Luke 5 Adventures is a new organization aimed at helping the church serve a population that often goes ignored, people with disabilities. It started in Cincinnati two years ago, and a southern Wisconsin chapter has just begun in the Hartland area.
“Worldwide an estimated one billion people are impacted by disability,” said Luke 5 founder Kevin Schwieger. They are either people with disabilities or family members, etc. “One percent of the U.S. population is in a wheelchair but you seldom see those people in church,” he added.
Schwieger has 30 years of ministry experience. Arriving at his church on a Sunday morning eager to share about a recent outdoor hike, he realized it would be insensitive to share that with the first person he met, a woman in a wheel chair. It bothered him so much he decided to do something about it and began to search for adaptive equipment for hiking.
After a long search he found an apparatus made by a French company that would allow people with disabilities to be guided through a hike in the woods or other terrain where a wheelchair would never go. His friend in the wheelchair at church was the first to get a ride and the apparatus was named “Rosie” in her honor.
Soon Luke 5 Adventures was partnering with the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital and Cincinnati Parks. As world began to spread about Luke 5, other chapters sprang up elsewhere in Ohio, and then in other states. “This has turned into something extraordinary,” Schwieger said.
News coverage in Christian media got Joel Tyler’s attention in Hartland and he began the process to start a southern Wisconsin chapter. Last Wednesday Schwieger and Tyler gathered a small group of volunteers at Elmbrook Lake Country Church in Hartland and introduced them to the ministry.
They got to sit in the Rosie and wheel it around the parking lot and then through some rocky terrain.
The person with disabilities seated in the Rosie is called the hiker and those who push and guide the Rosie are called sherpas. “The hiker gets to experience the impossible,” Schwieger said, describing a 3-day hike on the Appalachian Trail that he has scheduled for one person who’s already been on several other outings.
Tyler and fellow volunteers will be introducing their Rosie to the Hartland community in the Hartland Hometown Celebration Parade on Sunday, June 26th. People interested in volunteering or who want more information on Luke 5 Adventures in Wisconsin are invited to find them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Luke5AdventuresSouthernWisconsin.