The Future Church is....Trauma Informed (Joel Hollier at Future Church Conference)

Hello good people,

In January this year…which feels like a long time ago right now….a group of us hosted the first ever Future Church conference. It was a fantastic day — we had people travel from South Australia, Queensland, Victoria…converging in Redfern Town Hall for an exploration of what the church of tomorrow could look like at its most expansive, welcoming and imaginative. We delved into some heavy topics, but it was a really inspiring and wonderful space of connection and possibility. 

There will be another Future Church Conference — if you want to make sure you don’t miss any announcements about that give New City Church a follow on the socials — or even feel free to send an email to spiritualmisfits@outlook.com and we will make sure you’re in the loop when a date is announced.

In the meantime, I’m going to be playing some of the talks from last time here on the podcast. They were all brilliant, in my opinion, and are well worth sharing around and using as the basis for ongoing conversations.  

Joel Hollier was a major force in instigating Future Church Conference, along with the crew at New City Church. And here is Joel’s talk: The Future Church is Trauma Informed…

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Transcript

Will Small: [00:00:00] Hey friends, my name's Will. 

Hannah Gierhart: And my name's Hannah. 

Will Small: And you're listening to the Spiritual Misfits Podcast. 

Hannah Gierhart: If you've ever found yourself on the fringes of Christian faith, this is a safe space for you. 

Will Small: Your questions, doubts, and hopes are all welcome here. 

Hannah Gierhart: We're creating conversations, affirmations, meditations, and other resources to support you on your spiritual journey.

Will Small: And let you know that even if you feel like a misfit, you don't have to feel alone.

Well, hello, good people. In January this year, which feels like a long time ago right now, a group of us hosted the first ever Future Church Conference. It was a fantastic day. We had people travel from South Australia, Queensland, Victoria, all over the [00:01:00] place, converging in Redfern Town Hall. for an exploration of what the church of tomorrow could look like at its most expansive, welcoming, and imaginative.

We delved into some heavy topics, but it was a really inspiring and wonderful space of connection and possibility. There will be another future church conference. If you want to make sure you don't miss any announcements about that, give New City Church a follow on the socials. or even feel free to send an email to spiritualmisfits@outlook.com and we will make sure you are in the loop when a date is announced. In the meantime, I'm going to be playing some of the talks from last time here on the podcast. They were all brilliant, in my opinion, and are well worth sharing around and using as the basis for ongoing conversations. Joel Hollier was a major force in instigating Future Church Conference.

Along with the crew at New City [00:02:00] Church. So much love for Joel and New City. And here is Joel's talk. The future church is trauma informed.

Joel Hollier: They were, they were very kind words. Thank you. Um, my task today is to talk about the future of the church being trauma informed. Uh, trauma informed is everywhere these days, isn't it? Everyone wants to be trauma informed. And so for the next, uh, 45 50 minutes, we're gonna be talking about trauma. Woo!

Sorry if that isn't something that excites you. Um, uh, I'm gonna be talking about trauma and then Karen is going to come up after me and talk about And, and re traumatize everyone! Yeah, yeah! Um, and And, and talk about LGBTQIA the church. Um, now it might surprise you or it might not surprise you that there is [00:03:00] quite a bit of overlap in those two topics.

Um, so I'm, I'm not going to touch the LGBTQIA plus stuff too much except for a little bit of a little bit of my story. Um, but hopefully these two sessions combined will, will, uh, resonate in a, in a fresh way. I hope for you. Um, So we're talking about trauma. What do we think about trigger warnings? Um, it's an interesting one.

Research shows that if you give someone a trigger warning, they're more likely to be anxious for the entire session. Um, so it's kind of a catch 22. Either you get triggered when it happens or you get triggered now and it just lasts longer. Um, but, but we will be covering content. Um, we will be covering content that's heavy and so something that we say in our church all the time is you're not glued to your seat.

Go out, grab a cup of tea, go for a walk, come back, don't come back. Um, whatever is useful for you in this space, I will be saying things that are heavy. And so, I trust that [00:04:00] you have the capacity and the tools, the people around you to take care of yourself. And, and I'm not gonna infantalize you. Um, like I trust that you can do that.

