Getting Traineeships Going
By Pete Hughes
There has been a greater awareness of neurodiversity in our world today, Bec Baines explains how churches can be better equiped to minister to people with different forms of neurodiversity as we see the gospel include all sorts of people.
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TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Good day. I’m Jo Gibbs.
Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid, practical tip for gospel centre ministry. Every week The One thing is brought to you by Reach Australia. We’d love to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying churches right across the country.
At the end of each of our shows, we ask if you’ve got topics you’d like us to cover. And none of the request has been for helping churches be more accessible to neurodiverse people. So it’s great to be able to welcome into the studio today. Bec Baines from Youthworks welcome.Beck: Hello.
Thanks for having me here.
Can you tell us what your title is at Youth Works?
Yeah, it’s always fun when people ask me because it’s a bit of a mouthful, but my title is accessibility ministry adviser and basically what it means. Basically what that means is I help churches think about disability and inclusion and supporting people with disability coming along to church.
Awesome.
Well, you’re absolutely the person that we want to talk to today and but before we get into that, Adele, in our team at the moment we’re doing a fitness challenge. This is leading up to our national conference. This is the time when usually we don’t do any fitness because we’re all too busy.
But you know, you get points for every half hour of whatever exercise you’d like to do. What would be your exercise of choice?
So I’ve got two things I really love. One of them is boxing. So I love meeting up with my personal trainer and, yeah, hitting the pads and also having a spa team as well.
So that’s really fun. No, I like the focus and the discipline in that. But then on the other side, I love doing this thing called bar, which is a mix between ballet and Pilates. So in one sense you get sort of big heavy muscles, and another sense you get like really fine, Yeah, little muscles you didn’t know existed until afterwards.
OK, so you’ve got both happening. Alright, Hopefully we won’t have to use either of those in our interview today. But for now, you’ve pressed play on another episode of The One Thing Making your church accessible for neurodiverse people.
Today’s podcast is brought to you by Virtual Church Assist.
Virtual Church Assist offers remote administrative assistance that caters to you and your churches specific needs. The growing team full of unique skills, experience and expertise. VCA supports churches and ministry organisations all over Australia. Find out more at virtualchurchassist.com.
And now back to the podcast.
Well, Beck, can you tell us a little bit about your story and why you’re so passionate about making churches more accessible for people living with disability?
I’d love to share my story.
It’s an interesting story because there’s lots of channels for what brought me to where I am now. So when I was six months old, I had meningitis. I was very, very sick. Dad was a minute at the time.
His church prayed for me for the day, like come came in on a Saturday, prayed and I got better when my prognosis as I was actually meant to die or have severe disability myself.
But I left with just having some hearing loss. So I’ve grown up, yeah, one ear completely dead, the other just consistently losing hearing over time. So I’ve experienced schooling and church life with hearing loss. And I wouldn’t say it was difficult, but there was just differences in, you know, playing water games, for instance, that might have been a bit tricky as well, so.
Why water?
Goes because I wear a hearing aid and so get wet. Yeah, can’t get it wet. And, you know, being in the pool, there’s a kind of a you’ve got to trust the people around you. It’s a bit of psychology type thing, you know, is someone going to forget that you’re deaf?
And people do forget that I’m deaf. So anyway, that’s right. So there’s, there’s that kind of line of my interest.
But also when I was seven years old, we adopted a boy with Down syndrome and he was is a very delightful person.
So my three older brothers and I, you know, almost became The Wiggles 2.0 before the new wheels became a thing.
And, you know, we just loved on him so much and he was great.
And then when I was 19, we fostered a boy with autism, Level 3 autism and just a lot of other life complexities he had experienced in his early life.
And that was difficult.
That was hard.
We wanted to love on this boy and we did, but it just came with like relational hardships in the family as well.
So I saw that kind of side of things and even just church involvement all across the board with the three of us.
I also learned some sign language and that was when I became interested in the ministry side of things.
So I thought to myself, I’d love to to teach deaf people the gospel.
