Let My People Hear

A hearing accessible blog

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Some people treat hearing loss as not important enough to address. Hard of hearing who try to address the need for hearing accessibility in church are sometimes ignored or neglected. They are put off by something like this: “Your hearing loss is not important to us.” There are six areas where the hearing world may say, “Your hearing loss is not important to us.”

1. In the HOME
   All my life I grew up missing out on hearing everyday family conversation in the home. Many times I asked, “What are you talking about?” or “What did he say?” or “I didn’t get the joke. What was the punch line?” The answer would be, “Never mind, it was not important, or I’ll tell you later.” My thought was, “will the joke be funny when I hear the punch line later?”
2. In the Church
   The struggle to hear and understand increases without use of an assistive device in the church sanctuary. I would miss many important details from the pulpit and would hear a person say, “It is not important, I’ll tell you later.” Some people felt that I was disrupting the service by asking questions.
3. In the prayer meeting
    When I sit on the front row in a prayer meeting, I cannot hear the requests spoken behind me. When I turned around to see who is speaking, the voice stopped. I depend on lip-reading and need to see who is making the request. To compound my frustration, the leader will ask me to pray specifically for these requests. When I confess that I could not hear any of those requests given, the response was, “Never mind, it is not important. Just pray.”
4. Group Bible Study
   These meetings can be very exhausting for me to follow. The teacher may ask us to look up Bible passages in rapid succession. It is difficult for most hard of hearing to look up scripture verses while reading the teacher’s lips. It is hard to stay on track when I misunderstand so many words. When I ask for a reference check or a repeat, the statement comes, “Don’t worry, the references are not important; just listen.”
5. Music
   One day I discovered that the words to songs did not register in my brain. This is a challenge for hard of hearing people. I would not know if the songs were sung in Spanish, French or English. One of the directors of music told me that the words were not important; just enjoy the music. Making the words available just for me was not convenient.
6. The Preaching of the Word
   Following the pastor was more difficult than I had realized. Hard of hearing people depend on reading the speaker’s lips along with some assistive listening device. This was the final blow to my ego, to discover that I understood so little of the sermon. Some pastors would pace back and forth across the platform. This was before the lavaliere microphone. Sometimes, he would preach to the choir, then come down off the platform where lighting was poor and walk up and down the aisles behind where I was sitting. To emphasize a point, he would lower his voice to whisper his important point.

This is not the story of one pastor in one church. These are different incidents in different churches I have witnessed over the years. While attending a large church, I discovered that I could not hear or understand most of the service. It was a great blow to me that I had never realized it before; I thought it was normal for everyone. My question was, “What am I doing here in church, if I can’t hear or understand what’s going on?”

With a broken heart, I consulted one of the associate pastors and shared my dilemma to hear. “Was there something that the church could recommend to help me hear better?” He was irritated with my request and responded, “There is nothing we can do for you.” The implication was that my hearing loss was not important to him or the church family.

At that point in my life, I did the unthinkable, I dropped out of church.  Ten years later I enrolled in the American Academy for Hearing Loss Support Specialist, to become an advocate for the hard of hearing in the church. There is a solution for almost all hearing or communication problems in the in the church.

Hearing accessibility means that the hard of hearing people will be able to see, hear and understand everything said in every department of the church.  Even hard of hearing people are important to the Lord and to the church. We value your presence in every service, program and activities. Today it is our goal to goal to create an ideal hearing-friendly environment for every hard of hearing person in church.

We are now writing a book explaining the guidelines for hearing accessibility beyond the assistive listening device in the sanctuary of the church.

Until The Trumpet Sounds, LET MY PEOPLE HEAR!

David M. Harrison