Bethany Isn’t Found. It’s Built.
What Wonderfully Made is really building is not a day program or a bakery. It is a movement. One room at a time, one Tuesday at a time — until every adult with an intellectual disability in America has a place where they are known, celebrated, and sent back into the world with their head held high.
There is a place in Scripture called Bethany. A small village on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about two miles from Jerusalem. By every external measure, it was unremarkable.
But Jesus kept going back.
Bethany was where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived — the family that hosted him, fed him, knew him. It was where Mary anointed his feet before the cross. It was where Lazarus walked out of a tomb. Bethany was not the center of the action. It was the place Jesus rested before the action. The place where he was known. The place where the people around the table were not managing their proximity — they were friends who had made room for him and meant it.
I have been thinking about Bethany for a long time. Long enough that I am writing a book about it — The Bethany Life — because I believe the idea names something essential about how God designed us to live. We are not made to perform at a distance. We are made for proximity. For tables. For the particular knowledge that comes from showing up in the same room with the same people week after week in Jesus’ name until you start to actually know one another.
Wonderfully Made is one expression of that. It is not the only expression — Bethany takes many shapes in a human life. But it may be the clearest one I have ever seen. Because in that renovated Lodge space on the Peachtree Church campus, on a Tuesday morning, with cookies in the oven and Teon’s playlist on the speaker and Ian already looking around for a birthday to celebrate — what you are witnessing is Bethany. A room where people are known before they walk through the door. Where someone is glad to see you, without exception.
“Bethany isn’t found. It’s built.”
It is built by people who decide the world does not have to stay the way it is. That the post-22 cliff is not the final chapter. That an adult with intellectual disabilities does not have to spend their life waiting for a room to make space for them.
Kitty decided that. She sat with families she loved, watched them carry this weight, felt a calling she describes as undeniable, and started baking. I decided it too — not because the calling was originally mine, but because when your closest friend hears from God and asks for your help, you show up. You bring what you have. You build the things that need building so the calling can last.
I have spent significant seasons of my life making someone else’s dream possible — my husband Richard’s pastoral calling at Peachtree Church, Kitty’s vision for Wonderfully Made, organizations I have served that were not originally mine to imagine. I used to wonder sometimes what I had to show for all of it. I know the answer now. You are looking at part of it.
Twenty-two families who have a Tuesday. A commercial bakery run by people who needed someone to believe their work mattered. A chapter model being built so that what happened in Kitty’s kitchen can happen in churches across this country. Wonder Makers employed at Crumbl Cookie, Publix, and Steeple Cafe, carrying in their hands the evidence that belonging produces flourishing.
We have everything we need to build what comes next. What we need is more people who believe the same thing we believe: that every human being is fearfully and wonderfully made, and that it is our job — all of our jobs — to build the rooms that make that visible.
Donate. Volunteer. Order cookies. Start a chapter. Show up on a Tuesday and see what belonging looks like when it is actually working.
We have been building this room for you too.
Join the movement
Donate, volunteer, order cookies, or start a chapter in your community. Every act of support builds a room where someone belongs. Visit wonderfullymadecommunity.org and take your next step.