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Tony Payne: Well, thanks everyone to be with you today, and if you'd said to me, say maybe 12 months, certainly 14 or 15 months ago that I'd be standing here leading a seminar on Neurodivergence and all about it, I would've been very surprised because I knew almost nothing about it. In fact, when kind of randomly we decided we'd do a workshop. And focus on Neurodivergence at the Centre for Christian Living Event last May, and I started reading and researching. I knew Kate was interested in the topic.

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I interviewed Kate, and I very quickly discovered, not only that, I hadn't thought biblically and theologically about this area very much at all, but that I also knew very little about what Neurodivergence was, what the experience of Neurodivergent people was like. And Kate was very kind to me. We had about three conversations or versions of our interview together because it took me a while to get up to speed. I just had a whole lot of cliches and very basic misunderstandings of what it meant to be neurodivergent and what that experience was like.

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And it's been, as they say, a bit of a journey for me to come to understand all those things and to apply what the Bible says to those things. And my main role in today's seminar will be to put some of the theological framing around our understanding of this issue and how we should respond to it. And how we should love our neighbours, our neurodivergent neighbours, our neuro divergent children. In light of the gospel and a lot of the thinking that I've done and that we've done at the centre over the last 12 months on this topic, you'll be hearing some of the fruit of that today.

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That's me. Over to you, Kate. For me, Kate Morris: I think it started being interested in neurodivergence.

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Back when I was at uni, I studied gifted education. And giftedness is a type of neurodivergence. It's a different way of thinking. It's more than just being good at maths.

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It's, it's a broad thing. And back then as well, we also, some of the things that are actually now understood to be aspects of autism back then, we used to kind of lump in with giftedness if someone was gifted and autistic. And so. Adapting classrooms, adapting curriculums, that sort of thing was fascinating to me.

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And then when I had kids, we learned along the way that a couple of them are neurodivergent, they're artistic. And so some of this stuff was really important for me to be thinking about. And I was pretty shocked when I asked friends of mine, can you give me all the Christian material on being a Christian family with neurodivergent kids? Because it makes a big difference.

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And that that wasn't a whole lot. There's more and more, and it's really exciting to see more and more Christians speaking about it. So I'm currently studying a graduate certificate in autism and neurodivergent studies, and I've been writing and podcasting and a few other different things. And I spent a year researching as well with Anglican Deaconess Ministries, a DM Families and what it looks like to be a Christian family and doing some research alongside that, how to support Christian families.

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So I'm really excited to be doing this topic today. Why don't we start actually by saying what Neurodivergence is, so neuro brain divergence. Different. So kind of brains that operate in a way that isn't what you'd expect the typical brain to operate like.

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But in saying that, we also need to say no two brains are the same. You are never gonna find two neurotypical brains that are the same, or two neurodivergent brains that are the same. It's just kind of a category in order for us to begin asking questions. So Neurodivergence isn't the answer, it's the beginning of a lot of questions, I think when you get to know someone who is neurodivergent.

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Tony Payne: Okay, so we'll be tag teaming back and forward. We're gonna start now by looking at some sort of theological framing, and then I'll hand back over to Kate and she'll talk about, especially how that plays out in the family. Then we'll talk a little bit more, a bit more theological stuff about the nature of grace and church and church relationships. Kind of bouncing a little bit off what we did this morning, and then back to Kate who'll talk more about the practicalities of what it means to be a new divergent family as part of the family of God.

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And got a clicker. We've done one. We're now onto number two. And I'll hope to remember to click as I go along.

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What I'm gonna do over only just the next 15 to 20 minutes fairly quickly is take you through the major kind of theological landing points that make up a map for us. I guess, to navigate our way into this topic. I'm gonna move fairly quickly because most of these points are points which in themselves you'll be very familiar with. They won't be brand new points.

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God created the world, for example. That'll be the first one, one that you might be familiar with. You may not have put them together in quite this order and in quite this way, but I'm gonna try and show you what these points are and how they fit together. There are seven of them, and each one is just gonna be expressed in a sentence, which is on your outline.

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And this is the first sentence that The marvellous diversity of creation is contingent upon Yahweh, contingent upon God, who by his wisdom and spirit, majestically, created it, sustains it, rules, it, delights in it, and judges it. We need to start with creation because as Kate has just said, neurodivergence is about different brains, different aspects of the created order within us. And I put Psalm 104 down there as just one place that highlights the magnificent diversity of God's creation. In wisdom you have made them all.

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The earth is full of your creatures. How wonderful your work. So Lord, Psalm 104, here is the sea, verse 25, great and wide, which teams with creatures innumerable living things great and small. There go the ships and leviathan, which you formed a planet.

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These all look to you to give them their food induced season. When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they're filled with good things. When you hide your face, they're dismayed.

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When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send forth your spirit, they're created and you renew the face of the ground. Psalm 104, as you probably know, is this wonderful picture of the extraordinary lavish profusion and variety of God's creative purposes, and how much he's to be praised for his manifold works. The deep the waters, the mountains, the valleys, the springs that gush forth, the birds, the wild donkeys, even the rock badges.

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They're all there in psalm hundred four, and man, of course, who cultivates and works in this creation and all of this profusion of diversity is subsistence upon and contingent upon. The great Yahweh Lord of this Psalm, not self-contained, not operating under their own necessity, but dependent on him for everything, by his wisdom and his spirit, majestically created in all its variety and interlocking, interconnecting detail, which God delights him. The other key factor in fact, in this Psalm is the goodness of the Lord and the goodness that is expressed in his creation, and therefore, the delight that the Lord and the Psalmist by implication experiences as he looks at and appreciates and celebrates every aspect of this magnificent, interconnected creation.

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And this, of course, includes our brains, which are part of God's creation. And it includes, as Kate's already alluded to, the differences between us, the different details of our creativeness in all their diversity. The goodness of being blonde or brunette or blackhead or redhead. The difference of being tall or short or left-handed or right-handed, and the goodness of different brains of the profusion of different capacities and abilities and strengths that we have in the human family.

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And as a matter of convention, as Kate said, we have decided as a community to label as neurodivergent as different in a certain way. Some brains, which have very often, particular, ordinary strengths that is particular aspects of God's goodness that have been built into their created selves. The goodness of the neurodiverse brain, if I can put it that way, or the neurodivergent brain, is an important theological point to lay down. Very often when we think about neurodivergence in the past, it's almost been entirely under the frame of the fall, which we'll come to in a moment that is entirely under the framework of problem and a disorder.

