Spiritual Care First Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community

by Cody J. Sanders

Cody J. Sanders argues that spiritual care is inherently cultivated in every vibrant community--congregations and otherwise--and that every community member contributes to providing care for others. However, many congregation and community members lack confidence in their caring skills. In Spiritual Care First-Aid, Sanders provides an accessible introduction to spiritual care characterized by mutuality, empathy, and compassion.

Recognizing that not everyone is a clinician, Sanders provides instruction in basic skills of spiritual care in a way nearly anyone can use. The book offers an approach of hearing, helping, and healing so whoever is near can serve as a spiritual-care first responder when and where needed. Readers will gain skills and confidence in their abilities to provide peer-to-peer care that contributes to their communities in life-sustaining ways.

Spiritual Care First-Aid is an ideal training resource for seminary classrooms, particularly skill-building or pastoral care and counseling courses for non-clinicians. The book will also serve as a go-to field manual for lay ministry schools, congregations, and adjacent communities such as campus ministries and nonprofit organizations that train laypeople in spiritual care, as well as for pastors who desire to develop robust, practical care skills.

246 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025

Reviews

[Allison]

Now that school is starting tomorrow I finally finished this book from my pastoral care class last semester. It’s very practical and focused on providing spiritual care skills and frameworks for laypeople in congregations and other faith spaces. I found it to be very approachable with lots of detailed examples and would be as useful for someone with no background in spiritual care as it is for veteran spiritual care providers. It’s honestly best to think of this as a spiritual care handbook, and it is probably the best one of its kind that I’ve read. Sanders does a good job of using religiously expansive language in a way that this book could be picked up by a group in any faith tradition, but it does sometimes assume it will most likely be used by a Christian audience. I wouldn’t call it a Christian book but a few references came across as more Christian than not - this was very minor. I did struggle in reading it, perhaps because my brain wanted to be off school, but I think this would best benefit communities who take their time with it and read a chapter every 2 weeks to a month in a dedicated group.

[Lauren]

I'm a pastor of an ELCA congregation in Minnesota. We just read this book as a book club over the summer. I'll say it was little bit too dense for meeting just three times! But it prompted some great conversations and the participants especially enjoyed trying some of the exercises at the end of each chapter - those really helped them feel empowered to develop deeper skills in spiritual care. I'd say that while it was very useful for this group of mostly lay people, they had some trouble with the more technical jargon from therapy, counseling, and theology -- it still felt like a resource aimed primarily at seminary students and professionals.

[Eric]

This is a good guide to spiritual care. Some of the perspectives and example are unique to the authors experience, but there is still much valuable information, and a fantastic Appendix with many resources, and a place to put our own, local agencies.

[E.]

A really helpful guide to contemporary best practices in congregational care.