The Whole Woman: Ministering to Her Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

by Kristin L. Kellen (editor), Julia B. Higgins (Editor)

Do you want to minister to the women around you, but find yourself stuck in a rut? Are you bored with “the way you’ve always done it” when it comes to serving others in your church, community, friendships, or family?  The Whole Woman looks at what it means to care for another woman holistically—heart, soul, mind and strength—as an extension of loving God. The book explores how we might care for the emotions, motivations, desires, thoughts, and relationships of ourselves and others. It also provides some action steps that you can immediately put into practice.   The contributors of this book come from all sorts of backgrounds (professors, ministry leaders, convention leaders, and others) but have one thing in they love to see women grow in their walks with the Lord. Join the authors of The Whole Woman, and find out how you can best serve the women around you.  

Genres: Christian Living, Christian Non Fiction, Christian

219 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 12, 2021

About the author

Kristin Kellen (MA, PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). Her focus is counseling children, teens, and their families. Kristin is the co-author of her forthcoming book The Gospel for Disordered Lives.

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knowing how to coordinate body, soul, mind, and spirit, can be very challanging. Maintaining a good balance between them is sometimes difficult. However, Kristin Kellen and Julia Higgins have compiled a guide for just that. Using several women’s writings there are many suggestions to live a total life that both nourish and encourage women in stabilizing their busy lives and making them more focused and productive.

Divided into the four sections mentioned above, The Whole Woman, gives many excellent suggestions for living the life God intended as well as reaching out and discipling the women around us. The book discusses the importance of knowing and living God’s Word, keeping our minds healthy and focused, taking care of our bodies, and discipling others.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Biblical Womanhood by Julia B. Higgins
2. The Importance of Scripture by Emily Dean
3. A Whole-Person Ministry by Kristin L. Kellen
Heart Section
4. Emotions by Julia B. Higgins
5. Desires and Motivations by Kelly King
Soul Section
6. Relationship with the Lord by Tara Dew
7. Spiritual Disciplines 101 by Amy Whitfield
Mind Section
8. Renewing the Mind by Lesley Hildreth
9. Theological Study by Christy Thornton
Strength Section
10. Physical Body by Kristin L. Kellen
11. Community and Relationships by Missie Branch
12. Loving God and Loving Others by Kristin L. Kellen and Julia B. Higgins

This book is centered around teaching women how to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. The sections are separated into chapters governing each idea.

Every chapter is laid out more or less the same. It begins with a biblical explanation of the topic, moves to some temptations, then concludes with some applicational thoughts. The chapters all have discussion questions as well.

Overall this is a good book. It mostly accomplishes what it sets out to do. I love that their definition of Biblical Womanhood is centered not around women's "roles" but around becoming like Jesus. This book is not written to me, but I still found much to glean from it. Honestly I struggled to see how it was directed only towards women. The examples used are all women, but it appeared more Bible focused than woman focused. I don't think that's a bad thing, it was just an interesting aspect of the book.

It does suffer from having so many authors. Some chapters are better written than others and it feels a little uneven. The application sections are a little light. The book really is not about equipping you to lead a women's ministry in this way. It is more about how we all need to grow in these areas.

I received my copy of this book from Netgalley.

[Kasia Hubbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Whole Woman: Ministering to Her Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength does exactly that. There are five main sections that this book is broken down into, introduction into Biblical Womanhood (it's definition, importance of scripture, and a whole-person ministry and what that looks like), Heart (emotions, desires and motivations), Soul (relationship with the Lord and spiritual disciplines), Mind (renewing the mind and theological study), and Strength (physical body, community and relationships, and loving God and loving others). Each chapter then starts with a scripture, an introduction to the topic, a breakdown of exactly what is being defined and discussed in much greater detail, concluded with discussion questions that make you think more about how this applies to your life. I think the best chapter, for me in my own humble opinion, was the theological study and how/why it IS important to actually discuss this based on it's actual definition (I personally think we tend to give it the wrong definition and expectation of what it looks like to begin with) within a biblical lens. Overall, I agree with the way it's set up and how we should approach ministering to women, and really appreciate the breakdown of the four main sections and why it specifically relates to women, but like others, I don't think it's really gender specific. I believe it applies to both genders. I really enjoyed this book.
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*

[Another_Book_to_Ponder · Rating 4 out of 5]

If You Are In Women’s Ministries or Just a Heart For Women Around You… This Will Challenge You!

I was in Women’s Ministry for many years and probably was in a rut a few times. Thankfully I had people who poured into my life and we had a thriving ministry. Since then I have floundered and haven’t found my place. God moved us from our church .. for me it had been 33 years and my husband had been there longer. It was traumatic and I know I wanted to go kicking and screaming but I knew that wasn’t what God would want. 

As much as this topic interests me I feel I’m still healing and filtering things through the trauma. I will probably need to read through this again. I felt there was some good stuff shared.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from NetGalley on behalf of the Publisher and was under no obligation to post a favorable review.

[Hannah Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing groundbreaking for me in this book, but it took a lot of thoughts and topics that were familiar to me already and put it all in one place, which is nice.

I also really liked that, from the beginning, it was stated that the book wasn’t focused on a woman’s role/function but on her nature as a person created in God’s image. Too many women’s books emphasize specific roles and functions of women, so it was refreshing for that to not be the case in this one. It made the book feel deeper than other Christian women’s books I’ve read. Great read, especially for someone working in women’s ministry spaces!

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that the purpose of this book is to minister to women in all aspects of life towards loving God and others. What is important is that it is soundly based on the Bible. You could read it to minister to yourself too (and that in fact seems to be the aim of this book too.) A good read for every Christian women and one which I plan to go through again more thoroughly.

[Audrey Mc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will definitely do a study with a few other women later on. A great general look at the core messages of scripture and how to apply them to our discipleship.

[Dena McGoldrick Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource book

[Deb Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very practical and helpful book on how women can minister to other women in various ways. Looks at the four areas of heart, soul, mind, and strength.

[Ronja · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Whole Woman describes how to live in this world as a Christian woman and how to grow in the Lord. This book, to me, felt quite much like a basic book on the different topics like emotions and spiritual disciplines, rather than something that would help to minister to other women. This was good but also having different authors affected that some chapters maybe just weren't so strongly written.