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However, it's, it's important to recognise that neurodivergent people, nearly all neurodivergent people experience certain strengths and abilities and capacities that the more typical kind of brain doesn't have. There's a variety of goodness within that neurodivergent brain, if I can put it that way, that needs to be delighted in and given thanks for. But there is that note also of sin and wickedness in this psalm that sinners be consumed. The final verse of the psalm says that the wicked be no more.

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There is this discordant note in Psalm 104, just as there is a discordant note in all of the created order, and we see that too in Psalm 139. I'm gonna glide over this one fairly quickly. This is a favourite Psalm of many neurodivergent people. When we spoke with neuro divergent people leading up to our workshop, many of them, if they wanted to name their favourite Bible passage, it was this passage.

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The sense that God knows and creates each one of us intricately and wonderfully knowing our faults and judging the wicked. This, of course, is another Al Psalm, Psalm 139. It's more about God's knowledge, his supreme on missent attention to everything in his creation and how the psalmist can't run from him. There's a hint in that, that the psalmist might want to run from him perhaps, but is insistent that God sees him everywhere.

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In fact, he saw him and knew him right from the very beginning, even down to the intricate way he was knitted together in his mother's womb. I mean, those famous verses, fearfully and wonderfully made. How wonderful are your works? My frame was not hidden from me when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

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But interestingly in this wonderful picture in Psalm 139 of God's knowledge of each and every person, and the intricacy and intimacy of his creation of each person. Which is so important for many neurodivergent people. God made me, he made me the way I'm, he didn't make a mistake when he made me The things that he put in me, the way my brain works is part of his glorious creation and his knowledge of me. And yet, as in Psalm 104, this psalm too also has a kind of grating of gears at the end when it turns to the destruction of the wicked, it's this beautiful psalm of God's knowledge.

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And in the end, oh, that you would slay the wicked law. It's like a change of gears for us. And yet the shadow of sin and wickedness lurks in this Psalm as well. The shadow of the fall, the shadow of the dysfunction from which we cannot hide and which God searches and knows.

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And so if I wanna summarise, coming to 0.3, I told you I was gonna try and work quickly. A theologically frame neurodiversity describes the wondrous differences in human brains. In all their created goodness and in all their fallen dysfunction. And we need to affirm both of these things to receive with thanksgiving, the goodness of the different divergent brains with their various abilities and strengths, and to lament and mourn over the fallenness of human brains.

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Each of us have our own dysfunction, and it's very important to emphasise this. All are different and diverse in our own way. All are fallen and dysfunctional in our own way. Just as there is diversity of goodness, it must be celebrated.

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There's diversity of fallenness, and when we describe the neurodivergent brain, we're describing a brain that has unique good capacities. Very often not in every case, but very often, and also unique fallen dysfunctions of different kinds because whatever label we give to ourselves, every one of us is both a magnificent creation of God's goodness. And also a dysfunctional fallen creature subject to decay and disease and disorder and death in the own individual ways that we experience. Now, there's a tendency in thinking about neurodivergence, both in Christian circles and without to emphasise one side of this polarity over the other to see only disability and disorder.

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When we look at neurodivergence or perhaps to see only positivity and diversity in need of affirmation, and neither really is adequate as a Christian theological vision or is a realistic vision of the neurodivergent experience to see only disability and disorder fails to give thanks for the extraordinary gift of God in making each one of us the way we are with unique strengths to see only goodness and good creation is to live in a fantasy world. That limits our compassion and understanding for the real problems and difficulties that neurodivergent people very frequently experience. And Christianity has unique resources for understanding this.

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We have a theological frame in creation and fall that helps us to say both things just as strongly and is powerfully. And without that theological anchor in creation and fall, our understanding of neurodiversity tends to drift either towards a more medicalized model or to a more political model of understanding the phenomenon. If you have just an empirical view of the world that sees physicality and matter as the only things that exist. Their neurodivergence is a divergence from a norm, from a physical, medical, scientific, mathematically described norm that thus needs to be corrected and returned to in some way or compensated for.

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And the history of viewing neurodivergence only through that medical model as a divergence, as a dysfunctional disorder from the norm has been very difficult for neurodivergent people and is inadequate on its own terms. On the other side, though, we've also seen over the past 30 years, perhaps a swing in the opposite direction. If there is no such thing as a good creation. If value is something we create and ascribe to the things around us, then in the end, all value is personal.

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And the values we ascribe to things are personal and political. People value things and call them good for their own purposes to gain some advantage. The origins of the word neurodiversity. In fact, it's a relatively recent word in our culture.

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It was coined in the nineties. An Australian woman, Judy Singer, Judy Singer, was credited with being the first person to coin this term, and she did so very much as part of a political movement. She was writing in the human rights and political sphere, in the identity politics movement, I guess we'd say. And she wanted to argue that the way we treated autistic people was just another way we treated a misunderstood and discriminated against minority much as we would mistreat black people or gay people.

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That was the same category of political understanding, and that the so-called dysfunctions or disabilities of neurodivergence were really just a label. Powerful people put on neurodivergent people to marginalise them. Now, neurodivergence now is a much more widely used, less politically charged term perhaps than it was when it was first termed. That aspect of neurodivergence and understanding of neurodivergence as a political phenomenon only as an unfair discriminatory label, only is also inadequate in its own terms, even though it does name the experience and the marginalisation that neurodivergent people have often felt.

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I told you I'd move fairly quickly. I'm moving as quickly as I can 'cause I wanna get back to Kate 0.5. Okay, so summarising. It's not just creation and the goodness, it's not all goodness, it's not all fall, it's creation and fall.

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That's all of us and that's neurodivergent brains. But of course in the Bible there is also grace and redemption. Jesus comes to heal the sick and the broken hearted, and his kingdom is based on grace, not ability. This is very important theologically to understand and affirm as we think about the neurodivergent people we are or who are in our midst, who Jesus comes precisely for those who are weak and fallen.

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Spiritually and physically, and there are so many passages here that we could look at. There's this wonderful passage from Luke seven that I've put there in your outlines. When the disciples of John the Baptist come and ask whether Jesus is the one or whether they should look for another in that hour, it says He healed many in verse 21 of many diseases and plagues and spirits of many on whom were blind, EOW sight. And he answered them.

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Go tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind received the sight. The lame wall le cleanse the deaf here, the dead are raised up. The poor have the good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

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The kingdom Jesus brings is a kingdom of healing and grace. And in the gospels, very often, sickness is, it's almost like a picture of the weakness that all of us experience, by which we all need God's grace and the grace of the gospel. All the different ways in which we are fallen and sick, both spiritually and physically are addressed in the gospel and its blessings now and in eternity. Christianity is not a meritocracy.

