I get the impression that God loves an excuse to celebrate. The Bible stories are full of them. From the annual celebration when the harvest was brought in, to the Year of Jubilee every fifty years, not to mention Passover and all the other feasts, celebration was written into the Jewish law from the outset.
After a remarkable victory, Samuel erected a stone on the border of where the victory had taken place, and held a naming celebration, calling the stone Ebeneezer – “The Lord our Help” – and proclaimed, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7.12)
When Nehemiah had completed supervision of the repair of Jerusalem’s wall, he gathered the people together to celebrate “with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres.” (Nehemiah 12.27)
After God’s deliverance of his people from the scheming of their enemies in the time of Esther, their reprieve was commemorated in perpetuity by an annual celebration, the feast of Purim. This festival was marked by feasting, rejoicing, and sending portions of food to one another and gifts to the poor. (Esther 9. 22)
When the Jerusalem temple was rebuilt with the help of two gentile kings – authorised by Cyrus and funded by Darius – the sons of Israel, the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. (Ezra 6.16)
Several of Jesus’ stories end with a great celebration: the prodigal son’s welcome home by his father, the woman’s discovery of her missing coin, the shepherd returning with the lost sheep; and of course Jesus’ first miracle was performed during the celebration of a wedding.
So it seems fitting that at Through the Roof we should seize the opportunity for a celebration whenever one appears. And as this is our 20th anniversary year, there’s no time like the present! I like the fact that in the verse quoted above from Nehemiah 12, the people celebrated not with mere thanksgiving, but with thankgivings. There were multiple reasons to give thanks, and they made use of them all.
And in that spirit, we are inviting you to help us hold multiple thanksgiving celebrations this year. Firstly, save the date of September 9th when we will be holding a celebratory thanksgiving service at St George’s Church, Ashtead – details to follow in due course. And secondly, we have put together some birthday celebration kits to help you hold a Through the Roof birthday celebration in your own area. The pack contains: invitations; a DVD to play to your guests; balloons; bunting; rice paper cupcake toppers printed with our special birthday logo; a gift for each guest of a pen, a commemorative postcard with the story of the man lowered through the roof to Jesus and a leaflet celebrating 20 years of Through the Roof; and a glossy souvenir booklet for the party host to keep. In the picture at the top of this post you can see our trustees sampling the cupcakes we made.
To get your hands on one of our celebration kits all you have to do is ask! You can email us on info@throughtheroof.org or telephone 01372 749955 and we will put the pack in the post to you. All we ask in return is that you invite your guests to give a donation to our work – we are aiming to raise £80 from each celebration held – and that if you are able, you take some photos of your event and share them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, using the hashtag #TTRis20. Happy celebrating!
20 Years of God's Faithfulness (Ros' Blog)
1997. The year of Labour’s landslide victory under Tony Blair. Scientists succeeded in cloning a large organism, resulting in the birth of Dolly the sheep. The first Harry Potter novel was published and the UK handed the sovereignty of Hong Kong back to the Chinese. The world was shocked by the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the BBC launched its full time online news service. Twelve disabled people were arrested at Downing Street for a protest against cuts in benefits, in which they daubed red paint all over the pavement to symbolise “Blair’s blood”, while others padlocked themselves to the gates of Downing Street. David Blunkett became Britain’s first blind cabinet minister and Anne Begg became the first full time wheelchair user to sit as an MP at Westminster since Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh in 1880. And in the same year, via a tour of Bristol, London, Sheffield and Belfast with Joni Eareckson Tada, Through the Roof was launched.
All of these events left their mark on the world, whether positive or negative. The impact of Through the Roof, a small charity that punches above its weight, has perhaps been one of the more quietly remarkable.
Earlier today I was reading some of the statistics of what has been accomplished in the 20 years since the birth of Through the Roof. 40,000 people have heard the Gospel preached through our ministry. 20,000 people in 13 developing countries have received a wheelchair or mobility aid and a Bible. 6,000 people have found friendship and encouragement in groups and holidays. And thousands of Christians and churches have been helped to become more fully inclusive of their disabled brothers and sisters.
That is the overall picture; some of the individual stories are truly inspiring; the young man who came on one of our holidays as a volunteer to support a disabled person and left having given his life to Jesus in one of the meetings on the holiday. The blind volunteer who was able to tell an African audience of disabled people that their disability was not a curse as they had previously been taught. Rather, as the story in John 9 of the man born blind shows, it was that God’s good works could be displayed in their lives. 
The young Kenyan man who had suffered a catastrophic head injury in a road accident, which had left him paralysed but still with feeling and pain. With no medical care his joints had seized to the point where he could no longer sit up, and his legs were covered in bed sores. Our team were able to obtain wound care advice from a specialist in the UK, and also found and adapted a suitable wheelchair in which he could be wheeled around while lying almost flat. It was adjustable, meaning that his family would be able to sit him more upright very gradually over a period of time. And then there’s this little lady, whose joy at receiving a wheelchair and a Bible shines from her face and needs no words to describe it.
I recently bought a CD of Methodist worship, and I’ve taken to listening to it on the way to work. The track I keep playing over and over again is Great is Thy Faithfulness, and when I look back at what God has accomplished over the 20 years since the inception of Through the Roof I can see exactly why that particular hymn evokes such a response from me.
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
As we look forward to the next 20 years of Through the Roof, how might you get involved and partner with what God is doing through our work? Could you become a Roofbreaker in your church, tasked with helping your church to ensure that disabled people are welcomed and can belong with you, giving and receiving as God intended? Follow this link for more information about becoming a Roofbreaker.