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by Richard Lowe (Author)
Somewhere between ten and twenty percent of any given congregation has ADHD, autism, or both. Most of them have never told their pastor. Most of them have spent years trying to pass as neurotypical in every environment, including church, and they are exhausted by it.
The ADHD Christian is written for those people, and for the pastors, family members, and church leaders who want to understand them.
Author Richard Lowe grew up in the Church of Christ, where the expectation of sustained stillness, consistent attention, and careful adherence to spiritual patterns was absolute and non-negotiable. His ADHD brain had other plans. He left at fourteen, convinced that Christianity was not designed for people like him. What followed were decades of spiritual searching, sporadic church attendance, and the accumulating evidence that every faith community he encountered was built for a different kind of mind.
His return to faith was not a redemption story with a clean ending. It required a year of sustained effort to navigate a church's baptism process, showing up week after week while the schedule kept shifting and his motivation kept leaking - before completing his baptism in December 2024. He is still looking for a new church after watching his previous congregation change in ways that made it inaccessible to his nervous system. This book is written from inside that ongoing search, not from the other side of it.
Drawing on personal experience and the neuroscience of attention, executive function, and emotional regulation, The ADHD Christian covers nineteen chapters across six parts: the theological foundation of neurodivergent identity in Christ; practical navigation of daily spiritual life including prayer, Bible study, focus, and emotional regulation; workplace calling and ministry service; specific ADHD challenges including addiction, shame, and masking; thriving strategies including building support systems and celebrating ADHD strengths; and special considerations for AuDHD (combined ADHD and autism), introversion, and the faith-versus-medication question.
The book addresses topics that faith-based publishing has consistently avoided: how rejection sensitive dysphoria makes guilt-and-damnation preaching neurologically inaccessible regardless of its theological accuracy; why ADHD Christians frequently walk out of sermons mid-service and stop attending entirely; how to evaluate churches based on nervous system compatibility, not just doctrine; and how taking medication for a brain-based condition is an act of stewardship, not a failure of faith.
A closing chapter written specifically for pastors and church leaders offers the first resource of its kind in this category - theologically grounded, practically specific guidance for serving neurodivergent congregants, including what to do when someone disappears from the congregation and what to say when you reach out.
A discussion guide for small groups and leadership teams is included, with questions organized by section and a dedicated set for pastoral staff.
The ADHD Christian is not a workbook. It does not promise that faith will resolve the challenges of neurodivergence. It offers something more honest and more useful: the recognition that ADHD traits are not spiritual liabilities, that the brain that made traditional church hard is the same brain that certain kingdom work specifically requires, and that there is a version of authentic Christian faith that does not ask you to become someone else first.
