Getting the Idea of Narrative: Story-Based Thinking about Ministry - Part One
Written by William Presnell, D.Min.
Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:26
Narrative perception is a window into the storied realities of all human relationships. Theologians, philosophers, and researchers have had quite a say about it, especially over the past two decades. This has delivered an old-but-new twist to the saga of ministry practice, the bottom line of which has always been the stories people live by and tell others. Not surprisingly, those in the ministry resources business are putting their own spin on what the gurus have been saying. Their point seems to be that those of us who are lifting hands to help, offering shoulders to comfort aching people in ministry, and daring to embody the discerned wisdom of our traditions in our leadership, should make the hearing and processing of stories our priority concern in ministry. They tell us that we must not only understand the place of stories in the personal and communal fortunes of our fellow creatures, but intentionally integrate narrative approaches and methods into our daily work as well. I believe this is a point well taken. Narrative thinking does seem to make sense. Moreover, it offers an approach to the delivery of care and community leadership that reflects postmodern realities. In this article we will be making the case for using narrative ideas more extensively in conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating ministries of various sorts. We also hope that the concrete examples of this will be helpful to those who may wish to incorporate narrative ideas more intentionally into their work.
When my marriage ended 16 years ago, my friendship network underwent drastic upheaval. Some of those I'd thought of as friends who'd support me through the terrible transition of coming spousally-unglued backed away with alarming alacrity. Colleagues whose offices were eight feet away walked by my office door without saying hello; friends who used to invite me places didn't any more. It seemed my phone stopped ringing, although a faithful few stayed close at hand and unexpected people I hadn't thought of as loyal friends stepped up to see me through. One day a colleague of mine asked me what it was like to divorce and I said I'd not expected to become a pariah such that people fled from my company. She replied that she understood completely how that could happen because every time she looked at me she realized that "divorce" could happen to her and she didn't like to think about it, so it was easier to avoid me. I was grateful for her candor. In time I built a new network of friends.
Elegance and Authenticity: A Tribute to Pauline Oates by C. Roy Woodruff, Ph.D.
Thursday, 18 February 2010 19:16
A few weeks ago we lost a lovely lady and a dear friend who had lived a long and active life, Pauline Oates. The wife of Wayne E. Oates, a well-known and respected professor, author, and mentor to many, including myself, Pauline seemed happy to walk in the large shadow that he cast, knowing she was loved and honored. Yet, her own inner light was too bright to remain in anyone’s shadow without shining through with an identity and purpose all her own. Wayne and Pauline are two of the most significant others in the lives of myself and my wife, Kay. We met them at a formative time in our lives, and they became lifelong friends. That relationship with Pauline continued, and in some ways deepened, after Wayne’s death, and we are grateful for what she shared with us simply by being who she was, and we loved her for it.
Suicide is a black hole in life's fabric. Suicide is a failure of hope, of faith, of trust in the human family. Suicide sucks light from the world. Consider these real human stories:
Some time has elapsed since my last column; the effects of the chemo caught up with me in October and I was exhausted for the next three months. The good news is that my last PET scan showed that I am in remission. However, because the chance of staying in remission for 18 months is 50-60%, my oncologist sent me to Vanderbilt Medical Center to discuss stem cell transplant and a Phase 2 clinical trial of a drug used for multiple myeloma. The drug trial would have meant 48 more weeks of chemo, so, after much agonizing deliberation I decided to just ‘sit tight’ (as the oncologist phrased it) and live with the knowledge that there is a 40 to 50% chance of the lymphoma NOT returning within a year and a half. I feel well now and want to take full advantage of this new-found quality of life, so hope is the active verb at this stage.
Nature and Nurture: Products But Not Prisoners of Our Past by Wilson Wayne Grant, M.D.
Written by Wilson Wayne Grant, MD
Thursday, 04 February 2010 16:46
Throughout the twentieth century students of human development debated, at times, heatedly, the relative significance of various determinants of human personality and behavior. The larger debate danced around the question: Is it nature or nurture that determines the character and actions of the person? Decade after decade the pendulum has swung back and forth from one viewpoint to the other as myriads of scientists have jumped into the debate with their own sets of data.
Fuel was thrown on the fire of this debate in the 1930s by Dr. B.F. Skinner and his pioneering studies of behavior and conditioning. Building on the ideas of earlier behaviorists, he demonstrated the potential of conditioning to modify and control behavior. Although controversial even in his own day, Skinner’s work illustrated the power of circumstance and experience to modify behavior in animals as well as humans.1
The essential implication of behaviorism is straightforward: If an observer (a parent, teacher, or researcher) likes a given behavior, reward it; if the observer does not like the behavior, punish it or withhold reward from it. Rewarded behavior continues and dominates; punished or un-rewarded behavior fades. Formal as well as informal observation verified that behavior modification worked—at least in many circumstances. Thus, nurture obviously played a part in human behavior. (Some would say that Dr. Skinner certainly had a skewed concept of nurture.) Skinner and his disciples took this principle to extreme to say that all behavior was primarily determined by the modification (nurture) applied to it.
When, some months ago now, I heard President Obama refer to Reinhold Niebuhr as his favorite philosopher/theologian, my heart strangely warmed. I remembered all too well those sessions from my own graduate classes where we debated Professor Niebuhr’s thought with Dr. Glen Stassen, our own professor, who tended to favor H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold’s brother. I thought of his works such as The Nature and Destiny of Man (sic) or Moral Man, Immoral Society. I felt relieved that our president was at least acquainted at some level with the thinking of one who had helped to shape a generation of theological and even political thought in our country.
If you haven't yet read C.S. Lewis' classic, That Hideous Strength, I recommend that you latch onto a copy immediately. It's readily available at your library, used book source, or regular book shop in paperback. Please do not be dismayed by the fact that it is billed as Sci Fi. It's just not (but I suspect it was a marketing ploy which 'stuck to the boot,' so to speak).
