Rev. Dr. Pamela Cole: Pastoring Children- Learning the Hard Way

Note from Elizabeth: 
Pam Cole is an Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Greenville, my home church.  Pastoral Care is a part of who she is, for which I am SO thankful. She continually is shepherding me and challenging me with ways to teach, care and love others in ways Christ calls us to.  The Lord created Pam with a unique gift in which she sincerely cares, protects, loves, prays, cries and rejoices with those God has placed in her path. It really is a UNIQUE blessing and gift to those who know her, I know more of Christ because of Pam's care for me and my family during darkness.  Her sincerity and obedience to God's calling is what sets her apart and makes her wonderful Pam. 

So, of course, I asked my Ministry Mentor, and dear precious friend,  HOW do you do it so well? But, more importantly, how do you take care of children who need this immediate sincerity and care?  This is her response:







Unfortunately, I learned nothing about pastoring children in seminary. I learned about pastoring children through real life, trial and error in over twenty years of pastoral care ministry. I thank God that He has watched over the children on whom I had to learn with His special care and grace.

In my pastoral care programs in seminary and in my "real life lawyering" classes in law school, I learned the interrogation technique. I learned through watching the faces of children at my first church that the interrogation technique does not work with children! When I was a pastor at Easley Presbyterian Church in Easley, South Carolina, I would notice the expression of a child change after weeks of children's church and I would know something was terribly wrong- so using the interrogation technique from seminary and law school, I would sit the tot down in my big office, on a comfortable couch and question,

"What is wrong?"
"What happened?"
"How do you feel?"
"Why are you upset?"

I quickly learned that this technique was getting me nowhere with children going through the crisis of a parent's illness or job loss, or the loss of a friend. THe children would freeze up with my interrogation.

God is gracious and He quickly taught me the best way to pastor children: invite them out for an activity on a regular basis and let the child, on his or her own time, begin, to talk to you.

Here is my God story of breakthrough:

I heard from a Radiologist in our church that his wife was diagnosed with the very worst kind of breast cancer. He and his wife had two tiny little girls, five and seven. Both had big beautiful brown eyes that I knew were quickly going to change from joy and laughter to tears. The Radiologist told me his wife only had a few months to live and he wanted me to talk to his girls. He had explained to them as best as he could what was happening with their mother. The girls said nothing. They said nothing to their parents, or to anyone else.

I began to take the girls out to eat ice cream once or twice a week. I would pick them up at their home at an assigned time, buckle them up in the back of my car, and we would go to the local ice cream parlor. For weeks and weeks, the girls talked about everything but their mother. I continued to pick them up and I continued to listen to everything they wanted to talk about: toys, animals, colors, shoes. Anything the beautiful brown-eyed girls wanted to talk about, I listened.

Finally, one day as I drove into their driveway, the two little girls in tandem, in the back seat, told me, "Pastor Pam, we do not want to get out of the car yet."
I said, "Why, is something wrong?"
They said, "Yes, there is something we have decided to talk with you about."
"What is it?" I asked.
The smallest one started crying and sobbed, "Our mother is very sick and we do not think our Dad knows how bad it is. We think she is going to die."


These precious children knew how sick their mother was and they were not talking about it because they wanted to protect their father. Children do not process crises in the same way adults do. Their bodies are too little to take the shock in all at once. As pastors and parents, we need to give children all the time they need to process and talk- and be children all at the same time. We cannot expect them to act like little adults in a therapy session. Sometimes a child after being told terrible news will want to go and play- let them go and play. But be watchful- and be ready for when they are ready to talk.

I found from these precious little brown-eyed girls, who are now happily married and whom I held in my arms the entire night their mother died of breast cancer, that pastoring children requires patience and gaining trust. Children in crisis will not respond to being put on the spot by being asked to tell how they feel, as an adult would respond in a pastoral counseling appointment. A child must be given time to explain his or her own feelings- maybe and most probably through drawing a picture, telling a story, or playing a game.

So how do you pastor children from one who has made many mistakes? Go slow. Go low. Go gentle. Be trustworthy. And pray a lot.