7. True Love: Practical Steps for Churches to Love Neurodivergent Families

Hi, I'm Kate Morris.

And I'm Dave Whittingham. This week we're looking at practical ways churches can love and offer support to families with additional needs.

Well, welcome to episode seven.Today we're going to be talking more about church and we're building on the episode Last Week with Dr. Katie Unwin, where we're looking at the sensory experience of church, particularly for neurodivergent people. So if you haven't heard it, I do recommend going back and listening to it. You don't have to have heard it for today's one.It's not a part one, but it's a really good episode, I think, to be sharing with people you know, perhaps members of church or the church staff team. And Dave, welcome to episode seven.

Hi, Kate. Hi, everyone. Great to be with you together again. Can we start?Kate, I thought it'd be really great to say thank you so much to the people who have already jumped online and donated towards making this show happen. It's been really wonderful to receive those and a great privilege and honour, so thank you to those people.And we are really keen for this podcast to be such a benefit to lots and lots of people.

If you.

You are able to think about that, we are keen to raise at least $3,000 that will cover our costs of online things. It'll cover a little bit of our time, but not a huge amount. But it would really help us to make sure that we can keep moving forward.So if you want to think about that, you can donate@faithfulgod.net just go there and click the donate button and we would really appreciate that, but only if you can. So let's get on to talking about church. Kate, you're really interested in church, aren't you?

Yes. Well, I'm a Christian, so I should be. Yeah, I am. And actually, it's definitely an important topic for all of us to be talking about.But church can be just so hard for some people, and it's just worth acknowledging that, but working through what can be done. And Dave, I know this is important to you as well, this topic of church.

Yeah, look, I've worked in churches for a number of years and been in churches as a regular church member for even longer. And the Bible gives such a wonderful, lovely picture of church. It always warms our hearts when we read about that.And we all know that our experience of church isn't always quite as happy as we want it to be.And yet in that mess, in that struggle, there is such a wonderful opportunity to show the love of the Lord Jesus Christ to each other and to the world. As both a minister and a church member, I think I've often been really drawn to people who are on the edges and people who don't always have a voice.Maybe that's because I've felt on the edge often. I didn't know that I was neurodivergent, that I had autism and ADHD for all my life.I didn't discover that until the last couple of years, but it's been a wonderful revelation for understanding myself, but also seeing more deeply into how other people are experiencing church and experiencing life in lots of ways.

It's so important that we have that perspective, that people will experience things differently and that there are people on the edges or there are people who are struggling.It's just so wonderful to hear that you've got that perspective and what a gift it is that you are someone who, you're autistic, you're adhd, so you've actually got some lived experience in this. On top of being a dad of neurodivergent kids as well. I think that's one thing that's helped me about being a mum of neurodivergent kids.So, yeah, I've got three children and two of them are neurodivergent. So I think it's opened my eyes to what church can be for others. I think I just was very narrow minded before that.And it's also been helpful to be in ministry. So we were missionaries in France for nine years actually, until a few years ago.And over there we were working, my husband and I were working with uni students and also with children. And it's just so helpful to see that people will operate differently and what a difference it makes.When church can be a place of love, a place where you approach each person as individuals, not as copy pastes of each other. It makes a massive difference, doesn't it?

Absolutely. And you know, it's so easy for churches to cater to what is typical or to a middle of the range, whatever that may be, including neurotypical.So then it can be difficult to think about who are the individuals who are walking through the door and how do we, how do we serve each other with all the individuality that that brings, the catering to, the typical. I mean, the bigger a group, the more you have to do that in some way, like you have to find, you have to pitch somewhere.And so it's not always an evil thing. Sometimes it's just the reality of group dynamics. But we still have to work hard to keep working at loving.So my other background is as a teacher and in classrooms, you're always struggling with that.I was told early on that in any classroom in a primary school there is seven years of difference between the top student and the bottom student in terms of development. And that's when you've got kids in a single grade. And so teachers are struggling with this all the time.As a church, we need to be aware of it and we need to be struggling with it and working to care for everyone, even as we still need to cater to groups and think about how that looks.

