6. Sensory Needs and Church—With Dr Katy Unwin

Hi, I'm Kate Morris.

And I'm Dave Whittingham.

And welcome to Neurodivergence, Family and Faith.Today, we are so glad to welcome our special guest, Dr. Katie Unwin of La Trobe University in Australia, who is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Counseling, and Therapy. We're going to be looking at how we can support families with neurodivergent members, particularly in the context of church.Katie has done some really important research and work in this field.So we'll be looking at sensory aspects of church, at how churches can offer support, how parents can care for their children, how they can advocate for them. We'll think through some really practical things that can be done and.And ask some hard questions, like what if one person needs one thing and another person needs the opposite thing? I mean, there is so much to cover, so let's jump in.

Well, Katie, Dr. Katie Unwin, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. I'm really sorry to say you're not our first guest. Our first official guest was Kate's dog, Possum. But you're our first invited guest.So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

I'm so happy to be here and absolutely willing to be second to Possum. Possum is gorgeous. For all you listeners who haven't seen Possum, oh, my goodness, what a cute dog.So, yeah, I'm happy to be second to Possum any day.

That's great.

Okay, so, Katie, you've done a recent study, and you've been thinking about some really important things. Can you tell us what were you trying to discover in doing that study? What were the questions you were asking?

Yeah, absolutely. So the background to the study was that I was very aware that autistic people often wanted to engage in church.They wanted to attend church, be part of the community. But there were barriers that were stopping them. We know that because autistic people have told us that themselves.And also we've seen evidence of that in research.So Dr. Leon Van Omen, who is a theologian at the University of Aberdeen, and I got together and decided to try and do a study where we looked at what the sensory barriers were to autistic people engaging in church. Because we all know that our sensory systems are what kind of governs our experience with the world, and they can impact every area of our lives.So if the sensory system is working differently to how we might expect, then you're going to experience the world differently. And this is the case with churches.So, again, I Think in the past we've sort of had this idea that, you know, if church is okay for the neurotypical, then it's okay for everyone. Well, that's obviously not the case. We know that sensory issues can really, really impact someone's engagement in church.So with this study, we wanted to try and understand what was going on for autistic people within the church to see if there were some sensory things that were perhaps causing problems or even some sensory things that were really helpful in an attempt to try and support the autistic people themselves and also churches to be able to support autistic engagement through reducing sensory barriers.

Oh, that's so important, Katie. And you know, as a mum, I see that church can be quite difficult.As a friend of people who are autistic, I can see that church can be quite difficult. And as I've spoken to lots of families, this is a real area of difficulty for a lot of families.We want to be there, we want to enjoy being part of community. But as you said, it can be really, really difficult. And those barriers are real.And I love that you use the word barriers because they're not just slight discomforts, they're actual. It's another realm, isn't it?So, Katie, it's really exciting that you've been working on this topic because I think it's important not for us all to be going through just guessing, but to actually be doing some scientific, some research into this, to be actually thinking through it in a way that can be kind of extrapolated to others so that we can come to understand a place to begin. But of course, all this still requires curiosity and collaboration and a willingness to be flexible around people's needs.But I'd love to hear some of the things that you found in this study. So I know that part of what you're looking at was the difference between autistic and non autistic people and their experience.Can you talk a little bit about what you found there?

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for that, Kate, because sometimes people say to me, well, what's the point in research, Katie?Like, I know this is true, so why do we need to research it? So I'm really thrilled that you said that because that's the exact reason why we do do this research, why we spend years.Because, you know, yes, this study was published last year, but it's actually taken about three years to do because research is so complex and there are so many different parts of it. So, yeah, why did we bother?Well, we bothered because A, the topic was necessary, as we talked about earlier, but B, because we want to be able to, as you said, generalize it out, extrapolate out to more people than just those we talk to. So in this study, we had a sample of about 300 autistic and non autistic people, and we got them to answer a whole lot of questions for us.And then we did some really stringent statistical analyses to understand what the groups were telling us. And here's what we found. As you may expect, our autistic group experienced significantly more sensory barriers to engaging in church.They had significantly more accommodations, and they felt closer to God when they could be in control of sensory aspects of the service. And that was compared to our non autistic sample. Here's an interesting thing.The autistic sample and the non autistic sample from pretty much equally rated enjoying aspects of the sensory service. Right?And so sometimes I think when we're thinking about engagement in church and, you know, sensory difficulties, we're talking in the negative and we're saying, oh, things might need to be quieter, or we need to whitewash the walls so that they're less visually stimulating. And actually, what we were hearing here from both autistic people and non autistic people was, no, hang on.I like some of the sensory aspects of the church service. And we know that theologians, particularly Joanna Leidenhage have written about this.She said, guys, come on, we can use sensory things in the service strategically to support worship. And I love that about these findings.