Um, uh, as we talk about trauma, it's a hot button issue. There's many topics that we could go down. Um, but I am going to talk about it, um, not clinically, I hope not clinically, but, uh, I'm gonna be talking about it maybe with a bit of humor, which might feel like a bit of a, um, a juxtaposition. The goal there is for us to have calm bodies, calm minds, as we talk about these topics.

Because we know that if you are dysregulated, if your, you know, if your heartbeat is racing, um, it's really hard to actually take in new information. As I go through, if you have any questions, please throw your hand up. As much as this is, as Safina said earlier, it's very much set out as me talking at you, but please, throw your hands up if you have questions as we go through.

[00:05:00] Um, we're gonna start with a little activity, if that's okay with you. Is that okay with you? Great, I got your permission. You're in. Um, okay, here's how it goes. I want you to think of a song that you know most of the words to. You don't need to know all the words, but just think of a song that you know most of the words to.

Has everyone got a song in their mind? Yeah, yeah. Just to prove that you are telling the truth when you said yes, turn to the person next to you and tell them what song you chose.

Okay. Hey,

has everyone that truthfully now got a song? Did anyone just say, yes, I've got a song, and then you're told to speak to the, to speak to the person next to year you, and you're like, oh, I never had a song. Um, okay. Everyone has a song. Um, how many of our songs were Taylor Swift songs? None. Okay. [00:06:00] Um, how many of our songs were Christian songs?

Okay. A bunch. A bunch. I just realized, I don't know what time I'm finishing. Brad, what time am I finishing this? Okay, thank you very much. Um, okay, here's, here's how the activity works. Um, you've got most of it, you know most of the lyrics. Um, I'm going to point to a random person. And all you have to do is stand up and just sing either a verse or a chorus of that song.

Um, and we're going to be cheering for you. We're going to be judging based on, um, how much effort you put in. Um, before, do we have any volunteers before I choose a person just randomly? Okay, volunteer, wonderful. Jump on up. Would you like the microphone? Yes. Sing, 

Will Small: sing a song, sing out 

Joel Hollier: loud, sing out strong.

That was wonderful.

Okay, so now we're going to go [00:07:00] random. I'll point to someone. You've just got to stand up.

Pause. I am not going to make anyone stand up and sing a song. I am not going to do that. Okay, pause. What I want you to do is I want you to quickly tune into your body. Tune into what is happening in your body right now. And tell me, what is going on for you? Like, physiologically, what's happening for you?

It was mean, it was a breakdown. You're disappointed. You were ready to sing. Okay, what else is happening? What's going on for you in your body? You wanted to run. Your flight mechanism was like, I'm ready. You wanted to run. Paralysis. Yes, all of a sudden you freeze. Yep, what else? Anger. Yeah, yeah, you [00:08:00] felt the anger come in.

You're like, I did not sign up for this. Yes? Excitement. Yeah. Yep. What, what, what does it feel like? What does anger and excitement at that point feel like in your body? The lungs inflated the lungs naturally when we go into our, this is what we've just, we've just, uh, we've launched your stress response mechanism.

That's what your stress. So what does it, our lungs naturally inflate. What else happens? Oh my goodness. Your pupils dilate. So Sophina said your vision narrows in to what is directly in front of you. And did anyone see red at that point? That's a really common one. All of a sudden the colours change because the way that we process vision shifts.

Others. The adrenaline kicks in hugely. And what does that feel like? What does that look like for you? Your heart is racing. Your muscles start to tense. Can anyone still [00:09:00] feel it? Either your back muscles or your leg muscles. They tense up. Was anyone shaking? You got the shakes? Yeah, yeah. I'm shaking a little bit and I didn't, I knew I didn't need to sing a song.

Um, um, Your mind went a million miles an hour and I bet if I'd actually asked you to stand up you probably wouldn't have remembered the words. because they just disappear. All of a sudden your mind shifts from thinking about lyrics, thinking about food, thinking about who you're sitting next to, thinking about, you know, whatever it is that you're on.