So I was started that sort of passion thinking and I just remember thinking job like this doesn’t exist and you know, how awesome would it be if I could do something like this?
And then I worked as a support worker and I thought it was not just deaf people that need the gospel, you know, all people need Jesus.
So when I went to Barber college, I was encouraged into Barber college by my kids and youth minister at the time.
And I kept saying to my lectures, I really want to do disability ministry.
So, and I had one lecturer who made it possible for me to attend a course on disability ministry through the college and my ministry support team.
They were really encouraging me as well, giving me opportunities to share what I knew and teaching other people as well.
So all that kind of, to cut a Long story short, all of those things, yeah, really drew my, drove my passion.
And then I kept getting phone calls and requests and messages from different churches around the place saying we need support, we need helpers.
Yeah.
And youth works would be like, oh, talk to big bands.
And I’m like, I am a full time kids and youth minister myself.
And, you know, just that sort of, I was stretched.
And so, you know, I said to Andy Stephenson, my boss, I said, look, I can’t do my full time job and do what you guys need.
And, you know, I kind of need a a role that goes with that.
And so one thing led to another and now I’ve got a full time role in supporting churches inclusion and disability.
Oh, that’s fantastic.
Great story, great hearing your own personal experience in your family, thinking about that into ministry.
I’m sure over many years you’ve seen churches do this well and sometimes not so well.
And one of the things I’d love you to do is help us today, kind of step into that space.
So one of the questions I’ve got is when we talk about neurodiversity, what are we talking about?
And can you even give us some vocabulary around this to know what should we say, What are the words we should use?
Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s quite a lot in some cases.
And it can kind of feel a bit much when you’re kind of stepping into this and especially when you’ve kind of grown up with certain vocab and now there’s kind of a change to it as well.
And neurodiversity are key bit in there is diversity.
There’s lots in there.
So you have your autism spectrum, you’ll have your ADHD, you will have it’s called PDA, so pathological defiance avoidance.
And then so they’re kind of your key kind of things.
And then you’ll have dyspraxia and dyslexia, anything that involves the neurons in your brain and the connectivity that’s going on there.
And then all extended to things like Down syndrome and, and some intellectual disabilities as well.
So it really does expand.
And the neurodiversity element of that is that you could kind of have one thing but isn’t you, or you could have a number of things that are going on at the same time.
So you might have some people who have Down syndrome and are and have autism at the same time as well, or people have ADHD and autism at the same time as well.
Yes, a few things there.
Yeah, yeah.
So that’s it’s a whole number of areas that we could be talking about.
And so that’s one of the challenges for us thinking into this space is really thinking about what’s happening for the individual person who’s coming to church.
What are some of the challenges for people who are neurodivergent?
So that’s a word in terms of not typical, in terms of their neurological functioning.
It’s just luck for someone who is neurodivergent and considering this such a range.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
Tell us.
Yes, it it can be quite challenging on different fronts and it depends how the new diversity is affecting that person and their in their body as well.
So in some cases it could be the social dynamic of things.
And so, you know, often churches are trying to encourage you to come to church early and interact with people and might coax you with a coffee before the service or something.
And for some people that can be actually really hard because there’s a reliance on social interaction and taking initiative.
And there, there can be some social anxiety mixed up in that as well.
Sometimes things that can be hard is the unknown.
So when they don’t know how long music will go for or how long a conversation will someone go for, there’s a kind of expectations of what do I need to be doing and when.
And so we, we talk about that because if music has this unknown ending, sometimes the music can be really hard with the sound and the loudness and that can be impacting them.
And, and so when they know when it’s going to finish, it’s easy to, to manage and endure as opposed to this kind of never ending winners is going to stop in this kind of spiral and and whatnot.
And often people on the spectrum don’t quite, you know, keep on top of the time.
And so, you know, something can go on forever when really it was just a couple of minutes or things like that.
So there’s that kind of aspect of things that social dynamics or thing, loudness, even brightness of lights, not knowing what’s going on and when just a few of those things that kind of, you know, just even walking in the door, what am I meant to be doing?