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It's the opposite of that. It's built on a profound recognition of sin and need, and we don't often appreciate this, the uniqueness of this way of thinking, because in a graceless meritocracy, and that's the culture we live in Now, in a graceless meritocracy, neurodivergent, people tend either to be marginalised as less capable, or valued only for their superpowers. Again, if you don't believe in creation and fall and redemption, if that's not how you see the world, then you're left with a power-based meritocracy as the main alternative option.

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In a graceless meritocracy of this kind, neuro divergent people tend to suffer and have suffered terribly by being marginalised and minimised and mistreated to their great hurt. But interestingly, more recently, in an effort to correct this historic disadvantage and to affirm and be more positive, there's a kind of an alternative swing to the other direction. And a number of neurodivergent people mentioned this to us, that they sometimes feel that the extreme positivity towards neurodivergence that sometimes play in the media doesn't actually describe their experience, which is actually full of hurt and difficulties and problems and disorders of all kinds.

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Grant McCaskill, one of the good books on this subject, autism in the Church, grant McCaskill, who is autistic himself, he puts it this way. He says, we can fall into the trap. A ascribing value to autism only insofar as it confers unique abilities. So yes, we'll welcome your neurodivergence and the fact that you're really brilliant at maths and that's why you're valuable 'cause you're brilliant at maths.

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But in only seeing neurodivergent people as valuable if they're useful and have a power where we neglect and misunderstand the value and power of the gospel and the grace that it offers and their value as people. And finally, for me, in the Kingdom of Grace, we learn the truth about ourselves and we're enabled to live a new life of faith, repentance, and joy. The gospel of Christianity and the power of the Spirit brings up transformation of mind and of heart. To see the world afresh as it really is to understand each other and to understand people in the kind of theological way we've just been describing to.

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It helps us to understand that we are all broken, decaying, weak, dysfunctional, ungodly sinners in need of redemption and justification. We're all God's glorious creation, each with different abilities and strengths. To delight him, it means that we're humble about ourselves and thankful for who God makes us to be. It means that we praise him and we are confident in who we are, in Christ, in redemption, we're awakened to a new life In the Spirit, it's not a life which has just a materialist view of our dysfunctions and problems.

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It's a view that leads to liberation and our power to change. As we spoke with neurodivergent people about this, it was very interesting. Sometimes their experience was that neurodivergence could sometimes almost be seen as a coverall excuse for bad behaviour that you might behave poorly, but that's okay. I'm neurodivergent.

00:21:41.900 - 00:22:13.460

It was just my neurodivergence that was speaking. And while there's a powerful truth about that, that divergent people in all their variety do have particular areas of struggle and areas of weakness, many of them said to us they didn't want the weaknesses and dysfunctions of their created and poor themselves to somehow be cover for an unwillingness to address sin and be repentant like every other Christian who has weakness and dysfunction and bad habits in our lives. It's not a kind of neurological determinism, in other words.

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My brain is a certain way. Therefore, my behaviour is always this way and cannot ever be blamed or improved. In fact, the glory of the gospel is that we're enabled to live a new life of faith no matter what our particular dysfunction might be or our particular weakness. And we're able to repent and change by the power of the spirit, not evident necessarily to always overcome our inherent weaknesses, but to become more like Jesus in the midst of them.

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Now there's a very quick cantor through seven key theological landing points to try to understand and frame neurodivergence and for what we're about to talk about next more practically and miraculously. I finished this Kate with, could I do it in 18 minutes? I, I'm not sure I could. That's two minutes in each one and a bit more.

00:23:00.170 - 00:23:09.170

Well, that's my time, Kate. Over to you. Kate Morris: All right, so you can see where we've been. We're gonna head into looking a little bit at what life can be like at home.

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Particularly for Christian families who are wanting to bring glory to God, who are wanting to raise their children in the Lord. We have the same goals as any other Christian family, and yet some of these practical things might be a little bit different. So in order to kind of address this, we're actually gonna take a little bit of a step back. So in order to look at what might be going on at home.

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I think it's really important to understand a little bit about what can be going on inside a person's body, particularly when they're outside of the home. So, as we've said, everyone's different, but we're gonna pull out a a few categories of things that are commonly complicated or difficult or painful for people who are neurodivergent in order to kind of introduce some of these things so that you can be thinking through. But there are many more that we just can't touch on today. 90 minutes seems long, but there is a lot that it would be great to fit in.

00:24:01.610 - 00:24:36.640

And so as we look at this, you have to just keep in mind everyone is different, but one of the big common challenges for a person who's neurodivergent is often sensory processing differences. So often a sensory processing system, that means that lights can be more bothersome, sounds can be more bothersome. The sense of touch, taste, I mean any sense you've got, it can be more sensitive to the environment. And sometimes this can mean it's wonderful for a person holding something really soft can bring deep and genuine comfort because they're sensitive to that softness.

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But in the same sense, sitting here under perhaps bright lights, bright can bring great discomfort. And often part of this sensory processing is not being able to filter out that. So perhaps when you first walked in, you might have heard, say the air conditioning, and now perhaps your brain has filtered it out. But I'm sure there'll be people who are sitting here right now who are still conscious of that air conditioner haven't filtered it out.

00:25:01.270 - 00:25:25.110

I asked an autistic man to explain to me a little bit about sensory sensitivities and he used the example of a lecture theatre, which is perfect because that's where we find ourselves now. So he spoke about a particular lecture theatre he went to recently, he said. What I found is that the lecture room is not a great place to be in. Not just because I don't like studying, but the lighting hurt my eyes.

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I could hear the air conditioner, I could hear the buzzing lights, I could hear every spark of the sound system. The chair was uncomfortable. The desk wasn't big enough for me to spread out, and all these factors made that room pretty uninviting for me. So not only does he not like studying, but he is also trying to process all of these things and work through that while he's sitting there.

00:25:48.540 - 00:26:11.810

So he's talked about the physical discomfort there, but for some people that'll actually bring queasiness, they can feel trapped as well by the triggers. For some, it'll trigger a sense of fear or anxiety as well. Having bright lights might be making a person anxious, not just uncomfortable. And so it's worth understanding that what might be neutral for one person might be quite difficult for another person.

00:26:12.230 - 00:26:30.260

So outside of the home, a person might be processing and dealing with a lot of things that are challenging for them. There's also a tension. So this is a, an important factor for a lot of neurodivergent people. Again, not everyone, this isn't a lack of thinking, but kind of more, too much thinking.

