The Oates Journal (ISSN: 1098-1446) is a publication of the Wayne E. Oates Institute addressing issues related to spirituality, ethics, and healing from the perspective of pastoral care and counseling.

Before any of us takes one more sip of this heady narrative brew, we may well ask, “How does this kind of narrative thinking play out in other specific forms of ministry practice, especially in our leadership?” Let’s explore a couple of thoughts about that.

First, let us look at the ministry of preaching. The preacher’s stock-in-trade has always been facilitating the interlacing of biblical narratives with the stories of listeners in the nave and choir loft (Barnes, 1995, p. 9).  Further, narrative- thinking preachers strive to be more dialogical than didactic. They harvest and mull over multiple stories from their daily rounds of care. They allow working truths to “bubble up” from the plain sense and interpreted meanings gleaned from conversations with their community of faithful hearers. They notice how their charges speak about their interactions with popular media and cultural materials such as favorite television programs, art objects, and internet blogs. They move away from reliance upon the delivery of “essential, eternal truths down through history” as the one and only frame for their work or path to enlightenment. And they permit story images (particularly biblical ones) and visuals to carry the message of redemption. Most importantly, they arrive at their context-bound truths by reflecting theologically at the intersection of these harvested research stories.

Or, consider the work of pastoral caregivers. Caregivers who venture into the anciently rooted but relatively new frontier of narrative counsel can discover a new and fruitful approach to counseling emotionally and spiritually troubled persons. Pastoral counselors and chaplains in growing numbers incorporate narrative ideas into their work by launching their praxis from the postmodern era etiological notion that the problem is the problem. The problem is not the person of the one suffering. That is, troubled relationship interactions are not generated by an individual’s internal conflict. Their origin is in the relationships they have at all levels of living. Relationship with self is only one source of so-called “symptomatic” behavior in relationship systems. Symptoms are as likely to stem from the perception of differences people have with others concerning their story-organized ideas, values, and meanings and the ways these collide around a given issue or situation. So, narrative-thinking chaplains take a decidedly modest, kenotic, emptied (“not knowing”) stance, leveling the hierarchy of the helping relationship. They free themselves from the urge to “fix” the person and instead devote energy to the processing of stories. They make a space for the suffering one(s) to speak him/ herself into new wholeness by objectifying the “problem” as an entity apart from the person rather than within the person, so that the troubled one can converse or even negotiate with it.  As any chaplain or pastor knows, people most often move towards healing when they tell their stories in the presence of a caring listener. This is particularly true when the areas and influences of trouble are pulled apart from the whole and functional remainder of the person’s relationship behavior so as to avoid pathologizing the person. One way to look at this is to see the person as trapped in a frustrating fusion with the “problem,” that inhibits insight and change. Therefore, instead of referring to a person as an “alcoholic” (an identity label) we instead might ask the person to give a descriptive name to the relationship they have to the substance that is bringing trouble to their lives.  The person might call this, “A visit from Ethyl and Al.” We encourage the person to separate from and take charge of such encroaching, threatening, or broken parts of the self.

When we work with people’s stories our professional knowledge or skill of that of others is not discounted nor distained. Nor are the past history and future hopes of clients, or ours. Yet, what is privileged is what’s happening in the here and now. It is in the unfolding of the relationship narrative in a collaborative conversation in which the counselor and client seek to understand what the story says and means that insight and healing take place. The client is the expert because the story is lived by the client and best understood by the client.

Some years ago, when narrative thinking was beginning to enter the mainstream of health care, I was drawn into a pastoral situation that has stayed with me. The story is one of a dear, mature, devout parishioner of a church I was then serving. She was seventy-six and dying of cancer. She had no living relatives besides her husband. He told me that I was not to reveal the diagnosis to her, for fear of making things worse (she would give up, he thought). The doctor was waffling on the matter. From the story of my consistent pastoral conversations with her, I gathered that she believed that she was dying, but was irritated that her husband was unavailable to talk about their relationship and life after her death. I gathered as many stories about the dilemma as possible, including the wisdom of our faith community, the doctors and floor nurses, the chaplain who had visited her and memories from some close to her of how she dealt with life before her illness. A “real or right” wisdom emerged from the intersection of these stories, a spot defined by a meeting of crucial, interwoven meanings at which the Spirit so often awaits us. My authority for making this decision surfaced in the conjoint medical /community/religious institution milieu I was a part of. It was God’s Word for me in that place and time. We discerned that she should be told, and be helped to prepare for death. The husband could choose to stay in denial, but should not be allowed to decide whether his wife should be told the truth.  His pattern of protection was consistent. If he were to become wrathful, as he well could, it could be handled. After she was told by the doctor I made a follow up visit, at which the parishioner and I talked freely about the cancer and about the “final things” she wished to prepare for. She felt relief and empowerment that she would be able to shape the story of the end of her life. She could, perhaps for the first time, take care of her self-sufficient husband by consoling him while sharing her end-of-life journey with him. As for the husband, he was able after some difficult moments to grasp the reality of his wife’s impending death, not as a failure of his character (strong, invulnerable, all protective husband) but as a devastating but natural threat from the outside. Mortality had paid them both a visit, and while they could not control it any further, they could cope with it together. They called it, “Our Last Challenge.” Rather than feeling angry, the husband instead seemed relieved, too. Later, when they were alone together, he sobbed, beginning to mourn the loss of the only love of his life as she comforted him. But the tender intimacy they shared as a “sparkling moment” at this critical juncture in their marriage was surely a match for any they had previously experienced. If I had acted only upon the medical story, or on the perceptions of him as fiercely self-sufficient or unable to handle the death of his wife, I doubt that they would ever have experienced this precious chapter of their relationship story. The story would not have become “thickened” with depth and truth. I would not have performed the truth that God eventually gave all of us.