Where am I meant to be going?
What I meant to say, those type of things.
And I think sometimes churches can lend itself towards being very socially creative or intuitive or things like that, whereas in the past, a lot of churches have been very prayer book and you know, liturgy and focused.
And I think that’s actually really helpful for people who diverse because it does create a bit of a structure to how the service is going to go and what to expect and things like that.
So.
And I’m imagining for the for most people, they find joining a new church pretty stressful.
You don’t know where to go, you don’t know what’s going to happen, a whole bunch of things.
For someone who is neurodivergent, that takes that up to another.
Level.
And I’m listening to you thinking, wow, youth group sounds like a really stressful place to be.
Yeah, and it’s beyond the just the sort of shyness, anxiety aspect of things because, you know, people can experience and go, you know, give it a go.
But the difference in university as well is just that extra level of unknown or what is it doing to your mind or what is it doing to your body?
Like are you feeling pain because you’ve got sensitive hearing in that sense?
Like is it is it becoming overwhelming and overstimulated?
Is too much going on that like there’s a basketball game over there with the tinging sound of the basketball bouncing?
Is there a conversation over there is a coffee machine grinding and like all these things that are coming at once and you can’t quite philtre out different sounds and different experiences.
It’s all coming at once.
I’d like 110%.
And so it just becomes overwhelming and overstimulating.
And, you know, that’s why some kids will have meltdowns and because they just don’t know how to then process from that and what what are the best next steps to take.
So yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Well, we’re going to spend some time thinking about what churches can do in this space.
We’re going to start with the negatives, though.
What are some of the things you’ve seen done not so well in churches or by pastors?
Yeah.
There’s stories that I have heard and you hear of times when churches have said, look, this is not the place for you.
And we don’t, you know, distracting you make too much noise during the sermon.
And so there’s been some kind of encouragement to move on to a different church.
And, and I think that’s quite unhelpful that even though many people in churches are not quite experienced in this area and, you know, don’t expect you to be fully experienced.
You know, different people have different walks of life and areas of experience.
But I think just have the mentality that we’re all in this together.
And, you know, yes, it might be stronger, but let’s move on, you know, together with this.
So there has been that sort of stuff.
There has been, you know, ignoring the people or leaving, shutting them out of conversations or just kind of laughing off something and not wanting to deal with them.
So I knew someone who, yeah, it was on the supper roster and brought the food.
That was great.
And someone later on said to me, oh, they’re not serving the tea or coffee.
And I said, well, have you asked them to do that?
And so I think sometimes we place expectations where people go.
Of course, this is part of the job, you know, how do you not know that?
Yeah, Yeah.
But we actually need to make those kind of things clear.
Like, this is actually what it is part of doing that role.
And so you kind of have this unfair judgement on someone else for not doing what you think they should be doing.
But actually, the flip side is we haven’t told them what we want them to do.
So you got that aspect as well.
And it is just that sort of society, culture, kind of expectations we have on people that we’re not understanding why some renewed it Virgin is responding a certain way, why they’re asking certain questions or why they’re particularly interested in things.
And so we kind of put them down to are they just being annoying or they’re being quirky?
And so that kind of attitude that we have towards people as well.
But I think the biggest thing is just been telling people they’re not welcome and please move somewhere else.
Yeah, this is too much bother.
Yeah, yeah, OK, Alright, we’re going to move from the negatives to some of the positives.
Can you give us some tips for helping churches work better, be better places for people who are neurodivergent?
What would you suggest?
Yeah.
So I’ll start in the kids in new space.
That’s yeah, where I come from with youth works.
So a lot of it is really just getting to know the person, which sounds quite an obvious thing when you think about it.
Step one, yeah.
Say hello, but it kind of is really that, you know, how do you say hello to a young person?
You know, you’re not ignoring that young person only talking to the mom or dad or carer.
You’re actually hello to the person.
And if you’re not getting much out of them, you know, you can have your parents and carers in the conversation as well.