00:26:30.320 - 00:26:52.470

The brain can often be firing in many, many different realms at once. Or perhaps focusing on one thing without focusing on the thing that they wanted to focus on at the time. So I asked a woman with a DHD to explain to me attention for her, and she said, my brain is like a radio. I just can't tune into the station I want.

00:26:52.860 - 00:27:34.110

I can hear the sermon through crackling static, but other stations burst through and block me from hearing clearly enough to understand social anxiety is another one that's important to think through. So it's actually very common for people to be experiencing social anxiety. And when you think about church, so many social aspects of church school, workplaces going to the shops, I asked a woman who she's autistic and a DHD to explain to me about her social anxiety. And she says this, engaging with other people is incredibly draining and it often feels easier to go and hide in the toilets than to talk to people.

00:27:34.680 - 00:27:57.260

And the sheer terror, when the service leader asks everyone to turn to the person next to them to say, hi, I just want the ground to swallow me whole. During those moments. Moments, and you'll notice that I've used neurodivergent voices throughout. It's so important that we keep listening to how people are experiencing this and hearing it from them, what it feels like for them.

00:27:58.010 - 00:28:17.090

I mean, there are so many more things that we could be looking at. So there can be communication differences that make life challenging, or that means that a person is needing to use tools or supports. That means that they're operating in ways different to others. There can be speech differences with stutters or slowed down expression, or even speech can change over time.

00:28:17.090 - 00:28:47.430

A person can speak quite fine in one situation and not be able to access speech in another situation. People can experience amplified emotions, which can be great, really excited and happy, but it can also be intense sadness, intense joy that blinds what's happening around them. Debilitating fear from things that other people might feel fairly mild about. It can also be writing and spelling challenges.

00:28:47.430 - 00:29:06.630

So you can imagine being at school and it's time to write something down if you have a writing or spelling challenge or movement differences, which can be related to neurodivergence balance and coordination, so things like sport or walking or running. Keeping up with other kids can be harder. Getting dressed. That's part of balance as well.

00:29:07.050 - 00:29:39.180

There can be executive function differences as well. So it's the brain's ability to plan, to organise, to break down a task into those little steps so that you know how to get from a to the finish point, there's the sense of what's going on inside your body. Interception. Some people have a dulled sense of what's going on inside their body, which can mean that they are hungry, busting for the toilet and really thirsty with everything that comes along with this jittery, maybe headachey, perhaps feeling grumpy without noticing that this is what their body needs.

00:29:39.780 - 00:29:48.510

And so those are a lot of things that could be on a person's plate. Some of those things. All of those things. A mix of those things could be on a person's plate.

00:29:48.510 - 00:30:21.990

And you can imagine how exhausting some of these things will be, how it can affect a sense of self, how it can affect a person's confidence. And all of this is often masked. So by masking, I mean putting on a presentation of what you want people to see as opposed to what's happening on the inside. So for some people, they're able to and choose to work really hard, to copy other people, to hide their emotions on the inside, perhaps to suppress their reactions, to try really hard not to jump when the sound sparks or whatever it might be.

00:30:22.440 - 00:30:40.780

And I hear from people that masking is absolutely exhausting. So on top of experiencing all those complications, there's exhaustion from this too. One woman explained to me. No one knows how hard I'm working to maintain the performance I need to put on in order to be at church.

00:30:40.990 - 00:30:56.230

It's scary, it's draining, but I put on a convincing show so no one realises how much I'm struggling. And a young autistic girl explained it to me. She said that she masks all day at school so no one knows what's going on. But then she said, I go home and break down.

00:30:56.230 - 00:31:22.680

I feel really sad and I don't want to go to school anymore. So it's just worth understanding that for some people this is what is going on outside the home and then they walk in home and hopefully home is a recovery space. Home should be a place where you can let go and relax, where the nervous system can stop bracing. But this is when exhaustion can be really palpable for people.

00:31:23.040 - 00:31:41.940

And so for a lot of parents of neurodivergent kids, we can see this in our kids when they just walk in. And this isn't the sort of tired that I'm gonna feel at the end of time. I'm gonna get home and I'm gonna need a cup of tea and I'm probably gonna need to sit down and I'm tired. But I've come to learn over time that neurodivergent exhaustion is something quite different.

00:31:41.940 - 00:32:20.180

It's like a cocktail of types of exhaustion from so many different aspects of life that have run them down. A woman with a DHD explained for me some of the symptoms that she feels, she said. The sensations I experience when I'm exhaustion are often palpitations, heat, tightness in my neck, head, jaw, arms, upper back, clenching my jaw, hands, knees, toes, heightened sensitivity to lights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures. Increased sensitivity to internal sensations such as my bladder is full when it's actually not, and muscle tension, pain and discomfort.

00:32:21.070 - 00:32:33.980

So that's some of the physical stuff that a person might feel. There can also be emotions that come with this. A deep sadness, a deep anxiety, even a sense of guilt. People will feel an emotional burden as well along with this.

00:32:35.000 - 00:33:07.730

So you can imagine as a parent, I want my kids to do their chores. I want 'em to do their homework, and there is just this balance that has to be happening, understanding some of what can be going on. One mother told me about what life is like for her daughter and what this exhaustion can feel like for her when she gets home. The mom says at least once a week, she'll cry until late at night because she doesn't want to feel this way, and sometimes she says she even wishes she didn't have to live and she's aged 11.

00:33:08.150 - 00:33:26.210

This is very difficult for a mother to hear. So that's that mother's reflection. All of this pressure, all this exhaustion can lead to meltdowns. Now, we could do an entire session on meltdowns, but just to say really briefly, meltdowns aren't tantrums.

00:33:26.240 - 00:33:33.310

We unfortunately see a kid in the shop saying, mom, I want the lollies. No lollies. Wha. And people will say, oh, they're having a meltdown because they want lollies.

00:33:33.850 - 00:33:53.290

That's a tantrum. A meltdown is a full explosion, a release of the pressure that's been building up for days and sometimes even weeks. So this isn't a momentary, I want the lollies and giving the child the lollies isn't going to solve it either. All the adult adults can experience them too.

00:33:53.740 - 00:34:25.840

And so this is something that can be really impactful for families. For some meltdowns will be quiet and in a ball and in a space for others, it will be full body, full house implications, and that's something that you are unlikely to see if you're supporting a family with neurodivergent members, often people who have meltdowns, this happens when they're able to be in a safe space in order to release the pressure in the car, in the home, or that sort of thing. So not all neurodivergent people experience this, but for families who do have.