Further, a shadow story emerged from the intersection and reflection on the gathered stories surrounding the above pastoral situation. In the fluid heat of crisis the husband was afraid of losing his identity, his security, and his role as director, protector, and provider. These were the pillars upon which he had built the guiding story for his life and by means of which he identified himself. He did not wish to face his fear, sadness, mortality, and vulnerability. These stood apart, disconnected and in the shadows. When his story intersected with the other stories and the promises of God, he broke through, gained a new part of his identity, and changed his life’s guiding story from that of heroic strength and invincibility to one of compassionate and vulnerably resonant companion. I firmly believe that this man’s “rewritten story” scribed in the heat of crisis, equipped him to weather the storm of grief and loss and remarry happily a few years later.

Third, some of us may want to think for a moment of ways religious educators might put narrative ideas to work. Religious education has ridden down the trail of history on the backs of stories told and remembered in the Judeo-Christian and other faith traditions. When given the opportunity to articulate the congruence between their own stories and the biblical text, learners can not only find themselves transported to a new spiritual place, but speak themselves into a new and conscious wholeness as well. The experiences we have with God and other believers live on in our memories, organized by the stories we retell. Faith formation calls out these personal and communal stories for engagement with the story of faith. Thus, is identity refreshed, renewed, and even remade! Skilled educators who listen to and process these stories have a leg up on those who depend on didactic, “down from above” instruction in faith. Elizabeth Barnes, cited above, has described the faith formation process as a powerful human response to the capacity of the Spirit of God to “interweave” the biblical story and its multiple narratives with the stories of our lives that constantly intersect with it – with transformative results (Barnes, 1995, p. 9).

The Faith Community Leader as Story Broker

When applied to the study and leadership of faith communities and the evaluation of ministries, postmodern narrative discernment is guided by the same set of ideas presented above. Leaders of faith communities above all else respect and respond to the stories told them by community members. These members have stored away these organized memories and continue to be influenced greatly by them in their ministry activities. As a member begins to recall a story with, “I remember when…” we are alerted to the coded message that is often intended: “Let's try it again!” Relationship systems theorists correctly observe that effective community leaders are those who can remain self-differentiated enough to avoid being swallowed up by these influences, yet mature enough to listen carefully to and learn from them. This maturity is the capacity to make conscious, sound choices on the spot that bring about a balanced engagement of our intellectual responses and our heart responses as we tend to the stories of ones we care for, whether we articulate those responses or hold them in appropriate abeyance. When we achieve this as leaders we are able to look for and process these stories with appreciation as we imagine the community’s future with our members.

My colleague Carl Savage and I are so convinced of the power of a community’s contextual stories that we place them at the heart of our definition of pastoral theology. We define pastoral theology as: "Critical conversation that takes place at the intersection of the multiple narratives surrounding a particular contemporary situation nestled in a particular ministry context" (Savage and Presnell, 2008, p. 50-51).

We also strongly believe that, important among these intersecting narratives are the leader/researcher’s personal faith story, the mediated story of the faith tradition of the context, and the individual, family, group, and institutional stories from the context. It is from this intersection of institutional stories and faith/experiential stories of the people that the wages of theological reflection are drawn and the wisdom of the Spirit can be appropriated.

However, while our personal stories and stories of our faith communities are often entwined, a more specialized brand of story-brokering is called for in the narrative analysis a faith community does. It calls upon the capacity of its leaders to process a cross-section of stories. These narratives that gather at the site of any contemporary ministry situation under study include the storied historical experience of the faith community; the personal stories of its members; a contextual story that reveals the influences on community life wrought by the cultural and physical environment; and the found documents, symbols, rituals, and artifacts that have expressed its faith and yearnings. So take a close and disciplined look at a faith community’s stories and you are bound to see how the shifts and turns of its inherited patterns and experiential stories shape its ever-changing historical context, its biblical/theological tradition, and its patterns of intergenerational relationship. A faith community can be trapped or liberated by these stories – stories they create and live by. When conflicts rear their heads and hassles beset us in a faith community we can be sure that storied history is coming home to roost!

