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.
- Neurodivergence can include the Autism spectrum, PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), dyslexia, dyspraxia, down syndrome; anything that involves the neurons in your brain.
- We need to be addressing what is happening for each individual person.
- Challenges can include social dynamics, the unknown (not how long things go for), sounds and loudness of music and things. Creating a structure is good for neurodiverse people.
- For kids and youth, it’s important to get to know the person, having visual schedules and being flexible.
- For adults, again its important to get to know the person, to be gracious, communicate clearly with them and help them to understand the structure of churches.
- There is a difference between inclusion (made it possible for people to be there) and belonging (you want them there, they are active members and will be missed if they are not there).
- The gospel should shape this ministry, like every other ministry in church.
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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.
0:16
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.
0:32
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.
0:48
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.
1:08
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.
1:24
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.
1:44
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.
2:02
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.
2:20
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.
2:35
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.
2:51
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.
3:16
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.
3:39
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?
3:54
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.
4:17
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.
4:33
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.
4:52
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.
5:12
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.
5:32
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.
5:54
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.
6:10
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.
6:27
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?
6:43
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.
7:02
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.
7:20
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.
7:36
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.
7:54
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.
8:10
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.
8:29
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.
8:45
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.
9:05
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.
9:32
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.
9:49
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?
10:07
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.
10:28
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.
10:44
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.
11:05
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?
11:25
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.
11:49
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?
12:05
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.
12:24
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.
12:39
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.
13:00
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.
13:17
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.
13:34
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.
13:52
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.
14:13
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.
14:35
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.
14:57
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.
15:16
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.
15:34
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.
15:50
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.
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