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Thinking About Spiritual Crises
In Spiritual CPR, you argue that Christians often respond quickly to physical crises but overlook spiritual struggles, offering the WASH PIGS framework as a guide for recognizing when and how to intervene. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In medicine, we rely heavily on time tested protocols/ procedures for different things and practicing them ahead of time. For instance you don’t want to be looking at a textbook on how to do CPR when someone is having a heart attack. So on thinking about spiritual crises, it made sense to develop a frame work to help people work through spiritual crisis they might encounter spiritually ahead of time.
What do you think Christians most commonly misunderstand about responding to someone who is experiencing a spiritual crisis?
We need the church to be a safe place where people can work through a struggle. Yes, we hold them accountable, yet we help them though it. Instead, sometimes, I think the church has a huge problem in that people with good intentions think they should be punishing others instead of helping them get to the other side.
I also think that some people are afraid of spiritual “cooties”; they think if they get too close to someone struggling, they might catch the sin. Maybe people are afraid what other people might think if they associate with the person, or be afraid it might look like they are approving of whatever is going on. But, Jesus was called a “friend of sinners” and what people meant as an insult was true- Jesus offered them LIFE. Sometimes we are called to go into the messy places and that doesn’t fit well with American Christianity.
The book addresses highly sensitive subjects including pornography, abortion, sex outside marriage, LGBTQIA+ issues, estrangement, and chronic sin. What was the most difficult chapter for you to write, and why?
Idols was the most difficult chapter to write. Literally anything has the potential to be an idol, but what is a problem for one person may not be for another person. Trying to capture that was a little hard.
On top of that, idols and/or chronic sins sometimes have causes or effects within the physical world, so there are sometimes physical manifestations of sin. And people make judgments because of it, without knowing the whole story.
What is one mistake you hope readers will avoid after reading Spiritual CPR?
I hope people do not remain apathetic. Instead, I would hope they would be madly in love with Christ and be willing to put their phone down or whatever is eating up all their time and focus on the people around them. I really think if they would focus on their fellow believers around them, then recovery ministries would really start and true revival and spiritual awakening would occur. I would hope they would just step out, have faith, and see what God Will do with them.
Author Links: Bookfunnel | Amazon
In Spiritual CPR, board-certified physician Dr. Shaun Jester draws on a lifetime of responding to physical emergencies to present a practical, biblically grounded guide for recognizing and responding to spiritual emergencies.
From pornography and infidelity to abortion, addiction, and other life-altering struggles, this book equips believers to move beyond judgment, silence, and avoidance toward restoration, healing, and hope.
Using the memorable WASH PIGS framework, readers will learn how to assess difficult situations, offer wise counsel, and extend grace without compromising truth. Each chapter explores real-world scenarios, examines both secular and biblical perspectives, and provides actionable steps for helping fellow Christians navigate moments of spiritual crisis.
Whether you are a church leader, small-group facilitator, mentor, parent, or believer seeking to strengthen your ability to care for others, Spiritual CPR offers a compassionate roadmap for restoring those who are hurting, struggling, or wandering from their faith.
When spiritual emergencies arise, will you be prepared to help save a life?
The next spiritual emergency in your church, family, or circle of friends may be closer than you think. Will you know how to respond?
Spiritual CPR
Spiritual CPR, by Dr. Shaun Jester, takes the urgency of emergency medicine and applies it to spiritual crises within the Christian community. Drawing on his experience as an obstetrician and gynecologist, Jester argues that Christians often recognize a physical emergency immediately but can overlook someone who is struggling spiritually until the damage has become much harder to address. His answer is a framework called WASH PIGS, which asks readers to consider the whole story, a person’s awareness, whether help has been solicited, the potential harvest of an intervention, prayer, personal influence, individual gifting, and special circumstances. That framework gives the book a practical backbone. Rather than simply telling readers to confront sin or offer encouragement, Jester wants them to slow down enough to understand the person in front of them and decide what responsible help might actually look like.
The book puts that approach to work across eight substantial chapters covering pornography, sex outside marriage, elective abortion, LGBTQIA+ issues, idolatry, chronic sins, estrangement, and apathy. Each chapter opens with a scenario involving people whose circumstances are usually more complicated than they first appear. From there, Jester mixes biblical interpretation, medical or social research, personal observations, case-style questions, examples from Scripture, and concrete suggestions for intervention. The repetition is intentional. By returning to WASH PIGS again and again, the book trains the reader to ask questions before reacting. Some of the subjects are emotionally and culturally charged, and Jester approaches them from an explicitly conservative Christian understanding of Scripture. At the same time, one of his most persistent themes is that biblical conviction should produce compassion, dignity, patience, and a willingness to help.
What gives Spiritual CPR its personality is the combination of a doctor’s problem-solving instincts with the voice of someone writing directly to fellow church members. Jester frequently thinks in terms of diagnosis, intervention, risk factors, warning signs, and appropriate levels of care. That works especially well when he discusses situations involving abuse, addiction, pregnancy, trafficking, burnout, or circumstances where professional help and legal responsibilities may be involved. The scenarios also keep the book from becoming purely theoretical. Readers are repeatedly asked, in effect, “What would you actually do if this person showed up in your church or called you for help?” The later chapters broaden the idea in an interesting way, particularly the discussions of estrangement and apathy. By the end, spiritual CPR isn’t presented merely as correcting somebody else’s obvious moral failure. It becomes a call to examine one’s own passivity, motives, habits, and willingness to remain involved when helping another person becomes uncomfortable.
I’d recommend Spiritual CPR most strongly to Christians who take biblical authority seriously and want a practical framework for responding to difficult situations in their churches, families, and friendships. Pastors, elders, small-group leaders, ministry volunteers, Christian counselors, and mature church members could especially appreciate its scenario-based format because it naturally lends itself to discussion and training. It would also work well for a church study group willing to wrestle with sensitive subjects. Readers who share Jester’s theological starting point will probably get the most from the specific conclusions he reaches, but the book’s larger challenge is broader and memorable: if Christians say spiritual health matters, they should be prepared to notice when someone is in trouble, learn the whole story, and care enough to respond wisely.
Pages: 136 | ASIN : B0HD52QW3T