You can have a bit of a get to know you form so you’re not just saying what is their name, how old are they and what’s their disability?
You know, what are their strengths and what are things they find difficult and what are their goals that you’d love to see happen.
And so you might have parents who might not want to give all the information and diagnosis for whatever reason.
That’s a whole, I think other conversation in that.
But if you’re trying to just get to know a person and how you can support them and love them.
So if parents don’t want to say that they have autism, for instance, they may they may tell you though, are they they do have difficulty, you know, with fine motor skills and maybe you can help them do that other stuff.
So yeah, it’s doing a little bit of a child profile is good.
I love doing visual schedules.
There are massive asset to all across the ministry.
So for your young, really young kids, you can have something that’s like big keyword pictures.
And even if your routine is exactly the same, still just having something on the board or a wall or poster to say, first we’ll do games, then we’ll do some singing.
And then, you know, whatever it might be that you’re doing so that a young person can reference that and go, OK, I know that the next thing is going to be this particular activity that also helps the leader as well because they’re not having to constantly be like, oh, keep doing this, we gotta do this, we gotta do this.
You’re not listening.
Yeah.
There’s more of a visual connection as well because often people on the spectrum weren’t hear the thing that they’ve you’ve said first.
They kind of need that more visual connection there.
But then for teenagers, you can use that on a PowerPoint, for instance, or, you know, for adults and church, if you had a handout or even just the first slide on the screen to say here’s how the morning or the evening will work, you know, just to kind of give that snapshot in that picture as well.
So yeah, laying out those expectations as well.
And when you get to know the young person, for instance, what are their likes and what are their interests?
And what do they love doing?
You know, is it that they love Minecraft?
And so, you know, you can one of your activities can be, you know, what would a Minecraft scene in the Bible look like, for example?
So kind of bringing in their interests.
If they have things they’re curious about, you know, invite them to join in.
I’ve seen where a kid was kind of pacing a room and saw a game being played and it involved using an actual coin, which, you know, don’t think we see these days in his postcard world.
But he was curious about the coin.
And so, you know, one way to involve him in the game is do you want to have a go with the coin, get him involved that way.
Yeah.
And you know, is, is it Lego they want to play with?
And so in the craft time or for instance, or when they uncomfortable playing a game, can they sort of do something to the side so they can observe first before maybe joining in or something else that’s meaningful?
And so being able to have flexibility with your programme.
So rather than A1 size fits all, you have to join what we’re doing.
Can you run something else at the same time that is equally meaningful?
You know, whether it’s time with leaders while they colouring in or doing some sort of other activity that’s kind of all that sort of stuff, or like when you’re doing craft have different levels of completion.
So not saying here’s some scissors and paper on on you go make the whole whole thing.
Maybe it might you might need stickers or maybe something already cut out.
So they just glueing it.
I had a kid in one of my ministries who loved just the scissors in the paper, which is cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
And then it’s all just, you know, confetti by the end.
But I’m working on one at the same time.
And then he’s going, then we just switch and he’s like, I’ve got something to take home now.
And, and I think just even just listening and time and slowing down.
So this same boy actually who was nonverbal, but really wanted to be one of the boys and hang out and be part of that.
And when it came to, you know, does anyone have any questions or, you know, can you tell me the answer to this?
He always has his hand up.
And so we used some finger spelling to help with that communication with him.
But even when he wanted to pray, he, you know, he would make some, some sounds with his mouth and then kind of have this sort of nod and a you think Amen.
And, and let’s go, I don’t know what he said and said.
Well, God knows what he said.
And that’s the most important thing.
So, so just genuine inclusion and involvement being part of things as well.
When you look to sort of the wider church as well, just having that culture and community of patience and kindness.
If parents arrive late, you know, continue to welcome them, not kind of blow someone’s late or anything like that.
Sometimes they’re late because, you know, it’s hard to get out of the house in the morning, or maybe it’s because the social dynamic time is a bit tricky.
And so it’s just easy that they arrive as soon as church thoughts.