00:34:26.300 - 00:34:51.750

People experiencing these, it can be quite impactful for the family. And so the family naturally adapts to people finding life so tricky like this. It's a hard world. People in the family will be feeling this deep exhaustion, and it's a wonderful, loving, godly thing to be able to have an environment that supports them and prepares them for another day in the future for heading out of the house.

00:34:52.050 - 00:35:03.480

So this can be reducing triggers in our house. We don't cook spicy food during the week because some of my kids don't smell sensitive. So spicy foods are for when kids aren't already overwhelmed. It can mean little things like that.

00:35:03.650 - 00:35:40.110

It can mean schedules, lists, pictures of what's going to happen, labels on things. It often means taking things a lot slower, preparation for difficult things. If a young child finds a bath really hard with all the sensitivities that might be happening there, there might be a time of regulation that the parents need to be involved in active regulation in order to prepare the body for this bombardment of sensations. And then afterwards in order to help the body wind down, time, togetherness, hugs, squishes, whatever it might be in order to help that body to regulate again.

00:35:40.500 - 00:36:12.310

So often time passes quite quickly in a family with neuro divergent members where people allow each other to be involved in their lives and allow people to be involved in adapting and in helping people regulate. And so parents will often have busier lives than what you can see on the outside. So not just regulating and so on. Sleep is often quite complicated for kids, and so it might mean more hands-on from the parents late into the night or during the night or from 4:00 AM in the morning.

00:36:12.880 - 00:36:44.650

It might also mean being more hands-on during things like meals that are quite complicated or tricky for that child. If it's an adult in the family who has difficulties, then that adult might need to be really conscious at taking time out in order to balance what's going on. There could be a whole raft of therapies as well, which take time, OT speech, physio, psychology and so on in order to support the child. And so as we're thinking about ministering to families, it's just really helpful to know some of what you might not see that might be going on.

00:36:45.170 - 00:36:56.820

And then this can change month to month, year to year, I mean hour to hour. And so support needs can also be changing. We hold faster. The same biblical hopes and truths, don't we?

00:36:56.820 - 00:37:16.500

And so it can be complicated because a neurodivergent family, with all these other things going on, it might not be the matter of looking at Christian godly families around us and copy pasting. Oh, when they had a 3-year-old, they did this with their 3-year-old. I'll do that as well. We've actually got the privilege, I think, of coming back to the Bible constantly and going, that's not gonna work for my family.

00:37:16.500 - 00:37:25.170

So what's the goal of that thing that family is doing? I'll come back to the Bible. I'll have a look. I'm gonna extrapolate from there what it's gonna look like for my family.

00:37:25.650 - 00:37:57.810

A family with neurodivergent parents and neurodivergent kids to told me we've had to go back to the Bible and work out what God really asks of us as parents and what his heart is for our children. We can't just do things because that's what Christians do. We might not be able to do a lot of the typical things Christian families do to enjoy and express their love for Jesus, but we still love him just as much. We're desperately trying to work out how to glorify him in our families, and that necessarily means we need to do things very differently.

00:37:58.410 - 00:38:16.380

You can see, can't you? How loving the children might look one way in one family and completely different in another family. This brings us to point C because there really is a distinctive good, I think for families who are working so hard. It's a blessing from God.

00:38:16.710 - 00:38:41.370

All these adaptations that a family might make, these aren't just a way to kind of neutralise some of the hard things. I mean. It's to help with the hard things, but we can hope for so much more than just neutralising hard things. When families are putting in this much effort, when families are turning back to the Bible, when families are turning to each other and working to support each other, what a blessing for the whole family.

00:38:41.640 - 00:39:00.630

Even when things remain hard, it's a huge blessing to turn to each other and be thinking, how can we be supporting each other to be communicating? I think to the intentional aspect of supporting each other is a huge blessing. I see that in our family. We need to think through how do you regulate?

00:39:00.780 - 00:39:14.990

What is a way that your body is going to go from tense and anxious down to relaxed? And so relaxing isn't just. Get home, plop on the couch and put the TV on. We're actually needing to constantly be really careful with how we're regulating.

00:39:15.560 - 00:39:45.500

And I know a not a lot of adults, neurotypical or neurodivergent who need to learn this, how many adults just go home and binge watch or turn to junk food or any of these other things that aren't actually going to help that there a pause button. My kids are learning to be intentional with the time that they have to rest and work to bring their body down. And this is some of that responsibility I think that Tony touched on too. If a kid's grumpy, if an adult's grumpy, you don't just have the option of bottling in or let loose you neuro divergent, you can do what you want.

00:39:45.500 - 00:40:04.880

That's not what we wanna be saying. No. If you're grumpy, okay, you have a responsibility to the people around you to love them well, you have a responsibility to use your rest time to bring some of that tension down. And as you go through this grumpy and as you're bringing this tension down, we're gonna love and we're gonna support you.

00:40:04.980 - 00:40:34.950

I think this is such a benefit for families to be doing all of this. It doesn't have to be neuro divergent families who do all of this does it, but it's wonderful, isn't it, to see that when God gives us hard things, he often will also give us blessings along the way, even as we turn together to be looking to God as we turn together in prayer, as we look back to God for his purposes. I just think it's a huge blessing and not to minimise the heart either, but it's good to just pause and and think through that as well.

00:40:35.640 - 00:41:02.310

So I hope you can see what some of these families might have on their plate and that a lot of what's going on isn't necessarily going to be seen on the outside. So as you're supporting these families, or if this is you to be thinking through some of these changing needs that might be going on. And so we're gonna have a look at pastoral care for these families because pastoral care needs to be informed. It needs to be adapted, and so that is our next section.

00:41:03.350 - 00:41:26.420

Tony Payne: Yeah, I think we'll zip straight onto this next section, which is our final section. I'm gonna talk, give three brief ish kind of biblical theological points here, and then Kate's gonna tease out what that often looks like in practise, in churches, at the church, families. And then we'll have a time of questions we're on schedule. Amazingly, if we keep going like this, we'll have 10 or 15 minutes at the end for you to ask all your questions in the providence of God.

00:41:26.630 - 00:42:01.700

Much of what I'm going to say now in this next short section really flows beautifully outta what Simon said this morning. I wanna just make three theological points about the nature of churches as communities, as households that undergird the way we think about neurodivergence in church and neurodivergent families. The first one is that in the community of Christ, we impartially, accept and welcome one another. As Christ has accepted and welcomed us, it flows out of the grace of the kingdom of God because Jesus' kingdom is one of grace to sinners, and because his kingdom calls us.

