On any given day at L'Arche North Carolina, Elliot Krause might help prepare lunch with a community member, join a clinical care meeting, preach at a partner church, or spend an afternoon helping someone develop skills for independence—all while remaining rooted in a community home. 

At L'Arche, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities share life together, relationships come before programs. L’Arche envisions a world where those with disability are known as indispensable parts of God’s creation, and every person is understood to have gifts that reveal something of God's kingdom.

For Krause, a Duke Divinity School student pursuing a dual Master of Divinity and Master of Social Work degree, that vision connects to questions about God that he has carried most of his life.

"So much of my life has been spent wondering where God is present in suffering," he said. “This has been particularly pronounced in questions around bodily limitation: Why God would place limits on our bodies—limits that can be the source of so much pain?”

Born with severe hearing loss, Krause has spent much of his life navigating a world that often requires extra effort. Conversations can be exhausting. Learning doesn't always happen in the ways people expect. And the result has often been grief, with his own body, with others, and with God. 

The questions those experiences raised have never disappeared. And yet, said Krause, they have also played a huge part in the story of how God is revealed to him as he learns about himself and his calling. 

"I am still discerning what shape my work will take, but I feel called to a vocation of accompanying people—spending time alongside others as they navigate the joys and sorrows of their lives," he said. 

That calling led him to Duke's dual M.Div./M.S.W. program, where theological formation and clinical practice intersect in areas around disability theology. It also led him to his field education placement at L'Arche, where accompaniment is the entire way of life.

L'Arche communities are built on a conviction that runs against many assumptions about disability. Rather than viewing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities primarily as recipients of care, L'Arche believes every person has something to give, something to receive, something to teach, and something to learn.

His field education placement includes both sharing daily life with L'Arche's core members who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and working alongside the organization's leadership. During the academic year, he will move into the L’Arche home in Durham and live with the four core members of the home.  

The work is varied, but the idea is consistent: community is never one-sided.

For Laura Steed, executive director of L'Arche North Carolina and a 2011 Duke Divinity MDiv alumna, those convictions were evident almost immediately.

"Elliot doesn't see himself as someone who has all the answers," Steed said. "From our very first conversation, it was clear that he wasn't simply looking for a ministry placement. He genuinely wanted to live in community. He recognizes that every person has gifts to offer and that we are all transformed when we receive from one another."

Steed watched Krause use his gifts to make a transformative impact at L’Arche.

"He naturally notices people who are often overlooked and makes space for them," she said. "He has a remarkable ability to be fully present. In a world where we are constantly pulled in different directions, that kind of presence is a rare gift. "

His natural inclinations aligned with Steed’s vision for L’Arche as a place where every person’s voice is valued, but Krause also asked intentional, thoughtful questions that made Steed hopeful for the future of the church. 

“People with disabilities are leaders, and when we include people of all abilities, we more wholly reflect the 'kin-dom' of God," Steed said. "If leaders like Elliot continue to cultivate communities where people are fully seen, deeply valued, and willing to share life across differences, then I believe the church will become a more faithful witness to the Gospel."

Before coming to Duke, Krause worked in public health and medical device technology. While the work addressed important needs, seminary gave him something he had long been searching for: a theological imagination that shapes how he thinks of himself, suffering, communities, and hope. 

Coursework like “Disabled Church” with Dr. Sarah Barton helped deepen theological questions he had already been wrestling with for years.

The class invited conversation around how God is present in disability and what it reveals about God, “helping me further develop my framework for how I think about and engage with disability," Krause said. 

"Certain [ancient spiritual] conceptions of personhood allow for someone of more limited cognitive capacity to be treated as a lesser-than. The church teaches that we are dust plus divine breath—where our personhood is endowed by God, and not something that can be present in greater or lesser degrees.”

For Krause, there are still vocational questions to answer, but the work of accompanying others—and allowing himself to be accompanied in return—has given fresh shape to questions he had long been wrestling with. Both at L’Arche and at Duke Divinity, he is blessed with the space to engage with the questions in a concentrated way he never has before, and do it around people who challenge his ways of thinking. 

"What is new," he said, "is how I am able to locate [my work and my questions] within God's broader work in the world—to see the ordinary, daily labor of accompaniment as participating in something larger."

Special note: Krause's summer at L'Arche was in partnership with the Johnson Service Corps, who partnered with the Office of Field Education to fund five positions this summer.