There was so much to unpack in what you just said. I think I felt like you said so many big things really quickly. Can we just drill down a little bit?

Definitely.

So just, I know there are positives and we want to get to them, but in terms of the hard things, like if you're a parent taking along your child with autism, what are some things that could potentially just be really triggering or really hard?

I'm going to answer this question in the most annoying way, which is to say anything.So because our sensory systems involve sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, body movement, any internal experiences, too, pretty much anything within a church environment can become difficult. So what I would encourage parents who are listening to this to really think about is, what do I know about my child?Because you parents know your children the best. You know their personalities, you know what they like, you know what they don't like. So what I would say as a parent is try and plan ahead.Think to yourself, what do I know about my child? And what do I know about the church service, what do I think they're going to find potentially difficult?So in an example, it may be the case that something we looked at in this research and some previous research, you know, that your child finds loud noises difficult. Well, then you can try and provide some supports for that. But it might be more nuanced than that.In our last study in 2022, we found it wasn't necessarily for some autistic people that it was too loud or too quiet. It was two different speakers being discordant. Right. So one speaker on one side of the room was really loud and the other was really quiet.And that was what was hard. So I'm so sorry, David. It's so individual. It's hard to give some thoughts.

But in our study, no, that's fantastic.Again, we've certainly been talking about that sort of thing and trying to encourage parents to look at specific is in their children because it's not as simple as everyone's just the same. Is it? Like, I must be surrounded by autistic people at church because everyone covers their ears when I sing.But that could be, that could be other things.

You want me both, David?

Yeah.

So, Katie, this is really helpful because you're encouraging us to understand who our children are.We've been looking at over past episodes how important that is and how that is loving Jesus, like, loving as Jesus loves to be thinking, thinking about our children and what sort of adapted love they might need. And Katie, you mentioned that sometimes these things can become barriers to people coming to church. Can you talk a little bit about what you found?You asked a more kind of black and white thing like, has this been a barrier to you coming to church as opposed to what aspects were barriers?

Yeah, the, the rationale for asking that question was because there have been some pretty convincing studies by the World Health Organization, other, other organizations that have found that people who attend church have better long term and short term mental and physical health.So, you know, as a, as a scientist, you know, there are lots of caveats to that, but it makes a whole bunch of sense to me as a Christian because I know how important attending church is to my mental and physical health, both in the long term and the short term. So I think that was maybe one of the things that we talked about in the study.We did ask one discrete question where we said, do you think that the sensory aspects of the church have ever caused you to stay home? And overwhelmingly the answer for autistic people was yes. So significantly more so than for the non autistic people.And that's really upsetting for me because I'm thinking to myself, you know, these autistic people are wanting to come to church.They want to engage in community, they want to be part of it, and yet they're stopped because of something that's happening in the service that probably we could do something about if we thought about it. And so that was why, you know, we try not to extract, extrapolate too much from that finding because it was from one question in the study.It needs replication for sure, but it is giving us a glimpse into something that we've seen in previous research, which is sensory aspects of the service do cause some autistic people to stay home. The answer, we need to try and work this out. We need to try and stop this from happening.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm going to ask you very soon how we stop that from happening, but before we get there, in your answer before, you mentioned that, you know, two people speaking in a discordant manner could throw someone off. And it has nothing to do with volume. I wouldn't have even thought of that as a possibility.So it's really great to expand our minds in thinking about what are the possibilities of both negative but also positive. And so can you give us an idea of what are the sort of things you mentioned that people can really enjoy about church from a sensory perspective?What are those sort of things?

So I think, broadly speaking, I'm going to answer it in the exact same way I answered the other question. Anything, anything can be enjoyed because it all depends on the sensory system.But in our study, we were looking at things like the smell of candles, the smell of flowers.A lot of people talked about in our previous study, you know, enjoyment of like sort of holding an object, so holding a hymn book or a Bible, or holding a cross while they pray. And in our study that we've most recently done, we found that it was the case for both autistic people and non autistic people.They talked about in a previous study that the beautiful interior of a church can make them feel in a worshipful mood. And again, we found in this study that autistic people and non autistic people both enjoyed that. So there are lots of things that can be enjoyed.And that's really just scratching the surface. There are huge numbers of other things.But I think the take home for us is we can definitely have a mindset of what are the problems we need to fix within the church around sensory issues for someone.But at the same time, I would strongly encourage any parents or autistic people themselves, or church ministers or leadership teams to think about what are some sensory things we could actively do within the church that might support autistic people from engaging, enjoying their time at church and particularly bring them into a worshipful mood.

