A Book Review by David Sawyer, Ph.D. Carl Savage and William Presnell. Narrative Research in Ministry: A Postmodern Research Approach for Faith Communities. Louisville, KY: Wayne E. Oates Institute, 2008. Paper, 138 pages. ISBN 978-1-892990-28-0.

Like the graphic on the highway markers for the Lewis and Clark Trail from the prairies to the Pacific, Savage and Presnell stand and point the way to a mostly uncharted territory. Narrative Research in Ministry was written for the Doctor of Ministry program at Drew University, which is admirably marching “off the map” to discover ministry and methods of advanced theological study for the church in the 21st Century.

By necessity, explorers are often incomplete in their work, because they must blaze new trails and combine their observations with the necessities of survival in a strange land. This book succeeds in its theoretical foundations for narrative research, and gives some good outlines for the kinds of steps needed to pursue the approach. There are also some gaps in the overall mapping that a good “global positioning system” could close.

In Chapter One, they offer a compelling and accessible argument for moving from modern approaches to ministry to a post-modern, relational, interpretive approach. The clear descriptions of the various philosophers of postmodernism are the best I’ve read. Chapter Two describes a practical theology of narrative research under the title “Theological Reflection.” The hermeneutical approach there is not as clear as the chapter on post-modernism, but definitely helpful to someone wanting to study ministry as a student or researcher.

The map becomes more sketchy as they describe how to get into the research project in Chapter Three. The major elements are there, and the steps to be taken in narrative research are the right steps, but there is not a lot of meat on the bones of the outline. While the lovely mandala in the chart on page 91 needs to be better integrated into the text, the example of a narrative project that concludes this chapter is excellent.

The pointing explorers led me to expect that I would find a land of beauty and bounty when I got to the methods chapter. This, however, is the most unfinished part of the book. Savage and Presnell rely heavily on what they call “Bowenian Method” based on an extrapolation of the popular family systems approach to studying and healing families. As I’ve observed him, Bowen is not as systemic as his followers have proclaimed, and his emphasis on anxiety and family history is better at explaining why things don’t change than at promoting transformation. That puts Bowen theory at odds with the authors’ narrative emphasis on preferred future narratives. Although I was glad to see reference to David Steere’s 1997 book on Spiritual Presence in Psychotherapy, I was hoping for a more rigorous theological reflection on systems thinking and qualitative research, such as the more recent work of process theologians like Catherine Keller (also at Drew) or Gordon Kaufman.

In the chapter on evaluation, the authors wisely point to the complex values of truth and transformation, but they revert to abstract philosophical categories of evaluation: functionalist, ecological, materialist, structuralist, and semiotic. I was wishing they’d stuck to simpler, qualitative concerns in describing ways to evaluate the truth and transformation in a particular project. Chapter Thirteen of Colin Robson’s Real World Research (Blackwell, 2002) would have been a better source for their evaluation process.

Savage and Presnell are explorers who have pointed the way. Perhaps a subsequent edition will make the maps more complete.

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