00:42:02.120 - 00:42:52.970

Into being siblings with one another into a family, into sharing a father and being brothers and sisters. Then our relationship with each other is one of profound, gracious acceptance, welcoming and meeting one another and countering one another as grace given forgiven sinners and to not make distinctions, therefore, or divisions amongst ourselves as the world does. There's a few places in which the New Testament discusses this, and not with respect to the issue of Neurodivergence, of course, but in a way that is analogous to and teaches us about how we should think about these different kinds of differences. Romans 14 and 15, the issue there is different convictions about food and drink differences that might be differences in background between Jew and Gentile and religious upbringing in which the language of weak and strong is used.

00:42:53.600 - 00:43:09.510

Paul says that we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. Not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbour for his good to build him up. He says, now it's worth pointing out there are differences here in this passage than the issue we're talking about.

00:43:09.510 - 00:43:40.590

It's not as if I'm saying in this case the neurodivergent are the weak and the rest of us are the strong. It's by no means as simple or straightforward as that, but the principle is the same. The weakness here doesn't refer to weakness of ability or capacity, but the principle is that superficial differences, differences that are not about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, the things that really matter in the kingdom of God, these are not to divide us. Rather we should welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us.

00:43:40.590 - 00:43:50.100

It says there in verse seven of Romans chapter 12. I think that might be 15 or is that 12? Have I got myself mixed up? It's either 12 or 15 or possibly both.

00:43:51.060 - 00:44:36.620

There's a related point, of course, in the letter of James. Don't make distinctions amongst yourselves, says, James, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts. In James's case, it's the issue is wealth and status, and we could easily extend those kinds of distinctions to principles of colour or ethnicity or other characteristics by which we label people and then treat them differently or show favouritism to those who don't have those characteristics in both passages, it's love for neighbour, it's love for brother and sister that sees and welcomes and builds up the neighbour, builds up the brother and sister and is not diverted by non-essentials, by customs or characteristics.

00:44:37.010 - 00:45:06.600

That in the end, don't matter. Now there's an obvious application here to the way in which we welcome and love and put ourselves out as a Christian community for each other in all our differences and with all our struggles and strengths. To welcome and love neurodivergent people and neurodivergent families, not to see them as a nuisance or as an impediment to us getting on with our mission. Because as Simon said this morning, in a sense, we are each other's mission.

00:45:07.170 - 00:45:28.170

Our responsibility is to love one another. As brothers and sisters, that's what God calls us to. They're the neighbour that God has sent us to love, the brother, the sister that God has sent us to love. And that leads us to a second point that mutual watchfulness and burden sharing is essential to Christian community.

00:45:29.070 - 00:45:44.490

The nature of our brotherly, sisterly family, household of God relationship is not just one of acceptance and welcome. It's one of mutual responsibility. Bear one another's burdens, and so also fulfil the law of Christ. It's profoundly important.

00:45:45.590 - 00:45:58.940

Passage passage. It's the law of Christ. It's the way of Christ. It's the manner of life that Christ teaches and requires that we love one another and bear the burdens of others as he bore our burden.

00:46:00.380 - 00:46:28.310

Now, it is possible to lose this emphasis in our passion for growth and for mission. It's easy to come to see church and the church community mainly as a group of volunteers engaged in an outreach to the world as a kind of mission society, and that is an aspect of who we are as a family. We're a family that has that mission. We are that, but we're not only that, we're also a family.

00:46:28.790 - 00:46:50.480

We're also brothers and sisters who have a responsibility to bear one another's burdens, to profoundly accept and welcome one another and to love one another. In our own particular situations. We can't bring these two things into an intense competition. These two obligations, our obligations to one another as the household of God and to the lost all around us.

00:46:50.480 - 00:47:07.580

That is to the household of God that are scattered still in this world. Both of these are love of neighbour. I think Simon was right to point us to Galatians six 10 this morning. We should do good to all men, love all people, all neighbours, and especially those of the household of faith.

00:47:08.630 - 00:47:29.770

And by loving and serving the neurodivergent people and families in our midst, by putting ourselves out for their benefit, by being aware of them and helping them. It just seems to me to be basic, Christian, brotherly love. Not an optional extra thing, not a new programme. It just seems to be, to me, the essence of what it means to be a Christian community.

00:47:31.000 - 00:47:42.710

Now Kate, did you wanna chip in there, Kate, at that point, or not? Or, yeah. You might just do it after. In terms of bearing one another's burdens, there are particular burdens that neuro diversion people and families bring.

00:47:43.220 - 00:48:06.530

And Kate is more qualified to speak about those than me, and she's gonna mention some of those. I'm gonna make a third point though, that Christ and not only gives us one another as burden, and he does. We are all given to each other as burden in that sense, but also as gifts. Christ gifts his body with a rich variety of people whose contributions should be employed for mutual advantage.

00:48:06.710 - 00:48:33.150

And again, when we spoke with new divergent people leading up to our workshop, I'd say their favourite testament passage was Psalm 139. Favourite New Testament passage was one Corinthians 12, and the diversity of the body. I'll just do a very brief snippet from that famous passage that you know well. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit varieties of service, but the same Lord varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

00:48:33.150 - 00:49:17.230

To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good, the picture of a diverse body, and the essential contribution that each part of that body makes. Regardless of whether we might regard those parts of the body as highly honourable or highly dishonourable each part, even the less honoured part is only deserving of even more honest as Paul. So it's not just a question of accommodating, welcoming, serving neuro divergent people in our midst, but also realising that God has gifted our congregation with neurodivergent people, and that those people bring with them a gift to our congregation and a contribution to our life that is part of the strength and edification of the body that Christ empowers.

00:49:17.230 - 00:49:55.730

And all these different varieties of activities and service, the presence and the gifts that neurodivergent people bring, bring a great richness to the life of a community. And speaking to neurodivergent people and the workshops we ran on this topic, um, it was not just a sense from them of being accepted, welcomed, and accommodated as if they're a problem to be accommodated in the congregation, and that's how you think about their life. But I've seen that God gives us all to each other with quite unique strengths. The presence of each particular person and who they are and what their discipleship is in Christ is a gift to everyone of the rest of us as well.

00:49:56.330 - 00:50:12.590

And Kate's gonna now take this up a little bit and talk more practically about what it means for the household of God to accept, welcome and include all of us in, in these different ways. Over to you again, Kate. Kate Morris: Yeah, thanks Jamie. Yeah, it it's great, isn't it, to have a look at.