Lovely, Katie.One of the things that I found really interesting about this study was what you report on control and how important control can be for people who are autistic, who find barriers complicated in church and are seeking support. Could you help us understand a little bit about what you mean by control and how it can be helpful?

Absolutely, yeah.So this has been an area of interest of mine for a long while because broadly within the autism research field, we're always, always trying to find theories that can help us explain a lot of autistic experience. So there are theories that can explain like a tiny bit of autistic experience, and they're not super helpful theories.So we can try and work out if they're, if they're correct, if they're true. But it's kind of hard to do that.There are other theories that can explain more about autistic experience, and those seem to be more useful and perhaps closer to the truth.So one of those theories is this idea that an autistic brain actually doesn't experience the world in the same way as non autistic people, insofar as prediction goes. So our brains are incredible machines at being able to predict what's coming next.And they do this prediction thing because it means they don't have to then process so much later on down the line. And our brains are all about efficiency.So what we know is, particularly when we're thinking about the sensory environment, our brains are constantly predicting what we're going to see based on prior experience. And so it doesn't and in the future have to actually do too much processing.But the theory in autism is that potentially autistic brains aren't doing as much of this predicting as we would usually expect.Which means that the autistic perceptual system, their sensory system, is constantly surprised by things that happen in the environment, which increases anxiety, increases this idea of uncertainty that we know is really, really difficult for a lot of autistic people. And we know that exerting control over the environment can support with that prediction.Because if I go ahead and I turn down the lights, I'm having control over the sensory aspects of the room insofar as the lights go and I'm able to know I'm gonna turn down the lights. They're going to get dimmer and I have control.And so this idea about prediction in the brain and how that might be different in autistic people has led me in my research to ask whether providing sensory control over a space can be beneficial.And during my PhD I did a very rigorous research study with young autistic children, and I found that providing sensory control over a space was beneficial for them. Now, there were only 42 children in that study. So I'm not going to go and say that this is the case for everyone.But considering the theory that there is an autism that underpins autistic sensory experience potentially, and considering my study and other people's studies as well, that have found that control was probably going to be useful for autistic people, in this research, we decided to ask people whether they thought having control over different sensory aspects of the service would support their engagement in church, would support their connectedness with God. And we found that it did.So our autistic sample said that control was important in helping them feel closer to God, more so than our non autistic people in the sample. So what we can take from this is that obviously it's going to be different for different people.Obviously we need to do replication of this study and other studies.But it seems like providing control to an autistic person in any situation, including church, may support them in doing that prediction thing in their brain that will help them then engage better in the space that they are. And in this situation, the church makes sense.

I mean, it sounds good, but I guess the question that jumps to the front of my mind is, Katie, when you say control, what do you mean? Does that mean they run the service or what does that look like when you say control? What do you mean?