All of a sudden you are fixated on something and it is impossible to shift your mind at that point. Yeah, I think we've, I think we've got enough physiologically. What is going on? That is your stress response mechanism. Imagine if that was how you felt every time that you walked into a church. [00:10:00] Yeah. Um, imagine if that was how you felt every time that somebody said, I'm going to pray for you.

Can I lay hands on you? Bam, stress response. Um, imagine if that's how you felt. Um, if you're sitting in a classroom and you're trying to learn maths, who would learn maths? It's, it's not going to happen. Um, it just, it disappears. Um, trauma is physiological. There, there's a lot of research, uh, Bruce Perry's research that says it lives in the body.

Um, that, that's how we carry our trauma and trauma in essence. You know, if we're going to define it, trauma is an over responsive stress mechanism. Um, it served us well at one point. At one point when we actually needed to run, or when we actually needed to get out of there, trauma served us well, but sometimes that stress [00:11:00] response mechanism just keeps on going, and it can come up at the most annoying time.

Like when you're trying to get to sleep. And BAM! It hits. And all of a sudden your body is tense. And you might start shaking or you might start sweating. You struggle to keep your breath in track. And your heart is racing. Uh, there's a big correlation between trauma and insomnia. Um, in fact, most insomnia is caused by some sort of trauma.

Um, and so it then becomes a perpetuating cycle. Because in order to start healing from trauma you need good sleep. Oh, who designed this thing? It's a mess.

Um, as we go in, I think there's two lenses by which most of us generally think about trauma. And so I want to, I want to, uh, explore those two lenses that, that typically we think about, [00:12:00] uh, in, in order to come up with a bit of an anatomy of trauma. Uh, what does it look like? Cause it's only, I think once we understand trauma, as a concept that we can start to think about.

What does it mean to be informed about it? So the first one, um, is childhood trauma. I think most of us have thought through the nature of childhood trauma. Um, and here might be a helpful point, uh, transition for me to say how I kind of came into thinking about the concept of religious trauma, that's where some of my reach research sits these days.

Um, I had not thought of harm in religious spaces as trauma at all until I started working with kids. And the kids that I was working with, they exhibited all of the symptomology of trauma, through and through. And the kids I was working with as a social worker, they were the most traumatized, of the most traumatized, um, in and out of juvie, in and out of correctional centers, um, you know, we, we, we imprison our traumatized people.

That's what we do as a society. Um, [00:13:00] because, because trauma manifests itself in behavior, and behaviors we don't like, we We criminalize. Um, and so I was working with these kids. One of the things that just kept coming up was how many of them had experienced physical abuse as a child, sexual abuse as a child, neglect as a child, and it manifests itself for children in a particular set of symptoms.

Typically, it can look like ADHD, They suddenly become really, really challenging in the classroom. Which is annoying for the teachers. Um, and you know, teachers do an incredible job. Adding psychology to the mix is next to impossible. But these kids, sit them in front of a blackboard, and gosh, it's impossible.

Um, there's a thing called ACES, the Adverse Childhood [00:14:00] Experiences Scale. It's incredible. We've had this for a long, long time now, but basically what it does is it works through, okay, as a child, what did you go through when you were, uh, under 10, under 8, under 6, under 5, and then we focus on the first 500 days of life, those first couple of years, because we know in that there's some really key developmental milestones that need to be hit.

Kids need somebody who hugs them. Yeah? Kids need somebody who brings them in close with physical contact. Kids need to know, babies need to know, toddlers need to know, that when they cry and are in need of physical assistance, food, that it will come to them. For a long time, and I think it permeates a lot of how we still think, we had this idea that kids are resilient.

That kids bounce. [00:15:00] We don't think that anymore. Kids aren't resilient. Kids are absorbing. Kids take it in. They take it in. And you might not see the harm then, but you will see the harm later. 60 percent of our prison inmates. Experienced high ACEs scales, adverse childhood experiences. That's huge. Um, as churches, I think it's a really good place to start talking about childhood developmental trauma because most of us have kids programs.