So kind of offering that kind of grace and understanding of that rather than kind of going, yeah.
And can I ask, Yeah, you’re in the the youth and kids space.
Yeah.
And so you’re thinking into this and so love all of the tips that you’ve got for us.
Is this something we should be thinking about more as churches in the youth and kids space, not so much for adults?
Or are we losing adults who are neurodivergent?
Is it like what’s happening?
Should we be thinking about all the different ages at church?
Yeah.
And I think yes.
So you know, Youth Works is about, you know, effective kids and youth ministry in every church.
But what that does include is.
The teenagers that become adults and also the families and carers.
So that’s there’s a whole world of that as well.
Often kids who in your divergent will have parents who are new diversion as well.
So how do we love them and care for them and support them as parents as well?
How do we help the transition?
So even as kids go into youth group and youth group into kind of young adults ministry or whatever that might be, what are the steps were taken to communicate clearly what’s next, supporting them along the way, how we being input into their faith development as well, and just even how the structures of church are working.
So I’ve talked about visual schedule, for instance, that’s helpful for for adults.
So we did that at church.
I was at that just on the front page of the bulletin.
We handed out order of service.
So that was helpful for people.
But even listening to the concerns and needs of, you know, when someone says that music’s really loud and I’m struggling with this or is there a spot in the church that’s not as impacted by the noise?
So whether it’s the speakers aren’t that reached that sort of maximum yeah, there or is there a sensory room, things like that, that just sort of help adults part of the service.
But I think a liturgy can be really helpful too.
So structure to the service, helping people on their path of faith of going what’s going to be helpful and meaningful for you to connect with God.
So kind of giving the tools as well.
And you know, even listening to the concerns like, you know, the lighting is a bit hard for me and taking that sort of thing seriously and working with them.
So you don’t want to make changes or do things without actually asking people what is going to be suitable and helpful to them as well.
So a collaboration is actually really good to do.
OK.
It’s really helpful we get them put a link in the toolbox to a blog post you’ve written where you talk about the difference between belonging and inclusion.
Can you, yeah, share a bit about that with us?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So inclusion basically means that you’ve made it possible for people to be there.
So you’ve got your ramp, you’ve got your accessible bathrooms.
You know, you’ve you’ve got the most like schmick slick kind of building that people can dream of kind of thing.
So you’ve made it possible to be there.
You’ve met the kind of legal requirements too.
But belonging means is that you want them there and they are part of the ministry and that they are active members.
So you know, they have a say in and and how things are going.
You miss them when they’re not there.
You know, they serve in some way or maybe they serve in a capacity that really meets the giftings that they have.
So rather than saying this is a cookie cutter, you know, you’ve got to be this kind of leader or this kind of person or this kind of brass Polish or something like that, you know, what can someone bring to the team as well?
So I know my brother, for instance, the one with Down syndrome, you know, he’d be great at just handing out communion.
You know, a lot of churches have moved towards just handing them all out first and then take the take the communion.
And so he’d be, you know, he’s very gentle, very careful.
So a role like that’s great for him or even if it’s a role where you are supported along the way as well.
So you’ve got someone that’s kind of budding with you and helping you.
Yeah.
So you and you’re not missed in the sense of how good they went there.
Like that’s that’ll make my night easier.
Yeah, that’s not me.
That’s like a relief.
It’s oh, I actually missed that person and what they bring to the group as well.
And it does touch into the whole body of Christ thing as well.
Like actually you need all these people that are there, you know, they’re, they’re part of the body.
They’re essential and we cannot have them there.
Yeah.
So it’s, it’s a little bit like in the blog post, I, you know, reference the quote of, um, it’s like when you get invited to the dance versus being asked to dance.
So Yep, being at the dance is great, but it’s so much better if like actually you’ve been asked to dance and join in as well.
Yeah, yeah.
So it’s like a community building and culture.
And you’ve already touched on this a little bit.
Church is more than a service organisation or a community programme where gospel people, the gospel shapes how we think about this issue.
Any thoughts on that?