00:50:13.690 - 00:50:41.210

What God's family, the household of God is to be looking like. And part of what Tony was talking about, about supporting one another, bearing each other's burdens, working together, part of that is understanding some of what these families might be working through. And so we've talked about some of those things already. We've talked already about what the home life might look like, but we also wanna be watchful, as Tony pointed out, we wanna be thinking through.

00:50:41.800 - 00:51:08.710

Other challenges that people might be facing, whether they're a neurodivergent person or a family together with that person or people. And so it's worth just taking a moment to talk through some of the co-occurring conditions or additional challenges that a neurodivergent person might face. So actually, neurodivergent person is more likely to have a whole range of medical conditions. They're more likely to experience mental health challenges.

00:51:09.250 - 00:51:44.540

They're significantly more likely to experience traumatic events, sexual abuse, abuse, that sort of thing. They're more likely to have eating disorders, substance abuse, and they're much more likely to be navigating gender dysphoria. So as you're supporting a neurodivergent person, it's worth understanding that this might be a reality for them or something on the horizon. And if you're supporting families, of course this might be something families are thinking through, working through supporting someone through now or in the future.

00:51:44.540 - 00:52:12.590

So we need to be watchful alongside these families. It's also worth saying too, that marriages can really be under strained. So with more time being put into kids, more decisions to be made, decisions around therapy, decisions around discipline, decisions around dinners. I mean, the number of decisions and then the reflection that needs to come with that as well can mean that there's less time and energy for a couple to be put into each other.

00:52:13.190 - 00:52:39.800

Of course, as we've already looked at, marriages can really thrive here as well. It can lead the couple to talk more, to lean on each other, more to communicate their needs, to be the support for the other person to be praying together to keep turning to God. It can be a huge blessing, but the families are likely to also, even with those blessings, be under strain. And so it's worth understanding that that can be a reality.

00:52:40.400 - 00:53:07.880

Also, if the couple, if they have a different neurotype, so it's called cross neurotype marriages, so this could be, one is neurotypical, one is neurodivergent, or it could be one is autistic, one is A DHD, or it could be undiagnosed conditions, but a reality that the brains are operating so differently to each other, that communication styles are quite different. Relaxing styles are quite different. Decision making styles are quite different, and this can also cause enormous strain for couples.

00:53:08.270 - 00:53:33.510

So a bit later I'm gonna tell you about a podcast that I've been running, but our last most recent episode was with a Christian counsellor who works with neurodivergent couples and cross neuro attack couples, and she thinks this is so important for people who are pastorally, caring for families to understand. Just like we looked at with families, it's really hard to just copy paste other Christian families. It's the same with marriages.

00:53:33.540 - 00:54:08.620

If the couple operates quite differently to other people, it's very hard to copy paste. And yet that's kind of the expectation that Mari this counsellor sees in the Christian community. So she says this, she says, we have a lot of representations of what marriage should look like through Christian books, through preaching, through a sense of what a neurotypical relationship will look like. And very often what I see is couples who are trying to be neurotypical in their relationship and feeling overwhelmed by the reality that their relationship doesn't look like that.

00:54:10.200 - 00:54:35.520

No matter who these couples are, they all have the same goals. They all wanna be glorifying God in their marriages. The biblical picture of marriage is for every couple, regardless of brain type, so we're not throwing that out the window. But Mari, I really encourage you to listen to the episode because she really is very helpful at explaining what it looks like when we're supporting couples who are operating quite differently.

00:54:35.520 - 00:54:54.150

The listening that needs to be the beginning point. Turning back to the Bible, that is a really important aspect of that care, as it should be for any couple. And working with the couple to work out what does communication look like given who you are and how you operate, and what does decision making look like? What does it look like when you're overwhelmed?

00:54:54.150 - 00:55:27.720

What does it look like for you to need support? What does it look like when you're supposed to react to a comment from the other person and working out? That with the couple, understanding that neurodivergence can change how you apply what a Christian marriage can look like. So as we're walking along these families in good times, in difficult times, and these times all change as well, we wanna be remembering that all of these complications are also things that are going to be important to think through about how families experience church as well.

00:55:28.110 - 00:55:54.720

So we've looked at a lot of the different things. Now you can imagine a person walking into a church building with the people, the lights, the echoes, the sounds, the different chairs, the service outline might be different each week, all sorts of things. When I've spoken to different families, this is one of the most challenging aspects for Christian families. And what a shame, when we see how complicated life can be, how draining life can be.

00:55:54.720 - 00:56:22.650

You know what they need Christian community and for some it's so hard to get there. So here's some things that families told me. One said, I wish people knew the amount of energy it takes for us to just be at church. We can have meltdowns in our house from 6:00 AM and I've been told, you just need to have higher expectations of him and he needs to learn to behave himself.

00:56:23.790 - 00:56:53.670

You can imagine how gut wrenching that is if that's actually not the heart of the issue. Another family said occasionally, we've had a really, really hard morning before church, and my son is very dysregulated and we've done well to get there at all. Any jokey comments on the time of our arrival hurt and make me wanna cry as no one knows what I went through to even get there that morning. One family told me that church has brought them a lot of grief.

00:56:54.150 - 00:57:04.770

They said, there's so much grief here. Every Sunday we feel grieved. Church is so hard to be up for our family and it's a loss. We feel deeply.

00:57:05.100 - 00:57:19.760

We'd love our church to be more accessible for members. Different needs. And one family told me church was very, very hard. We left our church a few years ago and we just haven't been confident to find a new one.

00:57:20.390 - 00:57:57.650

So you can probably think of families in your church who find church hard, but it's hard to think of the families who aren't there, who've never stepped foot in the church because they've already had years of hardship because they're not confident to come, because they popped in one week and it was so hard and people so much didn't understand that the hurdles to get there are just too much. And so in order to be loving these families, I've come up with four C's to help us remember. We wanna be curious, we wanna be collaborative, we wanna be creative, and we wanna love like Christ.

00:57:58.760 - 00:58:17.910

So to think about being curious. Remember here, there's so much more going on probably than what you can see. So you wanna be curious, asking and believing. So that mother who said we had meltdowns in the morning from 6:00 AM beginning at a place where you are believing that that is even possible, understanding that that's a reality for some.

00:58:17.910 - 00:58:41.610

Rolling meltdowns for four hours is a reality for some people. And so beginning where you are asking what that's like as opposed to, oh, for my kids, I just gave them a Muey bar and they were fine helping them work through this. So one mother really encourages us in this. She says, what you see on the surface out in public, at school, at your home is not what we see in our home.

