In this episode of the GoHealth podcast, Gillian Straine speaks with Rev Canon Timothy Goode, priest, theologian, author, and Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster, about disability, ableism, healing, vulnerability, and the church’s imagination.

Drawing on Tim’s personal story of cancer, paralysis, rehabilitation, ordination, and daily prayer with Psalm 139, the conversation explores what it means to be “fearfully and wonderfully made” at every stage and in every condition of life.

Tim challenges the church to move beyond access as a matter of ramps and compliance, and towards a richer theology of agency, belonging, and the risen body of Christ: scarred, storied, limited, and gloriously held in God. Together, Gillian and Tim consider how healing ministry can honour the whole person without trying to erase pain, disability, history, or vulnerability.

In this episode

• Tim’s lived experience of disability, cancer, paralysis, rehabilitation, and ministry
• Why ableism is about more than disability, and how it shapes church culture
• The difference between access as compliance and access as agency
• Why “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” can become a daily act of truth-telling
• How buildings, pulpits, welcome teams, and worship spaces “preach” who is imagined and who is not
• The danger of idealising strength, independence, and the “perfect” body
• Why the risen body of Christ offers a better Christian anthropology: scarred, storied, and imaginative
• How healing ministry can centre consent, dignity, story, and belonging
• Why vulnerability and limits are not failures, but sources of imagination and transformation

Links:
Breaking, Not Broken by Rev Canon Timothy Goode
GoHealth’s Everyday Healing course

A transcript of this episode is available here.