Yeah, awesome. That's a great question. It can look like a bunch of different things.One of the things in the first place is giving the sense that someone is in control by using something like some headphones, right? So if the service gets too loud, I can put my headphones on. Right. That's one way we can talk about this.Having control is potentially, yeah, being able to turn down the lights. But we know that in a church service, every single person having control over the sensory space isn't going to be possible.Right, because someone's going to want to turn the lights up, someone else is going to want to turn the lights down.Here's what I would probably suggest based on this research, giving the person who might need that sense of control, the agency to know that they can control Some things about their environment. And so what that might mean is saying to your child, if you need to leave the church, you can go to this room. I will come with you.So when they're sitting there in the service and they can't control the lights and they can't control the music, and they're finding that they're starting to feel overwhelmed, they can go. I can control whether I stay or go. Right now I'm going to go and sit in the back. I'm going to go and sit in that separate room for a bit.And obviously, we need to think about what's age appropriate for a child, Right?But if that is age appropriate, that could be a way of providing control or without giving them the light switch so that they can turn it down or turn it up. So giving them that sense of agency, you can control your environment through going out.You can also control your environment through putting on your sunglasses, putting on your headphones, et cetera, et cetera.But what comes alongside that is needing to win the rest of the church family over to the view that what someone chooses to do in the service is okay. Right? I don't know about you.A lot of churches that I've been in have been of the opinion that everyone must sit quietly in their chairs for the duration. I understand where that feeling comes from.It probably comes from this sense of, you know, we want to respect the church space, we want to respect other people, blah, blah, blah. But actually, a lot of it is a lot more often about tradition rather than anything else.So I think we need to break that barrier and we need to support people within the church family to understand that. Actually, some people might need to get up and walk around at different points. Someone might need to leave the service.It doesn't mean they're making a statement about what's being said up the front. It just means they might need to take a minute. So I think that it's great to talk about what can we do for every individual?Can we provide them with control, yes or no, how can we do that? But I also think that what goes directly hand in hand with that is how can we win over the church family to this idea?I firmly believe it needs to be talked about a lot. It needs to be talked about up the front. We need to discuss different experiences.It needs to be explicitly said at the beginning of a service, if you need to get up and walk around, please do. If you need to leave at any time, please do. I also think ultimately that the way that we know how to do church is by reading the Bible. Yeah.It's God's gift to us as his people. And often we try and do whatever we can, whatever we think works without actually consulting the Bible. So I think we need to pray about it.But I also think it would be great if we can get our Bible study groups to be doing Bible studies potentially that relate to neurodivergence, to what it might look like to be neurodivergent, expressions of it potentially in the Bible, to how God sees his people. Does he see people as autistic or non autistic, or does he see people as his loved children?We created some Bible studies that have attempted to try and help people understand that sensory experiences are what we all experience, but that it also can be different sometimes. So that might be another way that you can support the church family to be able to understand that.Yeah, in the service, someone might need to take control for themselves and walk out for a little bit, but they'll come back later if they feel they can.

Yeah, I think, I think this is really helpful. Katie, I love that you've talked about giving our child agency, working with them in that.And in doing that, we're also kind of saying to them, oh, it's fine that you're experiencing this differently. And isn't it wonderful that there are things here that we can be experiencing?Church is a thing that we do in our bodies, not just floating away in our minds.I also love that you've talked about getting the church family involved and I really appreciate that you've gone and made studies because as a parent, it can get so exhausting. Always advocating our church is really, really understanding.But I know for when I'm trying to approach the school or other environments, there are times when it just gets tiring.And so it's just lovely to see that you've made these studies so that people can be getting people around them on board in a way that has been adapted to them. Now, I haven't seen these studies yet, but I'm very keen to get my hands on them. Can you tell me where we can buy them?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, they're free just to download online.We have a website called www.autismchurch.com and this website contains basically all of the research findings that Dr. Leon Van Omen, the theologian that I collaborate with at the University of Aberdeen, he is the co chair of the center for Autism and Theology at Aberdeen. And so we worked together for years. This is the study that we've currently worked on. Most recently we've created this website.It was actually created by an incredible autistic person who has done way more than we could ever have done if we tried to do a website by ourselves. And you can download a lot of resources from website under the resource tab.And we hope to be across the years as we do more and more research, putting more and more resources online. But it's a great place to go to as an autistic person, as a parent of autistic children.But also we've tried to set it up so that church pastors, vicars can go and get a snapshot of what we're talking about here. Evidence based findings of how you can support autistic congregation members to engage in church. So we hope that'll be helpful for people.

That's wonderful. I'm so glad you've prepared that. That's wonderful.

If you're a parent and you want to encourage your church to do better at this, to be really helpful in this area. What are some basic things or some key things that you can, approaching the minister or the church council or whatever it is?What are the sort of things that you should be taking to them? Questions you should be asking suggestions to make.

Oh, such a fire question, David, thank you for that.Yeah, I think, I think the first thing I'd like to say is, please, as a parent of an autistic child or as an autistic person yourself, please don't just suffer in silence in the pews.

Right?