Therefore, noting the ways in which our community’s stories form, are refined, get told, change, and communicate their guiding truths to us is a narrative leader’s stock in trade. The folks who populate houses of worship uphold each other as they celebrate a new family that is formed in marriage, when children are born and baptized, the seasons are shared, and when death finally breathes on them. They rejoice in effective ministries that help people. And they cry together when they fail. They pray for guidance and strength not only to get through things, but to make things happen for God’s sake. They remember their past and can be either strangled or inspired by it. They remember the ways of their God because the story has been told to them and enacted before them. This is the stuff from which a faith community fashions and continues to re-fashion its identity. They perform their own lived stories while engaged with the biblical narratives and the prayers, hymns, and worship events that leaven the faith story of their distinctive traditions. This brings God near to them. God speaks them into being in this faith-formative process. Their story and God’s story have a powerful and potentially life-changing meeting. They draw both spiritual orientation and ethical guidance from their encounter with God. Faith community leaders effectively bring the stories of the people together with the story of biblical faith in this meeting with the divine.  Christian leaders point to a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ that continues to be experienced in the Spirit. This is a relationship that repositions seekers in their conversation with the world to have an alternative voice and a brand new identity. For those of other faith groups the encounter with the divine is mediated through their own tradition’s symbolic figures and significant actions of the faith community. In any case, the Spirit “interlaces” the human story with the biblical or other textual narratives transporting the faithful to a new, powerful, and hopeful realm of religious consciousness. People are thereby equipped to take up discipleship in faith communities, empowered by a sense of the rightness and authenticity (plain sense) of contextual truths that come to them as their eyes are opened to the divine in acts of devotion and service. The only knowable and useful truth for them is that which is garnered from a community’s inspired discernment of their ministry situations at a given place and time. The faithful hold these guiding truths tentatively, but are expectantly receptive to the advent of fresh divine wisdom. This “plain sense” of the presence of God in community is but an operational understanding of what divine action is effecting in a specific ministry context. It is a work of discernment in progress.

Hearing and capturing the stories is only a part of the leader’s narrative task, however. The narrative leader takes up the tools of more serious story analysis as a tool for further discernment. How do we bring narrative ideas and processing into our pastoral work and leadership? Many of us may not have the time or energy to employ all of the sophisticated methods or generate the complex analysis recommended by the best narrative theorists. But this does not mean that we must leave story analysis to the “experts,” either, as long as we are modest and careful about what we find. We can carry around in our pockets at least a few narrative methods for story deconstruction, analysis, and reflection. With them we are all the better enabled to influence a troubled or wobbly congregation towards a changed discourse with the world, enhanced spiritual reflection, healing of conflicts, restructuring of its order, and perfection of its ministries. Let us briefly explore a few of these methods for story analysis.

Thematic analysis -  People organize their meanings through language, and the meaning of stories can be gotten at by examining their themes. One church of my acquaintance has a congregational story whose major theme is known in some ministerial circles as “clergy killer!” Another faith community is known as a “musical church.” In the first instance a recurring theme of pastor-congregation relationship has been one of conflict leading to the defamation and expulsion of the pastor. In the second case, the centrality of their music program to their identity is played out consistently in ministries organized around music. Deconstructing these abbreviated themes may help the leader gain insight into the identity of these congregations and their guiding stories. The themes may even be somewhat predictive.  However, Riessman (2008),  in her useful book on methods of narrative analysis advocates for reflection on stories that center on the case situation as a whole when dealing with a person’s or community’s guiding story.  While thematic analysis is often used, favored, and quite instructive in research, she cautions the story analyst not to be misled by the sole reliance on thematic analysis. A thickened story and deeper understanding may await the application of a variety of methods.

Riessman (2008) spells out some additional methods for narrative analysis:

The methods cited above will hopefully apprise the reader of the kinds of tools we need in ministry to explore stories in more depth and discern their deeper complexity and wisdom. For more complete and detailed explanations of these methods, see the works cited.  However, before we leave the subject I would offer the reader yet another approach to evaluating the stories people tell us about themselves, their faith communities, and the important work people in covenanted communities share.

Editor's Note:

This article is Part Two of three.

Part Three: Ministry Evaluation and Narrative Analysis

Dr. William Presnell is an Instructor in Drew University’s Doctor of Ministry Program. He is a licensed New Jersey Marital and Family Therapist, Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor in  AAMFT, and Fellow, AAPC. Over his career he has been a pastor, clinician, teacher, and trainer. He has also served as consultant for churches, businesses, and community groups. He is also the coauthor of the book, Narrative Research in Ministry: A Postmodern Research Approach for Faith Communities.

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