Effective Strategies for Youth Counseling

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i. Different potential strategies and objectives to conduct effective holistic youth counseling within the context of a local church

Youth counseling would usually fall under the youth ministry within the church, however, it should not be only upon the youth pastor to provide all counseling services for the youth.

There may be many retired individuals within the church who may have a social work, psychology, and/or social development background who may assist. In my experience, there have been people who are mothers or grandmothers, and just have a gift of counseling and managing youth problems so you don't necessarily have to search for the formally and/or appropriately educated people.

With young people, it is best not to single them out in group sessions even if it is to speak to them privately while someone else leads the group. Youth counseling needs to be one-on-one. While I served as a Youth Ministry Director, my Terms of Reference actually detailed that I must make "spontaneous visitations" which I found quite amusing but in actuality these were the most effective means of helping these young people.

When I visited their homes, their families would usually be there but they were still open to speaking about issues that they may not have spoken about when they are in the presence of their peers. Sometimes we would go for a walk outside or to a coffee shop with the appropriate ambiance.

Within the church, I would use our Sunday sessions or even Bible Studies to introduce situations that young people may face so that I don't need to single out anyone. Some of the young people mentioned in later years that they learned how to deal with the situations in their lives through the general group discussions that we had about these particular topics.

ii. Best practices

When ...