1.The pastor’s relationship with children, particularly when they are in crisis, can have a significant impact on their spiritual growth and development. The pastors role is creating a safe space for the child to feel comfortable to share. Their role is to work with the child to improve their emotional well-being, social skills and resilience. The pastor should know when its time to involve the parents to work alongside them to ensure the child is feeling supported and seen. It is also important that the pastor used child friendly methods like play therapy and art and storytelling to help relate to the child.
2.The use of art as a method of counselling. Art expresses the longings of our heart and it communicates our emotional needs and fears and it can even reveal our religious ideas. As the counsellor you can ask children to draw a picture that shows their family and ask them to draw lots of details from their you can ask the child to describe their picture. You as the counsellor can use the technique Probing and ask more open ended questions to get more information from the child. What they draw might reveal more about what they are going through than words could ever say.