Whether or not the church is open to it is not up to you. It is up to you to go and ask the questions and to pray about it.And it is up to the people who work in the church to work with you, to try and support you and your child.First thing is be bold, be encouraged, just to go up and with grace and respect, try and explain what it is that is difficult and what you could see as a solution. So we've got to be really careful in demanding too much in some ways because we know that running a church is a terribly difficult thing to do.So let's not go with a list of demands, but let's go with a list of things that we find difficult and potential solutions that we can see, try and open up those discussions. But as a church more broadly, I think there are some really simple things that can be done that actually could provide a world of benefit.So we've talked about the fact that potentially autistic people struggle with predicting things in the world, predicting their sensory environment. And one thing that can really support that is a schedule of knowing what a sensory event is coming up when.So museums are getting quite good at doing this. There are zoos as well. You can ask for often a sensory map.And what they do is they basically tell you where in the particular place, the art gallery or the zoo, particular sensory things will happen. And it gives the autistic person or the parent of the autistic child the sense of what's coming up next so that things aren't unexpected.And what this means is that you can kind of prepare ahead of time, right? And it also means that you can prepare just as it's about to happen. So what does that look like in a church context?Well, it means that potentially working with you or the church minister on their own or. Or a youth worker might go through the service and list out what's going to happen when.And this is more than just saying, oh, at this point we are going to sink, and then we're going to pray and then we're going to do the sermon. It's more about listing out what exactly is going to happen from a kind of sensory perspective.So when we come in, we're going to all sit down on chairs. There are no assigned seats. You can sit in the same chair as you usually do, but that one might not be available.If that happens, why don't you find a different chair? When the service starts, the room will go quiet, and then probably one person from the front will start speaking. They will welcome the church.And then we're going to sing a song. When we sing a song, we usually stand up if we want to, if we're able and want to. And the music will start and the words will come up on the screen.So it's like. It's like kind of this sensory roadmap of what's going to happen.So that at home, if you're an autistic person, you can have a look at what's going to happen that Sunday and kind of be prepared for it mentally, or you can go through it with your child and talk about the different things that might happen.And I would suggest that you yourself, if you're the autistic person or if you're a parent of an autistic child, you think about what parts of that might be specifically difficult for your child and talk through them properly.So if you know already that your child really struggles with sitting still for any period of time, you might look at the periods of the service where sitting still is gonna be somewhat expected. And you might say, look, this is where you might need to sit still for a bit, but look straight after that you can stand up.All right, because we're gonna then sing a song. We're gonna praise Jesus with our hands, we're gonna praise Jesus with our feet. You know, things like that.To try and help them see that something is gonna come up next that they might be able to engage with better. That might work for some kids, it might not work for others, but the idea is that you've been able to talk it through ahead of time.And then when you turn up to church, we want the church to stick to it. So to tell people from the front, please, if you're going to give me the sensory roadmap, don't decide.We're going to just do another song now instead. No, stick to what you told me is going to happen. And you can then help the child look through what's going to happen next.Again, if it's appropriate for the child, I would probably put some pictures in that are going to help them understand.Another thing that we're doing, Dr. Leon Van Ouman and I, we're currently working on a study about non and minimally verbal or artistic people's engagement in church. Because we know that often they're the forgotten voice. Why? Well, because they don't have a typical voice that we would expect.How can we support someone in that environment to kind of engage? Well, we're going to find that out in the research study we're doing now.We don't quite know, but based on what we're talking about here, having some pictures to show exactly what might happen when will help follow that kind of flow of the service that often neurotypicals take for granted. Okay, now I stand up. Now I sit down. Now I know this is gonna happen.

That's so helpful. When you first started speaking, just thinking with my minister hat on, I thought, wow, that's so much to say on a Sunday.There's no way that's ever gonna happen. And I'm throwing it out the door. But so some things I'm thinking about as you're speaking, a sensory roadmap.That would be a really easy thing to have on your website, wouldn't it? Of. And that could be a general one of this is what that looks like with photos.So you could even put that together for your church and say, can we put this sort of thing up on our website? Because this is going to be really helpful for newcomers coming along, but also in general for people so they can talk through with their children.But also, I was thinking every week the minister has to send out what's happening to the musicians and the people who are praying and all that sort of thing.Get people who are thinking about the service ahead of time, get them on that list and just say, can you include us in that email so we can talk through. Okay, this is a loud song. This is a quiet song. Oh, look, we're doing something different with the kids this week. We've got to be prepared for that.And that's just about adding names to an email list, isn't it? And so it can sound really big, but it can actually be some quite simple steps.