Most of us have kids leaders. Most of us are on the forefront of working in our communities with families and communities. And so a basic fundamental premise of being trauma informed is being aware of what childhood mistreatment looks like. That makes sense. [00:16:00] Uh, and so can I encourage you, as you think through this concept, think through it with kids in mind.

Um, trauma that is affected in those key developmental milestones has an oversized impact on the rest of life. So too does care. has an oversized impact on the rest of life. So childhood trauma is kind of the first lens that I think most people think of when they think of trauma. The second one would be something like PTSD.

Uh, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Um, PTSD is, it's a psychiatric diagnosis. It is diagnosed only by a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And we really came across it as a society through violent warfare. Uh, whether that was the trenches, and we'd call it shell shock. but then into the Vietnam War and people started coming home and they were changed, fundamentally changed from who they were [00:17:00] when they went.

And so people started asking, well, what is it that has actually happened in this space to, to create this? Uh, and we realized, not we, I was nothing to do with it. Um, uh, as a society, we realized that the impact of, uh, often one big event. when they were on the battlefields, one big event had a huge impact such that their entire personality could shift.

Personality, we had thought for a long time as set. You know, once you are stubborn, always stubborn. Um, we know that personality can change a lot throughout a person's life. Um, and trauma is one of those things that, uh, that kick starts change. And so that would be something like PTSD. Now you might have heard of a newer acronym, C PTSD, which is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.[00:18:00]

C PTSD is PTSD, but complex. There you go. Um, what's been added to it is we no longer see trauma as just trauma. The aftermath of one event, it is the accumulation of many events. So it's not just necessarily what one instance, uh, it can be the accumulation of many instances. And typically, um, typically CPSD has, it is tied with ACEs most often, um, so people who are diagnosed with it have typically had adverse experiences for a long, long period of time, often starting in childhood, but it manifests itself in all of those same things that we were just explaining.

It was all of that physiological response that you now know very well. [00:19:00] Um, because we all experienced it ten minutes ago, but it's that constantly. Any questions so far about what we've covered? It's making sense? Help me? Yeah, help! Yeah. Okay. The reason I draw our attention to childhood trauma and PTSD is because Most of us probably already knew a lot of what I was speaking about just then.

You're probably familiar with those concepts, and so what I wanted to share in that instance is we know what trauma is. We know what trauma does. And if they're the two big buckets, we can start to form a bit of an anatomy of trauma, but tease it apart a little bit to say, okay, well, what does this actually look like?

And a couple of key things come to mind when we start to discuss, uh, you know, we're not talking about diagnoses here. That's not what we're interested in [00:20:00] as church folk. We're not interested in diagnoses necessarily. Um, we're after understanding patterns of behavior. That can help us to, to grasp what's going on for a person more.

So, so typically, and again I say typically because there's always the outliers, typically trauma follows an experience of feeling unsafe, unsafe, in which you lack control. Feeling unsafe in which you lack control. Uh, unsafe can be physical, As in a car crash, uh, or it might be violence in the home. Um, but it can also be, uh, relational.

Like being told to stand up in front of your peers and sing. That is an experience of unsafety. Relationally, you were in danger just then. And you didn't have control because I have the [00:21:00] microphone. And so you had no way of restitution at that point. And if you were to say, no, I don't want to, that will cause shame, guilt, embarrassment.

There's a theory, an evolutionary theory, which I just find fascinating about why most people are terrified of being on stage. Stage fright. And the idea is, we evolved to have people looking at us for one of two reasons. Either as a deity, you know, they were staring at us because we were going to lead them into battle, or they were staring at us because they were about to boot us out of the camp.

They were about to kill us. Um, and so, evolutionarily, this theory suggests that We don't like having all eyes on us, particularly when we're not in control. So, it is an experience of unsafety, um, in which you are unable to control the situation, [00:22:00] and it's cumulative. Once that is our definition of a potentially traumatic experience, the world is your oyster.

