Book Review: Caring for the Souls of Children
This is a book I wish I had when I began in ministry. Very often children’s ministry leaders begin working at a church after studying in the field of education. The skills learned for that degree will help a children’s minister create age-appropriate environments and craft engaging Bible lessons, but it doesn’t necessarily prepare you to care for a child that is grieving the loss of a grandparent or that is navigating a disability diagnosis.
Others of us came to children’s ministry with a seminary degree—after studying the biblical languages, theology, and pastoral care. In my case, I took a few classes on biblical counseling, but I was never trained—for instance—on how to counsel a child that has been abused or is struggling with confusion about their gender identity. I only learned how to care for kids by watching and asking questions of more seasoned men and women. No book can replace that sort of mentorship in ministry, but the Biblical Counseling Coalition, Amy Baker (editor), and a stout group of contributors have provided an important manual that will help pastors, children’s ministry leaders, and counselors provide wise care to kids.
Book Summary
Caring for the Souls of Children: A Biblical Counselors Manual (New Growth, 2020) begins with foundational matters of theology and methodology. Baker’s thesis is this: “While we often think that children need a different approach to counseling—and we certainly want to tailor our teaching and interaction to the understanding of the child—it’s our observation that children struggle with the same desires adults struggle with, they are lured by the same lies that adults fall prey to, and they find hope in the same source adults find hope—in our Lord and Savior.”
Baker and the contributors are clear that children need the same gospel as adults, and her general outline of a session with a child—build a relationship, gather data, evaluate the struggle biblically, share biblical hope, provide biblical instruction, assign practical homework (pp. 14–30)—will feel familiar to anyone who has provided biblical care. But the Caring for the Souls of Children contributors are equally clear that caring for children will look quite different from a counseling session with a grown-up because children are still growing. In the third chapter, Julie Lowe provides a helpful age-by-age chart that unpacks how typical children develop physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and spiritually. The chart also provides a list of resources that will be helpful for engaging kids at various ages.
After the book’s opening section, part 2 addresses specific counseling issues under four headings:
“Children and Their Relationships” with separate chapters address a child’s relationships with Jesus, with their parents, and with friends.
“Children and Their Emotions” with chapters on anxiety, anger, suicide, and shame.
“Children and Their Bodies” with chapters on sex, sexual identity, self-harm, disease, and disability
“Children and Trauma” with separate chapters on abuse, divorce, death and grief, and traumatic struggles encountered by children who do not live with their parents.
Evaluation
Several things about Caring for the Souls of Children encouraged me.
First, I loved how practical it is. Throughout the book, each contributor provides activities and questions that will help a counselor to hear and understand a child’s struggles and also to communicate biblical truth. I particularly liked Julie Lowe’s “boat and refuge” activity (pp. 98–100) that can be used to help an anxious child name their fears and find refuge in God.
Second, I was thoroughly encouraged by the intentional ways each contributor included the child’s parents into the discussion. Contributors were careful to say that many children don’t need counseling, they simply need godly parenting. So the best approach is often to give counsel to moms and dads on how to parent their kids. Every chapter in part 2 ended with a section titled “A Word to Parents.” These closing paragraphs give mom and dads wise instruction on how to further engage their kids outside of a counseling session.
Third, I was deeply impressed with the contributors’ awareness of how both sin and suffering impact children. Biblical counselors can sometimes put uneven emphasis on personal agency, but the contributors to this volume—without denying a child’s responsibility—demonstrated a conviction that brokenness is bigger than sin. In Charles Hodges chapter on self-harm, for example, he describes how the endorphin rush that comes when cutting is part of what draws those who self-harm back to it (p. 197). In Pam Bauer’s chapter on children who are not living with their biological parents, she unpacks at length the trauma of loss, confusion, grief, and fear children experience when removed from their homes or given up for adoption (pp. 280–87) These are just two examples, but nuanced discussions of various struggles abound. Other favorites of mine are Jessica Thompson’s treatment of the parent-child relationship (chapter 5), Tim Geiger’s approach to talking with kids about sexual identity (chapter 12), and the Joni and Friends team’s chapter on counseling children with disabilities (chapter 15).
In my view, Caring for the Souls of Children’s biggest limitation is that it’s an introduction—and its introductory nature keeps it from covering everything. Amy Baker’s chapter on caring for kids who have been abused, for instance, doesn’t include instructions on when or how to report abuse. Here it would have been helpful to point to other resources by BCC members such as Darby Strickland or Deepak Reju who have written about how to recognize child abuse and report it. Similarly, when I read Pam Bauer’s chapter about caring for kids who have experienced the trauma of abandonment, I thought about the influence psychologist Karyn B. Purvis’s trust-based relational intervention has within the evangelical adoption and foster care community. It would have been helpful if Bauer had pointed her readers to an evaluation of this common therapy and its strengths and weaknesses—perhaps by pointing to biblical counselor Brian Liechty’s review of Purvis’s approach in Journal of Biblical Counseling 30:3 (2016) 85-93. While some chapters do list additional resources (I learned about so many new children’s books that teach kids about grief and heaven!), the manual on the whole would have been made better if every chapter had an “Additional Resources” list.
Now that I’ve mentioned this one concern, I must also say that I’m thrilled with this counseling manual and highly recommend it. I wish that I’d first encountered Caring for the Souls of Children fifteen years ago when I first began working with kids as part of a local church team. If you’re in that chair now—responsible to provide wise nurture and careful counsel to children and teens—be sure to pick up this excellent resource.
I was given this book so that I could review it but my opinion is 100 percent my own.