Yes, yeah, quite a bit.
But I yeah, the first and foremost thing I think is that, you know, Genesis talks about how we’re all made in the image of God.
There’s no hierarchy, there’s no difference.
God doesn’t say I’ll accept those people or anything like that.
It’s raw humankind and God values us and God loves us and he wants us to value and love one another as well.
So you get that from the beginning.
And then you think about, you know, fearfully ones you May God has made you, he loves you.
And then you move into the Gospels as well where you think, you know, why was this man born blind?
Was it because he singled his parents in?
No, Jesus showing his power in that and a lot of these healings are pointing to a bigger picture of Jesus salvation.
So Jesus is not healing people because necessarily because he’s going, oh, you have a disability that’s bad.
Like let’s fix that.
It’s actually showing you bigger things going on.
But one of my favourite gospel stories is the man who was paralysed and how he gets lowered through the roof.
And a lot of people recognise yes, the first and foremost thing this man needs is to be saved by Jesus and to no salvation.
And then he does the healing as to sort of make a point.
Um, and so they know, people know that they can recognise that.
But the, the beautiful thing beyond that is the four friends and actually just how much effort it took to get that man to Jesus, you know, creating a little bit of a chaos as well and holding the ceiling.
But, you know, you think about, if you think about one man that you’ve got to carry on a stretcher, upper roof and all that sort of thing.
So, yeah.
And so there’s a, there’s a fitness challenge for you guys, but just that effort.
And, you know, we want to get this person to Jesus.
And I think sometimes churches can kind of go, oh, that’s too much and too hard and do we really need to cater towards this person?
But actually, yes, we do need to bring people to Jesus no matter what it takes.
That’s what I love about that story.
And and then Luke 14 will go into actually how we have to go out and bring people in so we don’t just have a sign saying everyone’s welcome, which, you know, that’s a good thing to have.
But actually, what are we doing to go out into the streets and laneways to bring people into the church?
Does our church reflect the community that we live in, especially when we have one in five people in Australia have disability, you know, are they, is that number represented in our churches as well?
So yeah, yeah, we want people, we want them in there.
We want neurodiverse people as well.
And we want to love them and care for them and see them know Jesus.
Yeah, and we want everyone to have the same opportunity to hear about Jesus.
Yeah, well, we’re talking on the one thing.
So what’s one thing you want pastors to know about making churches places of belonging for people who are neurodivergent?
I think definitely just listening and slowing down.
And so that’s not, that’s not to say therefore make your sermon slower, but it’s just the time with people and hearing what they’ve got to say.
I went to a conclusion committee where the rector was part of it and and a lot of people in the inclusion community were neurodiverse and they were able to say, look, the reason why we sit in this part of the church building is because it’s really loud.
We find it a struggle, but we want to be at church.
We know it’s important.
There’s that.
And the rector just went actually no idea that was a thing.
And so I think just being able to hear the experiences of the people in your church is a huge thing and just understanding and being able to work and collaborate towards that.
So another church I went to visit, I had the kids and youth minister, the the new rector and his wife are warden and the mum of kids with disability and and one kid would knew diverse and she was able to just say, look, This is why we can’t even get through the door sometimes.
And this is what he needs.
And this is, you know, the struggles that we’re having and what not.
And so just for them to actually want to brainstorm together, OK, what would be helpful?
What can we be doing?
You know, and just even like, what kind of attitude can we have?
You know, how can we love you is a huge thing.
So yeah, listen, slow down here.
What’s going on?
Yeah.
That’s fantastic.
Thanks babe.
Well, in our toolbox today, we’ve got a link to Bex’s blog posts on the Youth Works website, so some more things that you can read there.
And Beck has kindly given us her email address and is happy for people to reach out, ask questions to continue the conversation with her.
Beck, thanks so much for coming in.
This has been a great conversation, so thank you.
My pleasure.
Now if.
You’ve got a topic you’d like us to cover on the one thing.
Please email us at [email protected] dot AU.
I’m Jake Gibbs.
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