At Church in the Canyon, we affect one another spiritually by what we are and do individually. Therefore, if we care anything about Christ, who is the head of the body, and other Christians — the rest of the body — we simply must move beyond our comfort zones to compassionately meet needs.

Bureaucracies aren’t programmed to be compassionate. It’s not in the nature of the thing. Take my friend, David Bowie, in his big, bulky wheelchair. After he became a quadriplegic in a car accident and his wife left him, he moved into a cramped one-room apartment and learned to rely on three or four part-time attendants to get him up and put him to bed. Life’s not easy.

David has been coming to our church for several years now, but not without great effort. He can cope with In-Home Support Services and Medicare, but when it involves getting to and from church, Paratransit is a challenge — the government-subsidized transportation service could care less about picking David up on time, and there are constant regulations along with new drivers with which he must contend. Sundays after worship service often mean sitting with David in an empty parking lot, waiting an hour or more for his ride. It seems my quadriplegic friend is constantly jumping through bureaucratic hoops just to survive.

Our PCA congregation, Church in the Canyon, consists of 75 or 80 people, and there’s not a one of us who hasn’t tapped his foot, looked at his watch, and felt badly for our friend. Dave Guth, one of our church elders, sighed, “Sometimes Paratransit doesn’t even show up at David’s apartment. Last month, he and his attendant had to take two buses then ‘wheel’ the last mile to church.”

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