You can apply it to so, so, so many things. The danger here, I'm very aware of this, the danger here is that we apply it to everything and we say watching Lord of the Rings Extended Edition was traumatizing. It wasn't my friend. Um, but that's the language that we start using. Um, and, and suddenly every, everything becomes traumatizing in the same way that everything is depressing.

Everything causes me anxiety. And I'm really conscious of that overextending the definition. That is, we want to be aware of that. At the same time, I don't care too much. Um, that's just how language works. We overextend a definition and then we come up with a new word. But [00:23:00] what's important is that we grasp the concepts.

We wrestle with the concepts. And if the idea of Physiological responses being outside of my control, and I need healing. If the idea of that being everywhere in our churches is at the expense of calling everything traumatizing, I'm okay. Uh, let's just call it all traumatizing, and we'll catch everything.

Bearing in mind, and you know, I keep wanting to go back and forth on this, and I haven't made up my mind in all honesty, there are real instances of complex trauma that we don't want to minimize. And so we need to be very conscious of that, that we honor the breadth of experiences that can be part of that.

So I started thinking about trauma while working with children. Oh my god. Um, about that time [00:24:00] I started doing a PhD and I started my PhD, uh, looking at LGBT experiences in the church, wanting to create pastoral frameworks, which sounds lovely, doesn't it? Um, that was, that was my goal. Um, I started interviewing people and what came up very quickly was that they weren't interested in pastoral frameworks.

The people I was interviewing just wanted to tell their story. And their stories were gut wrenching. And there was a lot of the same symptoms in those people as the kids that I was working with. And about the same time, I got married, um, to my husband, which was, yeah, thank you, thank you, it was lovely, um, I got married to my husband, and we went on a honeymoon to Hobart, uh, and I don't know why you laughed at that.

That was not the punchline.[00:25:00]

We went on a honeymoon to Hobart, which was lovely. Um, not a joke. And, um, we were walking along one of the promenades. It happened to be Easter. And skywriting came across the sky that said cross equals love. Cross equals heart. Uh, My husband went silent. He just kind of, you know, you saw it in his body, he kind of retreated into himself.

Um, he'd grown up as a missionary kid, uh, he's very invested in the church, he serves at church, he was on the music team, like he, he's very invested at church, but skywriting had him shutting down. Um, We have a word for that. Um, we call it dissociating. Um, so for most of us when we experience that you've got to stand up and sing moment, our bodies went into an [00:26:00] arousal state.

Our heart raced and we suddenly had to get out of there. It's the fight or flight. The other way that a body can go is freeze, which one of you suggested. And it's when your body shuts down and actually There's a few different types of dissociation. Sometimes your heart rate keeps going more, sometimes your heart rate slows down, and your mind starts to shut down, and your body focuses on all of its central organs, and it says, I'm not safe here, so I'm just gonna play dead.

Again, really annoying. I was walking along this promenade with my husband, and I saw in him exactly what I'd seen in a kid a couple of days prior. Yeah. I was like, oh my goodness, hello, you're traumatized, aha, but what's your trauma? Cross equals love. That was [00:27:00] enough to set him spiraling.

I'll be honest, walking into this space today, I know that I probably wouldn't be welcome to preach at many of your churches. I feel that because my experiences of church have been deeply, deeply harmful. And that, I think, set me on a trajectory to thinking about religion as a source of trauma, religion itself as a source of harm.

Gosh, we don't want to pry open that wound, do we?

Australia has just gone through a royal commission, which has shown a really under, [00:28:00] ugly underbelly to the Australian church and many Australian institutions, actually. And we would love to just put that to bed and keep moving forward as though everything is okay. But not everything is okay. And sooner or later, it will come to light.

It will come to light.

I was having coffee with one of our church folk the other day, and he said, why is it that you want to research this? Why is it that you want to explore it, uh, and, and go further into it? And my response, honestly, is, if I don't, somebody else will. Um, Be that the government, be that the police, be that the psychologist in a therapy space, somebody else is going to uncover the hurts that have been perpetuated by the church [00:29:00] on an individual scale or on a mass scale with what we're hearing this morning.