Absolutely.And you know, you picked up on something really helpful there, David, which is typically when we're talking about accommodations for autistic people, we think that, oh, they're just for the autistic people, actually. It's just not the case. Right, so you have personality types that thrive on knowing routine. I am one of those people.I would love to know what's happening. I love to know what's happening step by step. I'd love some more detail around that.You know, there's a lot of stuff that happens in church on the week to week that requires you to be an insider in order to know, like, so when to stand up, when to sit down, when to go and shake someone's hand or not, or blah, blah, blah. Right. Why are we making this barrier for our. For our newcomers to our church? Right?Because they come into the church and they're like, oh, I've got to stand up. Oh, everything's standing up. Oh, my gosh. Oh, no, everyone's sitting down. So confusing.So actually, a lot of these things, whenever I talk to people about trying to support autistic engagement in church, whenever I talk about these studies, a lot of the time the things I'm suggesting would be helpful for everyone, for newcomers, for the neurodivergent families, for people with my personality type that just like to know what's going on. So I think a way to encourage your ministers with this is to say, look, I'm not expecting that this one tiny, tiny thing would just help my child.I can see that it would be helpful broadly for this reason and that reason, you know, and helping them see that actually some changes might actually benefit the whole family rather than just one person, even though sometimes those things are beneficial to the whole family anyway, even if they do benefit one person. But that's something we can talk about another time.

So much of this is really helpful, Katie. I guess another Question I want to ask is around. We've talked about how broad the autistic experience is. It's so different for so many people.So what happens in church when people have needs that are completely opposed to each other? You've got one person who needs really, really loud music and that just sort of fires them up.And other people who just can't cope with that, it's gonna send them off the edge. They need really quiet music and all sorts of things like that. How do we help?

Yeah, thanks, Suede. I mean, that really is such a hard question.And the funny thing is, I did a lot of work about schools to begin with earlier on in my career, and I was asked the same question by teachers who were reading my studies. So, like, what do I do when, you know, two of my children in my class, what different things, blah, blah, blah. And the answer is, there is no answer.There is no magic thing that you can do that will mean that the space will be acceptable to every person there. But here's the thing. In churches, we have to do better than that.It's not okay to just say, well, we can't do this and this for everyone, so we're just not going to do anything at all. I'm sorry, that's not the way that God works.

Right?

God always meets people where they're at. He gives people what they need. So we need to, as a church community, strive towards that wherever we can.So, yes, maybe every individual accommodation that every person asks for, we can't do, but we need to try our best every single time we're asked. So I would really encourage parents and also autistic people themselves to ask for the things.And I would really encourage any ministers listening to listen. If anything, if nothing else, you've listened and you've tried your best to make it possible. It might be that there are actually things you can do.It might be that there'll be a way you can provide control. It might be that there are things you can change and that the whole church family will benefit from that.But if not, at a bare minimum, we have to love each other. We have to come at this with grace from all sides, right?If we're asking for the accommodation, we need to come at this with some grace and understand that it may not be possible, but we just always need to be striving towards it.That's the real thing that I would love people to take away here, is let's at least be striving towards helping everyone engage, even if we don't Always get it right.

That is so helpful. As Christians, we know we're not going to be perfect until the new creation.But we also know, well, that doesn't mean we just throw up our hands and we say, well, we'll just have to sin because we're not going to be perfect. Absolutely not. No. We strive towards godliness and we fail and we make mistakes and we pick ourselves up, we repent and we ask for God's help.And this is the same sort of thing, isn't it? Saying, look, we're not going to be able to do everything because everyone's different, but we're going to say, okay, well, what can we do?How can we love people and care for people to make this the most welcoming and helpful church that we possibly can? Thank you so much for that, Katie.

Absolutely.

Katie, it's been such a pleasure having you on our podcast. You are contractually obligated to come back for three more episodes.

That's right.

But it's been such a neat.Yeah, it's been such a blessing for us, and I hope so much it's been such a blessing for our listeners, and maybe even this is the episode that'll get emailed to a few ministers and things like that. So thank you, Katie, and we'll say goodbye.

Thanks so much, both.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that time with Dr. Katie Unwin as much as I did. So much to think through there.And next week we're going to continue thinking through this really important topic of church and how to be supporting our neurodivergent children in church and how to be loving to those around us as we do it.

Yeah, fantastic. I'm really looking forward to that episode. Hey, it's been exciting to see so many people coming on board and listening. We want to get to know you.We want to find out how you're finding the podcast, what would be helpful for going forward.So if you go to our website, faithforgod.net if you go to faithforgod.net and you click on the neurodivergence show, then there'll be a contact form where you can get in contact, tell us how you're finding the show. Say, hey, I'd really like to hear more about this topic or this topic, and we would love to hear your suggestions going forward.But for now, Kate, thank you very much.

Thanks, Dave. Bye.

Bye.