THE Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham has been awarded £118,756 by the Church of England’s Innovation Fund for research and development of good practice in the formation of neurodivergent lay and ordained ministers, as part of a joint collaborative project with St Mellitus College (News, 19 July).

The Anglican admissions tutor at the Foundation, the Revd Dr Allison Fenton, and the director of innovation at St Mellitus, the Revd Ed Olsworth-Peter, will be working in partnership to lead this work. The research will focus on the experiences of lay and ordained ministers.

Both are both neurodivergent, and will bring their experiences of ministry to this research.

Allison Fenton

I WAS diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD recently. As an academic, the diagnosis came as a surprise to me, but I have always been aware that I find the structuring of writing difficult. As I have shared the results of this, it turns out that it did not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I am more aware that writing takes me longer than I think it should, and my emails are full of typos, which people have found to be (at least) unprofessional.

My ordination discernment process was hard. I was often described as “bubbly”, or having a “big character”. I was never quite sure what these words meant, beyond suggesting a lack of maturity.

My diagnosis now suggests that what I was displaying was my ADHD. I have learned to manage my enthusiasms, not to overshare my creative ideas, and to make a note of anything that I need to remember. Receiving this diagnosis has been difficult, as I am having to reframe my identity, aware that there can still be a stigma attached this.

The Church of England is moving in the right direction in the area of academic preparation and neurodivergence; we are getting better at ensuring that we make reasonable adjustments; but there is so much more to formation than the academic alone, and we want our research to tackle that.

We have noticed an increasing number of students in training being diagnosed as neurodivergent, and are keen that they are fully supported. The institutional Church can be a very academic, words-based culture, which can be off-putting for neurodivergent or even non-academic candidates for ministry; so, we need to ensure that our training and formation programmes are fully accessible.

Ed Olsworth-Peter

I WAS diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia in my early twenties. School was hard, and I remember being laughed at in RE for reading aloud that the storm, in Matthew 8, was “ragging” (instead of “raging”).

This and other experiences left me feeling ashamed; for years, I thought that I was stupid. It took me a long time to realise, instead, that it was because my brain worked in a slightly differently way. In parish ministry, I discovered that there were things that I needed to do differently from neurotypical people.

For example, if sharing a vision for our church at PCC meetings, I learned to translate my thoughts by untangling them and slowing them down. My audio processing and memory is bad, so retaining information at the Sunday church door was challenging.

Preaching also demanded a mind map rather than a typed script, as I can recognise the shapes, and even the edits, which keeps me on track. I have also seen, however, that being neurodivergent has enabled me to fulfil the more creative ministry roles that I have undertaken, drawing on my visual thinking and alternative thought processes. It has become a key part of my identity, and I would hate to be without it, despite the challenges that it brings.

When I was training for ordination more than 20 years ago, there was limited understanding of the impact of neurodivergence within Christian ministry. Part of the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy is to be more diverse, so there is a welcome mandate here; but, besides the Church seeking to accommodate neurodivergent people, there is more work to be done to amplify the positive contribution of neurodivergent people, especially its leaders.

AS THE Church responds to a changing missional landscape, a more neurodivergent way of thinking is going to be needed. Over the past two years at St Mellitus, we have been exploring what the formational support of neurodivergent leaders in training might look like. It is great to be able to take this work deeper in partnership with the Queen’s Foundation.

Besides publishing research, we will host a national TEI symposium to discuss what good practice could look like in this area of formation. We expect the project to conclude in 2026 with the creation and delivery of guidelines for all TEIs to use.

We are currently looking for participants to take part in this research. If you are an ordinand, are training for lay ministry, or are in active ministry and have a diagnosis of neurodivergence, we’d like to hear from you. Please contact neurodivergence@queens.ac.uk.