00:58:41.790 - 00:59:10.350

Our children mask a great deal. Their classroom teachers were all very surprised at the autism diagnosis for both our children. Just because someone looks like everyone else, doesn't mean their brain or nervous system works the same as everyone else's. Just because someone appears to be coping doesn't mean they're, and so perhaps families need to ask for a change of this or a change of that, and you look and that adult or that child actually seems to be coping just fine.

00:59:10.350 - 00:59:26.910

So this is the curious, tell me about that. Let me ask more questions about what that's like for you, and then what supports do you need. So this brings us to being collaborative. So we wanna work with the family, work with the child, work with the adult to figure out what they need.

00:59:27.420 - 00:59:58.440

A family told me what worked well for them. They said the staff team at our church spoke to us as if we were experts in our son, which we are, and they never spoke as if the things we asked for were burdensome or unhelpful. I felt seen because of the way they asked real questions with a heart for seeing him included. Notice they felt seen because of this interaction, this working together, listening, asking, being collaborative.

00:59:58.890 - 01:00:22.350

She hasn't pointed to the end point. It didn't feel loved by the things that were done. The most important thing here is this attitude, this love, this collaboration, this curiosity. Of course, you might ask people what they need and they have no idea, or the family might be so exhausted that they're not ready to have this creativity to think through what they need to ask for from people at church.

01:00:22.710 - 01:00:48.810

So if you have any spare energy to get to know what things work for neurodivergent people you know, or to read a little bit, listen to a great podcast that's out there and get to know a little bit about what could work. You might have some ideas that you could work with the family to adapt and work out. And of course, collaborating with the child as well. So collaborating with children of all ability, levels and ages.

01:00:49.110 - 01:00:57.480

I think that it's easy to throw that out the door because it can be hard for some. Collaboration doesn't necessarily mean a verbal one-to-one. What do you need? I need this.

01:00:57.480 - 01:01:17.670

Let me advocate for myself. It can actually be watching this person, seeing what hurts, what they enjoy. Asking the family, how did they react when they got home and working out, okay, I'm gonna collaborate with this child. I'm gonna work out, how can I incorporate some of these things they absolutely love, and how can I reduce some of the things they avoid?

01:01:19.260 - 01:01:30.960

And in doing all of this, we wanna be creative. There are gonna be some things that your church has always done that you've gotta kind of throw out the window or adapt a little bit. But if, I mean, why not? That's love, isn't it?

01:01:31.200 - 01:01:58.130

We're putting people above programmes and also putting people above places. So one family told me that they used to go to a church that had a really echoy kid space, and their child had social difficulties, but also sensory difficulties. So imagine an echoy kid space where they're all noisy. And so this family went to the church and suggested perhaps they could put up some sound absorbing boards on a wall.

01:01:58.730 - 01:02:12.710

Great idea, right? The family was gonna pay for it, instal it, make it work. But unfortunately, the church said that the trouble with that is it makes that wall quite ugly and the staff team needs to meet in that room every week. And so they're not gonna put up those.

01:02:14.290 - 01:02:37.700

And so ultimately this child wasn't able to come along to the kids' church and the family ended up leaving that church. Now, of course there are times where a family might ask for something that they need that actually isn't possible. They need all the lights off. Perhaps that might not be possible, but it's this attitude of being willing to talk it through, okay, well that's not gonna work for these reasons.

01:02:37.730 - 01:02:41.870

I wonder what can work? What else could we do? How could we adapt? How could we work together?

01:02:42.020 - 01:03:00.830

Tell me more about why that's hard. It's these conversations, and I think this is also why there's not a checklist, 50 things your church needs to do in order to support neurodivergent people. I hope that list never exists because if there is, it's taken out. All of this being curious, being collaborative, it's taken out all of the, being creative with the family.

01:03:01.370 - 01:03:26.010

Instead, we are doing it in collaboration with people. But of course, being creative can also be preparing to support people who haven't yet stepped foot in your building or who haven't even said that they need supports. So working out, some people will find this or that, quite challenging, quite difficult. Some people don't wanna come in through the one and only church door that's open, where you have to walk past three people and say, welcome.

01:03:26.550 - 01:03:46.950

And just having a second option just quietly on the side. Who knows if anyone's even gonna need it, but perhaps they will. Or today, the slides, these are dyslexia friendly slides. I don't know if there's anyone here who's gonna benefit from that, but it didn't take me much effort to work out how to make slides that are gonna support people better if they do have those additional needs.

01:03:47.040 - 01:03:59.610

Simple. There are so many things like this that we can be doing in churches. And all of this of course is because we wanna love like Christ. So it just keeps coming back to loving like Christ doesn't mean loving our building.

01:03:59.610 - 01:04:25.350

Most our program's, most name tags or whatever it might be, most being prepared to say, this doesn't work for you, let's work out how we can do it. I wanna love you. And a church that loves like Christ, as Tony was saying, is a church that works together, A church that bears each other's burdens, A church that's supportive, a church where everyone can belong in Christ. So we've done really well for timing.

01:04:25.440 - 01:05:03.720

Tony, before we go to questions, though, this is my podcast, so this was born out of, I also do some writing, which I'll get to, but a lot of people told me I don't have time to read. And so I run this podcast with Dave Whittingham, who's an autistic man. He's a Christian, he's worked in education and ministry, and together we're just trying to work out what this can look like for families and churches. I encourage you to have a listen to episode six where we have someone on who's a Christian lecturer in psychology, and she's done a lot of work into how to make churches easier for people who are autistic.

01:05:03.870 - 01:05:23.650

So I really encourage you to listen to episode six. There's a follow-up episode, episode seven about looking after neurodivergent families and individuals that can be found anywhere you listen to your podcasts, or you can Google it. And then QR code for this one, I write resources for families and for churches. I really encourage you to have a read.

01:05:23.650 - 01:05:39.310

There are some in there specifically for churches. There's a series of three for churches, and I'd encourage you to have a read of that. You can subscribe, and that way you then get notified when there's a new one coming out. I'd also really encourage you if you're a podcast listener.

01:05:39.310 - 01:05:55.040

I really hope so. The Centre for Christian Living has three episodes on neurodivergence and they are an excellent resource. So if you can look up Centre for Christian Living, and I think they're called neurodivergence and the Christian Life. Okay.

01:05:55.040 - 01:05:57.350

Yep. Go for them. Yeah, I really encourage that.