Somebody is going to uncover it. I would love it if we uncovered it ourselves. If we were the ones to look it square in the eye and say, yeah, we did that, we, we did that. And many of you are leaders in your denominations, and we need to look it in the eye and say, that happened on my watch. And

that's going to be deeply uncomfortable.

And it's going to cause more trauma for a bit. Like, we're too far gone for it not to. It's going to hurt more before it gets better, but we have to do it.[00:30:00]

And so this is, I guess, for me, uh, a call for, for me at my, in my, my point of where I'm at in life at the moment is to help myself understand my own journey of trauma. Help me, help me understand New City Church's experience of trauma. That's kind of where my first heart is for, for that community. Um, and as we do that, there are more and more people who are saying, yeah, this is a good conversation to have.

This is a good conversation to have.

So we've named trauma, we've all agreed it's in the church. It's not something that is out there, if out there even exists, it's, it's in our midst. Um, I want to spend the rest of my time now thinking through. How do we [00:31:00] create, um, I'm gonna throw in a word here which I'm still not sure about but I'm playing around with it and so I'd love your thoughts.

I, I, I think the term trauma informed, it's getting to the point where it's a little bit, um, you know, as we were saying earlier, it's a bit overused. Um, anything can be trauma informed these days, just slap a trigger label on it. Um, so, so how do we, how do we, the, the word I'm toying with Again, this is risky, but let's go with it.

Is therapeutically rich. That's the word I'm, I'm toying with. Um, recognizing that we're not doing therapy. That, that isn't what we're doing. We're not therapists, unless you are a therapist, in which case, you are a therapist. Um, we're not thera But, we can create environments that aid in healing. What we would call a therapeutical, uh, sorry, a therapeutic.

Um, so that's a word I'm toying with. Maybe you're like, ah no Joel, don't go, don't do that. This is the first time I've toyed with [00:32:00] it in public. Um, but here's what I mean by that. Um, when it comes to that trauma experience, so it's happened in the past and now we're here. It might be in a church gathering, uh, we're chatting and, you know, you, once you, once you hear it and know it, you see it everywhere.

It's people shutting down. It's people getting agitated. It's people fighting. When you're like, what's there to fight about? Um, it's people, it's your youth group kids, absolutely obliterating the place. Not because they want to, but because they just have so much in them that they, once you see it, you're like, oh, okay, that is a trauma response.

So a therapeutically rich environment. It works in two different ways. Um, roll with me here. I might be on all in, but let's see where we go. Um, two different ways. The first one is bottom up. The second one is top down. Let's start with top down. [00:33:00] Top down, therapeutically rich environments, engage the mind as a way of helping to calm the body.

So it's physically, top down. This is spaces where, uh, in a, you know, therapy space, a therapist will say, let's come up with a mantra together that says, I'm safe here. I'm safe here. These people love me. These people love me. And so there's a mantra that somebody might repeat in their mind in order to calm their body.

Uh, I don't know. In our church context, uh, one of the ways that we do that is we say, we're going to disagree in this space and that's okay. Um, one of the ways we do that is we tell people up front, you're more than welcome to walk out, walk in, be comfortable. You're in control of your body at this point.

I'm not in control of it. You're [00:34:00] in control of your body at this point. Another way that top down works is, uh, we build rapport such that people know that we are safe people. Yeah? So, when they come and speak to you, they know that they're not going to be steamrolled. They're not going to be judged.

They're going to be listened to. They're going to be cared for. And in their mind, they are able to repeat to themselves over and over again, other people might not be safe, but my pastor is safe. So therefore I can approach you and not have my body jeopardize this, this relationship. So that's a, that's a top down approach.

The second approach is a bottom up approach. And this is It's newer to Western thinking. It's not new by any stretch, stretch. It has been around for millennia. Uh, and this is [00:35:00] listening to the body as a source of wisdom and then helping the body to regulate with the goal to calming the mind. So it works the other direction.

Interestingly, uh, it was during the Greek, I want to say economic crash, 2009. A bunch of researchers from, I'm not even going to say because I can't remember what university, but a university. They, they went on to the London Stock Exchange and they did an experiment where they asked people to listen to their heartbeat.

