Book Review: Autism and Your Church

This is a resource book for helping set up a ministry for special needs children and adults in the church, specifically in regards to individuals with ASD. It explains some of the challenges associated with ASD and how to work with them to make the worship experience better.

One of the strategies was writing "stories" describing activities and social expectations for different parts of church. It talked about how this might be a help for more than just the people with ASD and I agree. It reminded me of the "bozo buttons" line in the Yada Yada book. About how we often speak in a language that others don't understand and assume that everyone automatically knows how to behave in the church environment. This is not always the case. For example, I have grown up in the church all my life and I have been in many different denominations, and experienced communion in many different ways. And yet we recently had communion in the church I go to Bible Study at and we were all (my whole family of church going Christians) thrown for a loop. We didn't know the procedure at this particular church as it was different than any we had experienced. It would have been nice to have it explained to us first. I ended up not taking communion because it just didn't feel right. There are so many instances where visitors feel out of place because they don't know what is expected and these "stories" would be so helpful.

Anyway, it was a good resource book and it had a list of other resources in the back that would be useful. I think it would be very helpful in helping us to serve those with special needs in our church.
(Review written Nov 2007)