Oh, wonderful. That's a really helpful insight there into just what a range people can be.We can't just sandwich people down to you're this age, therefore you operate like this or anything like that, can we? We've actually got to get to know people. Yeah. Last year I, I, I did a fellowship, as you know, Dave, and a big part of it was interviewing families.And I think a big privilege that I found in that was the families I was interviewing. All of them had members of the family who had diagnoses around neurodivergence, but every single family was completely different.And I'd hear their needs is one thing, and another family, their needs are quite the opposite thing. And the variety is a beautiful thing. And yeah, it gives us the chance to get to know people.I guess the thing that allows us to stand back and think it through is, is all about love, isn't it? Wanting to love. Members of the church love them more than the traditions or the programs or even the way our place, our church place looks.Part of the time I spent with families last year, hearing from them, a big thing that I kept hearing is what happens when churches don't show that love and they are quite rigid and how complicated and difficult this can be for families. I heard this from so many families, I can't emphasize that enough. I've got a few quotes I want to share.These are just a few of the quotes, but this is what can happen when churches don't seek to understand and show that love.So a family told me that they've tried to communicate their needs to the church, but we've been told you just need to have higher expectations of him and he needs to learn to behave himself. And then there's another family who told me a similar thing. They said a minister told us you need to learn to ignore them.And he pointed out other families in the church who didn't have a problem. I felt like no one understood that it wasn't that simple.

Oh, they're such heartbreaking quotes, aren't they, Kate? At best, there's a serious misapplication of some good principles.So you're thinking about disciplining and teaching our kids how to be in a large crowd and all that sort of stuff. And yes, as parents, we need to say we don't just throw discipline out the window or teaching and training our kids in godliness. Absolutely.But those responses feel like a quick, easy thing to throw out that doesn't engage with the person's difficulty.It more comes from a place of, I don't want to deal with your difficulty, so you go and solve it and become like everyone else, and then I won't have this problem. And it's so heartbreaking. You know, as ministers, as church leaders, the potential for good is so high, but the potential for hurt.Hurt is so high as well, isn't it?

It really is. Yeah. It makes me think of 1 Corinthians 13:1 3 might just have a read of that.It says, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship, that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Isn't it amazing?You take love out of the picture, and he says, um, I'm a resounding gong. You take love out of the picture, and I am nothing. You take love out of the picture, I gain nothing. It's. It's nothing without love.

Absolutely. One of the saddest podcasts I've listened to is a series about a particular church. It was a really, really big church.It was a poster church for lots of good things. And yet this podcast worked to examine how it all went wrong, because in the end, the church collapsed.And if you go back and look through there, all these people who had just been crushed along the way, and despite all the big movement that was involved, all the downloads of sermons and all the things that were being published that were coming out of this church, people were just getting hurt left, right, and center because that thing at the core, that love had been ripped away. And if you, you know, when you're reading through the Bible, I'm about to do a new Series on the second half of Exodus in my Stories podcast.

Excellent.

And the. One of the things that struck me in going back and looking at it is the Israelites keep rebelling and God keeps giving them stuff, caring for them.And yes, he does discipline them, he rebukes them, but, you know, they complain about the food, thinking he's brought them into the desert to kill them, despite all the evidence of everything that he's done. And yet he just showers more love on them and feeds them for 40 years, miraculously, with this manna from heaven.And it's so central to who our God is, so it has to be central to who we are.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Churches sometimes do this really well and they do show love really well.Dave, I've given you some quotes there as well, from families. Yeah, yeah.

I'm so glad that you've given me these quotes, because we don't. We don't want to say this is all negative because actually the spirit is at work and God is doing wonderful things. So here's what one family says.They say the staff team spoke to us as if we were experts in our son, which we are. And they never spoke as if the things we asked were burdensome or unhelpful.They recognised that the structures would help other kids in the group and they really sought to make him feel welcome, and therefore us welcome. I felt seen because of the way they asked real questions with a heart for seeing him included.

Yeah. Isn't this a. Isn't this a lovely quote?And in this podcast, we've been talking a lot about how we want to be curious, collaborative and we want to be creative. And I see that in this quote from this family. We've got this staff team who are curious.They ask about the son, they're collaborative, they're saying, how can we help? How can. What would help you? What do you need? Not copy pasting systems they've used in the past.And they're creative, they're happy to put in some new systems, they're happy to do this differently for this individual, unique child. And this family has said in here that, you know, these systems will actually help other kids too. And that's often the case.Last week, Dr. Katie was saying how for her, she loves predictability. And so when we put in systems like schedules with neurodivergent people in mind, someone like her actually is also really benefiting.But, you know, even if no other child benefited from these systems or supports, it's still worth putting in place, isn't it? Because this is a person who belongs in church.

