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.

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.

Getting from Here to There

In order to more fully incorporate narrative thinking into ministry practice, we faith community leaders may have to leap-frog over the residuals of modern modes of thinking that persist in our consciousness.  This is in part a matter of toning down the visioning of our work. Thus, we move away from explaining experiences by use of grand theories that cover everything. Instead, we more profitably take to discerning contextually limited truths from stories we’ve listened to and processed with others. While we do not necessarily give up our cherished universal truths and beliefs, we must at least suspend judgments that are projected from them in order to hear and act upon what is coming from the other. Or, climbing down from our coveted meta-positions and the relationship power that goes with being wise guides, we level the hierarchy of the helping relationship.  Respectfully, we collaborate with those we seek to help in the search for a preferred, “real and right” story within them that will enable them to put their being right and their faith into more effective action.

Some of us love this new kind of ministry talk or are at least curious about it. Others of us may see nothing new, here, or may be skeptical and not wish to bother with any radical departure from our preferred ways of delivering care or leading faith communities. Many of us dislike changing our ways. And honestly, who of us cannot at times be impatient and dismissive with ideas that contrast with our own.

Fair enough. But, before you hit the road, consider this: whatever our stance, there is growing recognition among faith community leaders that the most basic care we give our constituents requires that we listen to and respond with thoughtfulness to stories people tell us. Doesn’t it ring a bell in our heads that, as astute practitioners and human services providers of all brands, we usually do a better job for our constituents when we grasp that people make sense and meaning of their origins, identity, work, struggle, play and important relationships through their stories? The simple truth is that at every moment the outcome of our care depends as much on the covert influence of the storied experiences we bring to the meeting as it does on our professional knowledge.

The Stories We Have Become

Like all people in human communities, we as leaders undeniably become our own stories. Our identities are a fluid, ever-changing amalgam of our life experience. Our stories and our lives are under construction from birth until death. Still, certain parts of our storied identity appear in regularized themes and story plots and these shape our course and direct the choices of our meandering journey through life.  They also come into play in the performance of ministry tasks. We cannot preach a sermon without recalling religious experiences we have had, family injunctions that still invoke their tyranny, the imprint of our mentors on our thought and speech, or the wrenching struggles we ourselves have had with a powerful text. Likewise, at a hospital bed, it is not only the outpouring story of the suffering one before us that defines the pastoral relationship and guides our interventions, but our own (hopefully managed) angst is right there as well. Sometimes the emotional painfulness in the room can even tear open our own existential wounds and trauma memories. This parallel story process may be a blessing or curse, depending upon our level of skill in identifying it and maturity in handling it.

Whether the reader can identify with a narrative frame for ministry or not, one thing is certain: we are living out our stories even as we walk beside those who are living out theirs. No one escapes from the power or influence of their life stories. Indeed, we human service professionals who find a home in faith communities can ourselves be as captive behind the closed doors of our stories as are those we seek to help. Any of us can be a prisoner of powerful, highly charged experiences we are reluctant to address, or seem neither to challenge nor change. Pastors, religious educators, chaplains, counselors, therapists, social workers, administrators, etc. – none of us is granted an exemption. No matter how well educated our brains, or how well put together we may think our emotional systems are, if we neglect the continuing impact of our own stories on what we are doing in the actions of ministry, we do so at our peril. Especially, the unprocessed experiences, story plots, and unexamined patterns of our personal stories can, and too often do, emerge from the shadows to bite our backsides or unexpectedly shake up our lives. For example, a leader’s personal/professional story can sometimes appear “problem saturated” and captive to unexamined behaviors spun off from habitual, inherited family of origin patterns. These can generate a tub-load of trouble.  Addiction, distorted religious ideology, uncontrolled sexual conduct, or angry residuals of family of origin relationship experience such as deceit, excessive competitiveness, extreme emotional reactivity, or avoidance of intimacy and responsibility are only a few of these woes. When a minister’s life is in their grip, the giftedness, energy, and joy of ministry can languish in misspent efforts or self-sabotage.

Furthermore, any of us can harbor within important pieces of ourselves, story fragments one author has referred to as “shadow scripts” that belie or even contradict the stories we are living out.  These unvoiced and unrecognized parts of our identity, perhaps even preferred ones, may lie latent within until some turn in the road, some new opportunity, some crisis, calls them forth to be dealt with. These can shock us beyond belief if they do not fit with our usual perception of ourselves. Consistently responsible and attentive to the needs of others, we can suddenly be faced with a part of us that says, “Enough of this responsible stuff. For once I want to skip that ‘important’ meeting and sleep in this weekend!”

Or, more seriously, we may be living out an internalized, dominant societal discourse that has “colonized” our consciousness, limiting our options in life. Popular ideas of self development and the good life can hold us in the harness of a certain profession, love relationship, family role, or habitat. One day we realize that this is not what we want to continue. From that point on our days become one tedious step at a time until we reach a point of change or relief that starts us on an entirely different path in life. So we begin, however haltingly, living out a dream too long denied, a preferred story that has been crying out to be realized. I believe that these transformative events amount to no less than a discovery of our deeper, unrecognized, complex, and unrealized humanity. While they are not always happy discoveries, embracing the shadow stories that pop up in our consciousness can lead to an instructive awakening to the darker forces within our character, as well as to our fuller God-given potential. As people of faith, the turmoil we endure before and after these life-bending events are a process we are in with the Holy Spirit, who brings new birth out of the groaning and travail of our gestating existence (Romans 8:22 NIV).

The Stories Others Tell Us

The discussions we have with ourselves on the above concerns can be both sobering and liberating as we address the needs of and offer care to others who are close to us. For instance, when we narrative thinkers are asked to reach out to a troubled parishioner or colleague in ministry, we do so with the full and modesty-making knowledge that the person’s story is not dissimilar to our own. Theologically speaking, our story, the person’s story, and the stories of our faith tradition and theirs, intermingle at their nexus with catalytic results. As we tend to the stories of others, we narrative thinkers are often found keeping our mouths shut and our sensory apparatus wide open for the purpose of making room for the inspirited wisdom of a storied situation to emerge. With heightened awareness, senses cranked to the full, we are there with the companionship of the Spirit, who eases the burden and suffuses the helping relationship with a dose of divine power and intention. We listen. We withhold judgment, assuming a curious and kenotic (emptied) stance. We do not seize upon whatever “pathology” we might once have commenced to look for. We hear the problem parts, but do not privilege them in our care. Rather, we look with the person at her/his life story, identify its culturally subjugated as well as promising parts, and help reposition the person in relationship to life in the world to achieve their own authentic voice. This is a work of restoration and empowerment in itself. We then attend to those parts of the person’s story that are not problem-ridden and boost them upon the scale of our consciousness, making a place for their expression in the conversation. In the presence of the other, we reinforce those story parts, endorse their positive themes, and help these elements of meaning rise to a more prominent place. We work with the troubled person to “tease” them apart from those problematic parts of the person’s life that are overcrowding the rest. We use what narrative therapists refer to as “externalizing conversations” that shift the problem part or pattern of the suffering person from inside to outside of self so that it can be experienced and dealt with as a separate entity.

Editor's Note:

This article is Part One of three.

Part Two: Getting the Idea of Narrative: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

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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