So if you were to sit here right now, and I'm going to take a few moments to say listen, listen to your heartbeat, see if you can feel your, no don't put your hand there, see if you can just feel your heartbeat. Some

of you, I'm not going to ask you to share whether or not [00:36:00] you can. Um, it's a, it's a very personal thing. Um, what we're doing there is we're, uh, we're tuning into our inner feels. Um, it's called interoception. Where we're exploring what's happening in our body. Um, interestingly, people who could feel their heartbeat earned more on the stock exchange.

How interesting is that? Um, um, that is western ways of thinking, finally realizing, oh, the gut has a lot to tell us. Um, this gut instinct and that is, um, from my understanding, it's quite a decolonizing approach. First Nations people have thought about this for a long time. It's quite a feminist approach.

Female, uh, presenting people have been thinking about this for a long time. Much, much more than, um, men have in, in a lot of ways. Um, but it's, it's tuning into the body to say the body holds a certain wisdom at this point. And [00:37:00] so how do I use the body to actually help calm my mind? Thank you. Um, in, in the health hub that I used to manage with these, with these, these, um, these kids were nuts.

It was so much fun. It was the kind of place where you dodged chairs, regularly. Um, one of the things that we would often do is these kids would come in really elevated. They'd be, you know, throwing things against the wall, they'd broken windows, they'd broken a door and they'd smash their way in. Um, and we would pull out a long stretch of Lycra.

You know, like a stretchy fabric, um, and we would get them to come close to us and we'd get their permission because we've practiced this before, and we would wrap them up like a burrito. Really, really tight, and we would lie them on the ground. It was remarkable. Um, these kids would go from bouncing off the wall to being enclosed, and not trapped, they'd get out at any moment, but enclosed, where they could, ah.

And it, the idea that we learned from OT Land is it simulates a hug. [00:38:00] Um, we're not going to hug the children, that would be inappropriate, but we would encourage the mother and the father to hug the child. We would also have a hammock in our health hub. And so these kids, they'd come on in and we would throw them into the hammock.

And you'd watch their bodies kind of be enveloped. This is the body starting to calm. And once the body is convinced that it's calm, that it's safe, the mind can start following suit. That's the bottom up approach. So how might we do that in a church setting? For Our church has couches, which is lovely. Um, that was a, you know, luck of the draw, but I'm glad that we have them.

Um, cups of tea are remarkable. Always have tea and coffee on hand, um, because it does the job. Once we're in this space, remember we're talking about the bottom [00:39:00] up, we're talking about sensory input. For more UN videos visit www. un. org You know, your touch, your taste, your sight, your hearing. Making sure that the space is calm.

If, if, if that is, uh, important for people. Making sure that as people chat, the music isn't blaring. Making sure that the light is comfortable. All these things that you might do as you're just inviting someone into your home. Um, you know, they, they, it's just good hospitality. But what I'm wanting to suggest is actually, that can be a trauma informed approach to how we do church.

Because what we're recognizing is that as people come in, for some of them their heart rate's up, uh, they might be shaking a little bit, and what we're wanting to do is hand back control of their minds and bodies as much as we possibly can. You're not forced to stand up when we sing a [00:40:00] song. You can sit if you'd like.

Um, you don't have to speak if we pass the mic around. You can just let that pass on by. All of those things, they don't feel like therapy, because they're not therapy, but they can create that therapeutically rich environment where you're recognising the body, you're recognising the mind, you're recognising the mismatch that can sometimes happen there, And then just helping in as much as you can to bring them in line in a calm way.

That's really powerful. And some of that is really simple. But gosh, it makes a difference. I want to wrap up with an acronym. Um, an acronym that I, I found really helpful. Um, and actually I came across this acronym when I was doing research for [00:41:00] the, the PhD. I, I, I was like, I don't know what we're talking about.

And then, uh, I came across this organization in the States called Risking Connection. Um, and they use this acronym RICH, R I C H, as a hook to hang ideas on when it comes to trauma informed practice. R, rich, R I C H, R stands for respect. Um, and this has to be the foundation of our trauma informed care. One of the great travesties of trauma, for me I think the, the, the deepest devastation that trauma can cause is disconnection.

