“How do I communicate with my group member who’s non-verbal?”

“My group members are easily distracted during small group time. How do I hold their attention?”

“What do I do when my group member doesn’t reply or just replies with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’? Or if they just repeat what I say?”

These were just some of the questions we received after polling volunteers to ask about the challenges they face when interacting with our friends with intellectual disabilities (ID).

On 29 March, volunteers from across our 3 clubs gathered for a time of mutual encouragement and equipping. Yafen, a speech and language therapist with experience working with persons with special needs, conducted a training session on how to better communicate with our friends with ID.

Besides teaching us practical strategies to improve understanding, attention and expression, Yafen urged us to move away from thinking of our friends’ communication challenges as a problem with them. Instead, we should first consider if the problem lies with us and in our environment. Have we thought hard enough about how to remove the barriers to better communication? For example, are we speaking too fast? Are our Bible talks too lengthy and our language too difficult? Are we using appropriate pictures and fonts in our slides to aid understanding? Is our meeting room too noisy or too cluttered? It was a great reminder that better communication with our members is not impossible; it just takes love, patience, and hard work!

Do pray for God to increase our love for our friends with ID, such that we won’t “wing it” at Jesus Club gatherings but instead work hard at communicating to them the life-giving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.