Spiritual Autism

From my friend John Gregory’s blog Pursuing, his recent post Overcoming Spiritual Autism he shared these characteristics of Autism:

• the inability to emotionally connect
• the challenges of listening and tuning out all the thoughts racing through the mind
• the inability to deal with the unexpected

I don’t know about you but I can find myself with those same problems on a day to day basis either in dealing with my job, family, friends, etc, etc.  Then he really lays down the life application:

When you look at those three characteristics from the angle of our challenges of connecting with God, it is easy to see how we have those same issues quite often. The key to these challenges is spending as much time with God as possible – as much "face to face" time that keeps me emotionally connected to his spirit, that narrows my focus to what is most important spiritually for me, and that stabilizes me when life throws me a nasty curveball.

The God part I get, I understand what I need to do and the struggles that I have with it, but I get it. The difficulty is figuring what part are you in feeding someone else’s autism?  spiritually? technologically? <insert your own area>?

I’ll take technology and make application to it.  Why would I choose that?  I’m emotionally connected to it, my thoughts are usually somewhat thinking that way, I understand how to deal with the unexpected. 

Think of our typical end user and their focus is usually their ministry.(Students, worship, small groups, etc.)  You can then go through the three characteristics and make your own applications as needed:

1. They don’t connect emotionally (especially positively) with technology it’s just a mean to an end. How can you help them see and use technology as a tool and not a hindrance? What are you doing on an ongoing basis to evaluate your systems to proactively assist ministry?
2. Their thoughts are their ministry not technology, your challenge is to let them focus on their ministry and you focus on technology.  If you need them to focus on technology then schedule a time and allow them to get ready and focus on that, you’ll find them much more receptive and focused.
3. Typically knowledge gives ability, so if they have an "inability to deal with the unexpected" it’s because they don’t have the knowledge to handle the situation.  This is where you’re job starts, you need to know the problems that are going to come up, and give your users the tools to be prepared for them or at a minimum the confidence in you to know that it will be resolved. What are you doing to track ongoing problems, recurring problems, and trending?  Do you have a useful knowledgebase  to allow the user to get answers when you’re not available? When there is a problem do you just fix it or do you show them what caused the problem and how they can prevent it and/or resolve it on their own?