That is when trauma really bites. Disconnection. And that is disconnection from, uh, from self. As I said, we lose track of our body, we struggle to control it. Disconnection from land, [00:42:00] uh, disconnection from each other, and disconnection from God. Respect is the first step in building that connection again.

I'm going to say something that is probably going to ruffle feathers, but Let's see where it goes. I Will never attend a non affirming church that that is I think my stance at this point in life Because I don't think it's possible to be trauma informed and non affirming That is my journey of where I've got to in my own experiences You because I need whoever is pastoring me to respect my marriage.

Uh, I need whoever's pastoring me to respect my spirituality, my journey with God and my faith. So I'm not going to say that that is the same for everyone. Um, there's lots of [00:43:00] LGBTQIA plus people who can exist in those spaces. For me, I, I can't do it these days. And it is a trauma informed. Decision that I've had to make out of my life So that's the first one respect If you want to flesh that out more, please grab me at lunch grab me an afternoon tea I'd love to just chat about that in the second one.

I Information sharing It is incredibly powerful when someone comes to you and says, I'm, I'm hurting. This is what's happened. Maybe in my past, this is what's currently happening. And you're equipped to be able to say, I don't know much about this, but let's find out together. Let's get you plugged into a good psychologist.

Let's get you plugged into a support group. Let's get you plugged into some information. Here's a YouTube video. Here's a, a, a book. Here's whatever it is that might be able to support them in their journey. The reason why it's so [00:44:00]powerful is because it says we finished this conversation, but then you were still thinking about it.

And you came back with more information to say, I I'm with you on this journey of healing together. Respect information sharing. The third is connection. Um, and that is undoing that disconnect that I mentioned a moment ago. It's starting to undo that disconnect. Um, as I chatted to people, um, particularly as I was researching this space, people who'd been hurt by church, one of the things that kept coming up was psychologists would give the recommendation, oh, you need to stop going to church.

To which, I heard quite a number of times, so I stopped going to that psychologist. Um, which is interesting because sometimes they needed the psychologist in order for the healing. Um, but they, they felt like the [00:45:00] psychologist didn't understand what they needed more was connection. And so, uh, growing those circles is really important.

Um, we have a resource which I'm going to make available to everyone, um, that we've produced over the past year, uh, actually that a few people in this room have helped produce on, uh, it's a religious harm support group, um, because I don't think it's possible to heal in isolation, um, but we can do it together.

Um, currently it's called Religious Harm Support Group. It needs a much better name. So if you have one, let me know. Um, so it's Respect, Information Sharing, Connect, and finally, Hope. Trauma, Saps, Hope. That is what it's good at. And you can probably recognize people in your own lives, in your own churches, who feel hopeless because of [00:46:00] the situations that have been thrown at them in life.

And it's incredibly powerful when somebody is able to say, I, I don't know about you. And I recognize that you might not have hope at this point, but I think I have hope for you. I think I have hope because here's why I can see me. Dot, dot, dot. and having a sense and sharing a sense of hope that allows people to fix their eyes above what is right in front of them, above the disconnect, above the harm, above the hurt, to say that there is a better future and we're going to get there together.

And I think that is extraordinarily powerful. I think God loves healing. That is part of what God does. And I believe in a God of resurrection and [00:47:00] renewal. And as we, as leaders in our faith communities, walk with people through that healing journey, we really are taking part in the work of God. I think the day of the CEO pastor is done, and I'm excited for a new season of pastors as healers to be in our midst.

That's what I'm praying for, for the Australian Church. Um, I'm gonna pray now and invite you to pray that alongside me. God, we thank you that you are a healing God. God, the wounds that go so deep can so often feel like they will never leave. Um, they will always be part of us. And in some ways they will.

but also we want to lose the power that they hold on us. So God, make us people of healing. Give us [00:48:00] lenses which recognize harm and provide pathways to better tomorrows. God, thank you for a trauma informed approach that we can bring to our churches. Amen. 

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