Instead, think of this novel as: (1) a good/evil allegory; (2) a study in ethics; (3) a study in moral theology; (4) a tale of spiritual struggle not only on gigantic mass levels but on the individual level, which is of course where the rubber meets the road for us all; (5) magic, myth,and folklore--there is super-supernatural stuff within; and (6) everyone who reads this book will at some point identify with one of the characters who are struggling to make the right choices.
She sat alone in her living room on Christmas Eve, her old wooden rocker creaking gently as she rocked, a brightly painted footstool supporting her tired and hiking booted feet. Next to her on a low table, a teapot she'd made years ago in her mother's memory exuded aroma of jasmine and radiant heat. Her picture window was wide open to the scene outside, bamboo screens set aside, so she could sit in darkness and watch fat flakes of snow drift onto the dogwood, azaleas and holly bushes in her yard. A single candle her only light, a warm mug of tea between her palms, an old prayer shawl around her shoulders, she sat and waited for Christmas to come.
This year's recession has hurt almost everyone's continuing education budgets, and this time of cultural transition has made participating in lifelong learning especially important. So the Oates Institute is offering a special opportunity to become a member of the Oates Institute and register for our online seminars free through 2010 for only $96 (a 20% discount). Click here for more information.
Narrative perception is a window into the storied realities of all human relationships. Theologians, philosophers, and researchers have had quite a say about it, especially over the past two decades. This has delivered an old-but-new twist to the saga of ministry practice, the bottom line of which has always been the stories people live by and tell others. Not surprisingly, those in the ministry resources business are putting their own spin on what the gurus have been saying. Their point seems to be that those of us who are lifting hands to help, offering shoulders to comfort aching people in ministry, and daring to embody the discerned wisdom of our traditions in our leadership, should make the hearing and processing of stories our priority concern in ministry. They tell us that we must not only understand the place of stories in the personal and communal fortunes of our fellow creatures, but intentionally integrate narrative approaches and methods into our daily work as well. I believe this is a point well taken. Narrative thinking does seem to make sense. Moreover, it offers an approach to the delivery of care and community leadership that reflects postmodern realities. In this article we will be making the case for using narrative ideas more extensively in conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating ministries of various sorts. We also hope that the concrete examples of this will be helpful to those who may wish to incorporate narrative ideas more intentionally into their work.
When my marriage ended 16 years ago, my friendship network underwent drastic upheaval. Some of those I'd thought of as friends who'd support me through the terrible transition of coming spousally-unglued backed away with alarming alacrity. Colleagues whose offices were eight feet away walked by my office door without saying hello; friends who used to invite me places didn't any more. It seemed my phone stopped ringing, although a faithful few stayed close at hand and unexpected people I hadn't thought of as loyal friends stepped up to see me through. One day a colleague of mine asked me what it was like to divorce and I said I'd not expected to become a pariah such that people fled from my company. She replied that she understood completely how that could happen because every time she looked at me she realized that "divorce" could happen to her and she didn't like to think about it, so it was easier to avoid me. I was grateful for her candor. In time I built a new network of friends.
A few weeks ago we lost a lovely lady and a dear friend who had lived a long and active life, Pauline Oates. The wife of Wayne E. Oates, a well-known and respected professor, author, and mentor to many, including myself, Pauline seemed happy to walk in the large shadow that he cast, knowing she was loved and honored. Yet, her own inner light was too bright to remain in anyone’s shadow without shining through with an identity and purpose all her own. Wayne and Pauline are two of the most significant others in the lives of myself and my wife, Kay. We met them at a formative time in our lives, and they became lifelong friends. That relationship with Pauline continued, and in some ways deepened, after Wayne’s death, and we are grateful for what she shared with us simply by being who she was, and we loved her for it.
Some time has elapsed since my last column; the effects of the chemo caught up with me in October and I was exhausted for the next three months. The good news is that my last PET scan showed that I am in remission. However, because the chance of staying in remission for 18 months is 50-60%, my oncologist sent me to Vanderbilt Medical Center to discuss stem cell transplant and a Phase 2 clinical trial of a drug used for multiple myeloma. The drug trial would have meant 48 more weeks of chemo, so, after much agonizing deliberation I decided to just ‘sit tight’ (as the oncologist phrased it) and live with the knowledge that there is a 40 to 50% chance of the lymphoma NOT returning within a year and a half. I feel well now and want to take full advantage of this new-found quality of life, so hope is the active verb at this stage.
Throughout the twentieth century students of human development debated, at times, heatedly, the relative significance of various determinants of human personality and behavior. The larger debate danced around the question: Is it nature or nurture that determines the character and actions of the person? Decade after decade the pendulum has swung back and forth from one viewpoint to the other as myriads of scientists have jumped into the debate with their own sets of data.
When, some months ago now, I heard President Obama refer to Reinhold Niebuhr as his favorite philosopher/theologian, my heart strangely warmed. I remembered all too well those sessions from my own graduate classes where we debated Professor Niebuhr’s thought with Dr. Glen Stassen, our own professor, who tended to favor H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold’s brother. I thought of his works such as The Nature and Destiny of Man (sic) or Moral Man, Immoral Society. I felt relieved that our president was at least acquainted at some level with the thinking of one who had helped to shape a generation of theological and even political thought in our country.
If you haven't yet read C.S. Lewis' classic, That Hideous Strength, I recommend that you latch onto a copy immediately. It's readily available at your library, used book source, or regular book shop in paperback. Please do not be dismayed by the fact that it is billed as Sci Fi. It's just not (but I suspect it was a marketing ploy which 'stuck to the boot,' so to speak). 
