Christian brothers and sisters,let's gather here!
Joker
Veteran
Joined: 19 Mar 2011
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 7,593
Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)
John_Browning wrote:
How about a topic: How have churches done when it comes to accepting and including you?
That's a kinda relevant question. My first church was a nondenominational Protestant Church, originally formed out of my high school's Christian club, then turning into a housechurch, then we met in various rented halls and whatnot. It was the place I finally realized my NVLD diagnosis was correct, due to the way I was treated there. Not that all my treatment all the time was "bad" or anything, just it showed me the divide between myself and others, if that makes sense. I tried my hardest to participate in the youth group activities, and they tried their hardest/reasonably hard for the most part to accommodate me.
Alot, though, was the very social nature of that church environment. It was a Charismatic kinda church, so closer to like, Pentecostal, if you're familiar with that. In this kinda weird environment, you weren't so much graded by your piety, but your participation with the group was the main equation of piety. So you'd get like, admonished for not going out to eat after church with all the other kids in youth group. A big thing was my youth pastor and the way he ran things. In a lot of ways, he ran it like a cult, at the very least the youth end. People would be like, assigned as "friends" to new people, and not in the way of, say, greeters at a normal church, but he'd like, organize social groups together and quite literally assign people to social groups he created based on what he thought were commonalities. So, in some ways, it was just ran really...strangely.
But, on the positive light, I now know that was the first place I knew what it was like to be part of a group, and sorta be "cool" and have a big social group of friends. I guess the easiest way to sum it up that church/experience was "hanging out in the name of Christ." It was neat, in that I'd be "hanging out" with people like 3-4x a week, have a big group of "friends" instead of my boring group of hodgepodge friends I could count on one hand. It was really fun having "friends" and having a really well defined social group. It was something I never really had in my life before, and I really liked the experience of it.
But, even though I seemingly did well initially, or they were just trying to be really welcoming, my "Aspie" quirks started showing through. That, and the high high level of socialization just became too much. At that church, though, the main pastor (who was a good guy really) his son actually was diagnosed NVLD/AS exactly like me. It's actually pretty rare to find NVLDers, it's an exponentially lower diagnostic rate than AS, so to find someone similar to me like that, yeah. He was a self proclaimed agnostic, but mostly his problems were just the social dynamics of the churches his father was involved in. Basically, people admonished him a ton for social quirks/introversion, and he kinda grew to detest it all. And then later I ran into seemingly the same problems he ran into. All my interests were different than everyone else's, all my mannerisms different, everything about me was different. And my youth pastor, he'd give me crap about it. I'd literally get told to conform my interests and stuff to everyone else, so I could be more relational to people in the church, and to witness better (ie, I guess the justification for that is "be all things to all men" but I do have quite broad interests scope, just they're not ordinary.)
So, yeah, after an argument of sorts with my youth pastor, I more or less left. I was dealing with a lot of hard stuff during that time, and had to socially withdraw to handle it. So, during my time of withdrawal, I did lots of reading, and lots of praying, and finally settled on Orthodox Christianity. So I went to an Orthodox church and...kept coming back. I've been going like...8 months now? It's socially a bit more nerdy and "square" and it's not hip and relevant and cool at all. There's mostly adults at my church, there's almost no young people, and it's easier for me that way. The contrast there is really amazing, the older people seem to like me, and are like "wow, it's good a young person even shows up to our church at all." It's in general just a calmer kinda church, and I think some of the adults there would have been diagnosed Aspergers. There's one guy I met who, like me, will keep going on and on about subjects, they're stuff I'm interested in, you know, he used to be a high level powerlifter and makes like huge model rockets and does all kinda neat stuff, but yeah. As far as friends there, honestly I've not made a ton yet. People are friendly with me, but real friends don't come instantly, they take a while to grow naturally.
In other ways, I feel like it's a weird role reversal, too. At my old church, it was a constant sorta challenge akin to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" kinda thing. I guess there's a time and a place for such an attitude, but yeah. My friend from my old church (that I knew through all the years of highschool before the church started) that now barely ever talks to me after I switched churches basically keeps telling me I switched churches because I wanted something easier. But, if I can't do something, I can't do it. I mean, I gave it my all, and I couldn't do it. So as much as I can see what I "had" in Charismaticism, and in a lot of ways desire it back, I just have to have faith that I'm where God wants me to be and just to try to do the best I can in light of my circumstances to "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance."
So, VERY longwinded, sorry for a wall o' text there, that's a... yeah. My experience I guess. To my old church's credit, it was the place where I "rediscovered" Christ again, so it's hard, because on one hand I see so much error, but on the other hand, it reignited the spark in me, and yeah... Regardless of what happens at church, though, I guess I just gotta take Jesus's promise seriously.
Quote:
Behold I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.