Absolutely.And how different is this response compared to those quotes that you read out before where these people have said, you matter, your son matters, your problem or difficulty matters. And it's not just a difficulty for you, it's a difficulty for us, or it's something for all of us to be working through, not just you.And I think you see that in some of these other quotes. So one mother says just being able to be us and not feel judged or like a burden is lovely.And then another mother says, compassion and trying to understand go a long way, as does being believed. Believed that we are trying our best.

Yeah, that's a great attitude, isn't it? Earlier we heard from parents saying that they feel like no one understands. But here this is an approach that means that people learn to understand.They have compassion, they're believing them, they're listening to them. It's just wonderful, isn't it? And it means that we need to be flexible in all of this.Next week we're going to look at what families can be doing to be helping our children today. It's good to be focusing, I think, on church, but I just wanted to flag that we haven't forgotten what families can be doing as well.But if you've been listening to our other episodes, you'll know that we often like to think through environments. Thinking through what are some stressors we can eliminate or triggers we can eliminate?What are some things in the environment that maybe we can't eliminate, but we can mitigate?And what we also like to think through when there are triggers, when there are stresses, when things are hard or exhausting, what are some ways that we or our children can be regulating in order to respond to those things or prepare for those things? Dave, it's important that we don't give any checklist here because one child will need one thing and another child will need another thing.And no checklist is the key to this loving attitude, this curious attitude, this collaborative attitude, this creative attitude that we keep talking about. But I think there are some things that are just helpful to toss around. So I know that you'll have a lot of ideas.There are some things I've found as well along the way, ideas maybe of things that people could offer to people in their churches, maybe some things parents could ask for. Or maybe we'll say one thing and it'll help people go, oh, you know what? That's a bit like this other thing that we could think through.What sort of things have you come across in your time.

Yeah, look, there's lots. I just want to reiterate that first and foremost, the thing to do is listen and understand.So all these things that we're about to talk about are very much the second step, not the first step in terms of eliminating triggers. These are the sort of things which again highlight what you've just said about how they're actually good for a lot of people.Not just for neurodivergent people, but something like adjusting the speaker system to eliminate high pitched sounds. So I worked with a guy once who was so irritated about the microphone in the church and he said speaking is actually what we're all about.We're people of the word and so we need to have our thing that we speak into working really well. So if we're going to spend any money as a church, let's get a system that works well and let's train people well on that.It doesn't have to be complicated, but that's just a simple thing that will be good for neurodivergent people, but actually will be good for everyone. A separate entrance to avoid eye contact and crowding. Think about how people come into church.Once we went on holidays and we went to a church and we arrived late, they'd closed the back door but left the side door open. But the side door was kind of really side towards the front. And so, and we'd had an awful morning.And so the only way into the, this building of this church that we'd never visited before was through a door where everyone would see us come in. And the only seat available was like the second to front pew.

That's hard.

We don't, we don't need to be judgmental to people who are, who are arriving late or anything like that. We need to say, yeah, this, this is tricky and we're really glad you're here.So finding a way for people to enter that isn't a burden for them, I think is just really important about how you think about your space. It's like thinking about softer lighting. How does your space affect people? These sort of things are important.

I think that's right. Yeah, absolutely. And of course there'll be triggers that we can't eliminate.And this is when we might think through some ways that we can mitigate triggers. And we'll look more at this too next week when we think particularly about families.But like a church can be thinking through how they can help families mitigate things. So the church can be including people in the outline so that perhaps Children or adults are triggered by the sudden music.Starting an outline can mean that it's not so sudden, can mean that they can remove themselves from that space or sit in a better space. Knowing that this week we're having the choir singing or this week we're having. It depends on what your church does.Also, I think having a buddy leader for children who struggle can really help.So some churches will give a volunteer to that child and they'll be there ready to go right from the start just to be with this child, to help with the transition from the main part of the service through to the kids part time of the service through to moving into morning tea or afternoon tea or whatever the church does. And things as well, like having at this, at the entrance of the church, earmuffs, cushions, things that can sort of normalize.Bringing in tools that are going to help you sit through the church. This can make a huge difference to families, to adults, to kids along the way.

