Crisis Counseling: A Guide for Pastors and Professionals

Crisis Counseling represents a much-needed resource for the professional, pastoral, and even lay counselor. Providing a biblically based framework for responding to a crisis event and the following times of trauma, loss, and grief, the book offers specific examples from Scripture and everyday life. It also treats specialized areas of crisis counseling, including how to work with children and teenagers in crisis circumstances and how to develop a crisis response team in a church setting. A concluding chapter helps readers deal with the stress, burnout, and secondary trauma that often accompanies crisis ministry and counseling. Are you equipped to counsel individuals caught in a traumatic situation? A shooting in the church? A violent divorce? The sudden death of a spouse? Crisis Counseling is designed to help those in ministry understand the nature of crisis events, how individuals are impacted, and how to provide effective aid during and following times of crisis. Though intended for the professional and pastoral counselor, it offers definitions of all concepts, making it accessible to lay readers. Specific examples from Scripture and everyday life abound. Specialized topics include how to work with children and teenagers in crisis circumstances and how to develop a crisis response team in a church setting. The concluding chapter helps readers deal with the stress, burnout, and secondary trauma that often accompanies crisis ministry and counseling. "A timely and indispensable work, not only for pastors and professionals, but also for all ministers and caregivers who struggle to help people overwhelmed by traumatic events. . . . Written from the perspective of a mature biblical counselor and scholar, Crisis Counseling is required reading for people who seek a clear and cogent introduction to the field and want guidance and biblical direction for effective ministry in times of crisis." --Dr. Ian Jones Professor of Psychology and Counseling, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary