S9 Ep908: Disability and the Church: Dr. Lamar Hardwick
Theology in the Raw
Theology in the Raw
4.5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2021
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
Lamar has an MDiv from Emory University and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Liberty University. Over the years Lamar has served as a youth pastor, hospice chaplain, football coach, and pastor but his most important role is serving his wife of 16 years and their three beautiful children ages 11, 8, and 3. In 2014, after years of silently struggling with social anxiety and sensory processing disorder, and a host of other significant issues, Dr. Hardwick was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. He was 36 years old when diagnosed. Dr. Hardwick has had articles published by various autism and disability websites such as The Mighty,The Huffington Post, Key Ministry, and The Autistic Self Advocacy Network to name a few. His articles and blogs can also be found on his website www.autismpastor.com. Dr. Hardwick is the author of the best-selling book I am Strong: The Life and Journey of an Autistic Pastor and the recently released Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion.
In this episode, Larmer tells his story and helps us understand how the church can better understand and include people with Disabilities.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw. |
| 0:02.8 | I have on the show today, Dr. Lamar Hardwick Lamar is a pastor and author, |
| 0:08.7 | a speaker. And he's recently written a book called Disability and the Church, |
| 0:15.1 | a vision for diversity and inclusion. And that's a topic of this podcast. Lamar |
| 0:21.6 | is on the autism spectrum. He was diagnosed later in life just about six or seven years ago. |
| 0:27.3 | And he's been he was a pastor before he was even diagnosed. And so he has a really interesting |
| 0:33.0 | story and some just really brilliant wise humble thoughts on how the church can be the church |
| 0:40.4 | to people who are wrestling with various disabilities. So please welcome to the show for the first |
| 0:45.4 | time. Do you want to know what Dr. Lamar Hardwick is? |
| 1:04.0 | All right, friends. I'm here with Dr. Lamar Hardwick. Thanks so much for being on the |
| 1:09.6 | All-Genera's really looking forward to this. And man, I know you just came off of COVID or |
| 1:15.8 | still kind of recovering. So praise God that you're alive and still recovering for the most part. |
| 1:23.3 | So why don't we start? I would just love from my audience to hear your story. Your website is the |
| 1:32.1 | autism pastor, the URL. So that'll give us a little entry point into your story. I'm sure. But |
| 1:38.2 | yeah, tell us about who you are and then I want to talk about your book, Disability in the Church. |
| 1:42.0 | Okay. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for rescheduling too. As you said, I did have |
| 1:48.8 | about with COVID there, but I'm glad to be doing better. So yeah, I guess the good place to start |
| 1:56.8 | is with autism pastor. I get questions about that a lot, obviously. So for those who may not |
| 2:07.1 | have ever heard about me or my work or follow me on social media, you can find me at my website |
| 2:14.5 | autismpastor.com. I have actually two twitters. One was created after I was diagnosed with autism. |
| 2:23.3 | So that a lot of people follow me on autismpastor.com. So I mean autism pastor on Twitter. So I get that |
| 2:30.4 | question a lot. So the first part of that story is after years of just struggling with a lot |
... |
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