Absolutely. It says you're important, you're valuable, and you might need things that are different to what other people need.But we want to help to cater for people. But there are some things we're not going to be able to get rid of in any way, are there? So what do we do in that situation?

Yeah, so this is where regulation's really important. And understanding that regulation isn't just something that happens after church, it can happen before church and during church as well.Again, we'll talk about this for families, but what can churches be doing to support regulation for people? And having talked to a lot of different families, this looks different for everyone.For some it's, you know, a child curling in the ball on the floor just in order to reduce sensory input.But for others, it's actually standing and moving around or going for a quick run around the building and coming back in in order to get some energy out.One adult told me that for her, if she can stand at the back and flap and rock during the sermon, she'll concentrate a lot better because she can regulate through what's already happened in the service.So providing spaces for this and I think just the general understanding from church, I'd love more people to understand that when you see someone rocking or flapping or in a little ball, this can be really healthy and really good. They're actually regulating through things.So churches can have at the entrance a little bowl of fidget tools, things like fidget spinners and that sort of thing to normalize that people want to be doing something with their hands. It can help with attention and so on. But it can also help to calm people down, to get some energy out.What a wonderful thing to have a church endorsing that regulation in church.I think one of the troubles with checklists and even one of the troubles with doing what we've just done, Dave, in giving some ideas along the way, is that, as you said at the start, this isn't instead of listening, but it also.We don't want to just go through the motions and forget the impact it can make of doing a loving thing or being loving beyond these categories of elimination, mitigation and regulation. So actually, on Sunday. So just a couple of days ago, my family headed along to church, as we do, and my son was feeling pretty overwhelmed.But we were met by this lovely person at church who knew my son and knows that he absolutely loves Lego.And they'd headed out to the shops and bought Lego and came into church with us, joined our family, and we all sat together as my son was doing this Lego. And I could see in his face that he felt known, he felt treasured, and he knew that he belonged to.Even though church is so hard, it's a place where he belongs. He's part of the family.

It's such a beautiful story. It's so good. I mean, it's loving to your son.It's loving to you as parents and caring for you in caring for your son, and it's loving to the whole church. It's modeling to the church how valuable your son is and helping your son through a difficult time.

Yeah. Yes.

So beautiful.

Brings a tear to the eye.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. It shows, doesn't it, too, that he's more than just the difficulties that he's experiencing. He has interests and joys, and he wants to be part of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think my danger in hearing that story is I want other people to do that sort of thing for me and treat me that special.And, you know, that'd be lovely if anyone's out there listening. But. But it sets that challenge as well, doesn't it, of saying, okay, how am I loving people in my church?How am I looking out for other people's needs and having that deep, rich concern for them?

And it can be simple, too. Someone recently showed my daughter some knitting that she'd been doing. Knowing that knitting is a joy for my daughter. And it's just.It's just these connections. I know you. Here's something we can share in conversation and in delight at the moment.

That's so cool. Well, we should probably wrap it up with that beautiful story.I guess we want to say that we never know the full story just by looking at someone externally, just by saying, oh, yep, someone's in my church. I know them. It's like we have to ask.We have to have the conversation because things are hidden and we need to be working together to help each other love one another. We need to be curious. We need to be flexible with how we do things.Not saying, well, I've planned all this great stuff and it's not going to change just because someone different is in my church. No, no, your church is the people. And so what is your meeting going to look like and your time together going to look like? Because we are the church.They are the church. So we need to be asking, how can we help us be the church?

And I hope this also is an encouragement to parents to advocate at church for their kids to have the courage to speak about their children's needs, believing that their children belong and that it's right that churches are flexible and make adjustments and love you and your child, your whole family, just as it should.

Absolutely. And love is in everything. Sometimes it is making those changes. Sometimes loving needs to be lovingly.Say, I know that the church can't change everything, and so I'm going to work through that, but it needs to come from every direction, doesn't it?

Yep. And that's for next week, too.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay, well, what a. What a great link into next week. Or I should say next fortnight. So we've. We've kicked off.It's been really fun starting the podcast and we've been doing it every week, but we are going to switch to fortnightly. We know we're covering a lot and we want to give people time to think about that.And so we will be back in a fortnight, God willing, and we'll stick with that as a pattern from now on.

And just a reminder that if you are willing to give to head to faithfulgod.net or click the link in our show notes. Well, Dave, I'll see you in a fortnight.

See you then. Thanks, Kate.

Bye.