I had never seen my campus ministry colleague so frustrated.
We were in a meeting discussing how to identify and develop godly student leaders on campus. My colleague, a competent, proven ministry veteran, expressed frustration over one student. This student was identified as a leader in the group from the first weeks in the ministry; the student was charismatic, well-liked, and “always knew the right thing to say.”
But behind the scenes, the person was problematic, wielding popularity to gain influence as a means to selfish ends. My colleague was distressed because this leader needed to be removed over character concerns but had already gained influence over the whole fellowship.
This is an all too familiar story in ministry. A leader’s charisma is confused for character; flaws are overlooked, and he or she ends up causing harm. If we want to disrupt this pattern, then we must study the experiences of other kinds of leaders: people who struggle to make good eye contact, who are not the life of the party, who are neurodivergent. People like myself.
I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as a toddler, placed at the eighth percentile of child development. Receiving the news, my parents were counseled to keep their expectations low. They were told I would never read, write, or be an independent adult. To be fair to that doctor, if you had seen my profound needs back then, you might have agreed with the diagnosis.
Today, I am finishing a master’s in divinity and I work as a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I have planted a fellowship on two campuses.
It’s worth noting that neurodivergence, a term coined by autism activist Kassiane Asasumasu, is much broader than autism. It is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it simply a few personality quirks or a “superpower.” It’s meant to articulate the sociopolitical reality of people whose brains are wired differently than the majority, and who as a result can be profoundly socially ostracized.
My neurodivergence manifests as autism, a developmental disability that can impair my ability to communicate and to socially connect with others. Having a social disability in a job as social as a campus minister has come with many challenges.
Growing up, I struggled to make friends. Today, in every interpersonal interaction, I have to make a choice between either focusing on good eye contact or being able to fully listen to what the other person is saying. And there’s also such a thing as too much eye contact, apparently?
I also have to constantly monitor whether I’m being too blunt and how to interpret indirect communication from others. In fundraising, for example, if someone says, “Ask me another time,” do they actually mean it? Or is that a “no”? Being able to interpret a person’s tone right away is not as intuitive to me as it is to my colleagues. Unfortunately, I’ve burned some social capital as a result.
On the days I manage well socially, I do so at the cost of my energy, depleted for something as seemingly small as a one-hour pizza and games event. And I haven’t always been able to win students over with warmth, humor, and easy conversation in the way I’m expected to.
When I was in training to do this job, I was given many resources, including handbooks on how such winsomeness is done. One included a list of ten mistakes that people in my role make, which included: “Believe their own sparkling personality is all they need.”
I’ve learned to embrace my neurodivergence, but I am also keenly aware that my autistic traits do not translate to a “sparkling personality.” Notice what the handbook assumes: “all they need.” This phrase presumes charisma as a non-negotiable part of a leader’s profile.
I didn’t believe God would call anyone to a task he hadn’t equipped them for. And so I spent hours searching my organization’s training resource database for anything about leadership for someone like me.
I found nothing, and no matter how many people I asked, there was nobody who had struggles like mine—with eye contact or listening well, or managing direct versus indirect communication. It was as though no one had anticipated that someone with autism, with its unique limitations, would do this kind of job.
I recognize that the conversations around autism, neurodiversity, and accommodation are complicated. The variety in how autism can present itself can be overwhelming, especially with a noted rise in the diagnosis rate. The cultural definition of neurodivergence seems to always be changing. And I know that supporting neurodivergent leaders brings up many questions.
But we already bend over backward to accommodate charisma. We recognize its danger, but because we see value in it, that’s where we invest our resources and spiritual formation.
If we meet someone who has a social disability, we tend to ask, “Can they lead?” But if we meet someone with charisma, we skip that question and ask instead, “Can they lead with integrity?” We would rather assume the risk of a toxic leader than assume the risk of an ineffective leader. Where has that gotten us?
No matter how gifted in any facet of leadership an individual might be, the best thing any leader can bring to their work is their character.
Pete Scazzero of the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast talks about embracing our limits as “God’s grace in disguise.” Serving in campus ministry with a social disability, my limits are highly accentuated. But what can take some leaders decades to figure out, I have been forced to learn in my 20s: I can’t do it all. And rather than relying on easily won interpersonal capital to do this work, I’ve had to focus on the harder task of character formation instead.
This past spring, I met a student at a conference for campus ministry leaders who asked me to pray together. After the week of training, the student—who was neurodivergent and had a disability—was afraid to lead.
When we encourage and equip a student like this, we are fighting our addiction to charisma. If people from all forms of neurodivergence do not have access to all types of services in the body of Christ, that does all of us a disservice.
David Giordano is a campus minister serving at Onondaga Community College. He previously served in campus ministry at Vassar College and SUNY Polytechnic. He holds a bachelor’s in organizational management with research focused on churches and organizational structures. He is finishing a master’s in divinity from Northeastern Seminary with a focus in social ethics. He has written for his seminary blog about Neurodiversity and Church Leadership. David lives in Syracuse, New York, where his family has been pastoring for 16 years.
