|
|
|
|
A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO PASTOR-CONGREGATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
By Kelli Walker-Jones and Dick Hester
The word “narrative” generates visions of storytelling. To many preachers, for example, “narrative” means including more stories in an otherwise dry sermon. At Triangle Pastoral Counseling’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Project, “narrative” is about more than telling stories. To us, narrative means that we live in stories. Story is the way we see the world. Humans are narrative creatures, and our access to reality is through narrative.
Every situation can be described by more than one story. The four gospels bear witness to this fact. The evidence is all around us. When the daughter of one of the authors (Kelli) was in second grade, her teacher assigned each member of the class to tell a story about making a peanut butter sandwich. As each student told their story, another classmate had to act it out.
The results were hilarious, as wildly divergent stories emerged about the simple act of making a sandwich. Some children forgot to open the jar. Some forgot to spread the jelly. Each child told the story differently, and their sandwiches were something to behold.
When we recognize that any event can be told in more than one narrative, we suddenly become aware that other choices always exist. When stories are filled with problems, they often tell how a particular situation came to an impasse—a situation with no apparent solution.
Our SPE project is aimed, in part, at helping clergy become curious about the alternative stories that aren’t being told. Problem-saturated narratives often conceal untold stories of other options, of untapped resources, and of hope. If multiple stories can be told about any situation, then the idea of the story no longer holds water.
When pastors work from a narrative perspective, they are always asking themselves and others, “What story isn’t being told here?” As our SPE pastors are discovering, such an approach invites people to look at the life and decisions of their community from a different, less polarizing angle.
Dan, for example, one of our project participants, successfully used this narrative approach to help his congregation face the fact that it needed a new building. As the church’s senior pastor, Dan dreaded the prospect of launching a capital campaign. He knew that key people would shrink back from taking such a risk.
From the outset, Dan knew he could take the familiar path of pastoral leadership—tell the church what it needed, recruit backers for the new building, and do damage control with members who disagreed. But that path was more complicated than it might have been because John, an influential lay leader who had always been Dan’s closest supporter and adviser, was unavailable due to health problems.
With the help of his SPE project peer group and his project mentor, however, Dan was able to look at his church’s story of growth and buildings from different angles. As he did so, he began to realize that, ultimately, the congregation was responsible for making this new building decision. Not him.
As he pondered his options, he told his mentor that he wanted to move away from playing the role of CEO. “I’m trying to figure out how to be a spiritual leader in this process,” he said.
As he reflected on this aim, the answer came to him.
“My job is to facilitate the process and not be wedded to the outcome,” Dan told his mentor. As he said those words, he stepped into a narrative quite different from the one that conventional wisdom had laid before him.
Armed with this new insight, Dan led his congregational board to devise a process that would allow members to voice their own stories about the project in a “safe” forum. Rather than a gathering to debate or decide the issue, the meeting was simply a time to listen and hear the different voices in the congregation.
To open the meeting, Dan had the former pastor and two lay persons who had been through previous building projects tell their stories about other times when growth had led to a new building. Then, members were asked to make one statement supporting the project and one statement expressing reservations.
The meeting allowed the congregation to reach into the narrative of its past to fashion a story about its future. Whether the building was to be built or not, Dan’s job was to care for the process. The outcome belonged to the congregation. By turning to narrative and memory rather than Roberts Rules of Order, Dan provided powerful spiritual leadership.
Our SPE project draws from narrative therapies that call for the helper, or therapist, to take a not-knowing position rather than be a knowing expert. From Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament interpreter, we borrow the metaphor of thin and thick narratives. Thin narratives are conventional, one-dimensional stories that stick with a single version of events. Thick narratives are complex and ambiguous, and contain multiple versions of events. From Parker Palmer, the author of several books on education, spirituality and social change, we borrow a primary rule of interaction: “No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight.”
Unlike conventional therapy, which views the therapist as the expert healer, narrative therapy views the client as the expert on his or her own life. The therapist, in turn, becomes a curious listener who never assumes to know things ahead of the client. Instead, the narrative therapist works side-by-side with client. Together, they become “archeologists of hope” who are unearthing untold stories. (See Gerald Monk and others, Narrative Therapy in Practice: The Archaeology of Hope.)
So what does all this mean for clergy? What happens when a pastor becomes attentive to the multiple stories in the congregation and considers it to be the real expert on communal life? Rather than being responsible for solving a problem, the pastor focuses instead on a process to help the community hear the multiple narratives of the problem. The minister becomes the tender of the process rather than a judge or enforcer of solutions. The community takes responsibility for its own actions, and new options for creative solutions come into view.
Theologically, our project is grounded in the belief that God is constantly at work in the world, even when we cannot see it. Narrative work takes a position of relentless optimism, believing there is always another story that may disclose God’s work and invitation. When a person or a group expresses pain or hopelessness, the minister’s challenge is to listen for shards of alternative stories, stories that can be assembled into narratives of hope and the realization of God’s dream.
One way we practice this archaeology of hope, both in our SPE project and in our counseling work, is to present cases in a reflecting team format drawn from narrative therapy. In this process, the person presenting a case chooses a listening partner and, instead of talking to the group, speaks only to the partner. As the presenter and partner pair off, the group is placed in a position to overhear and to serve as a “reflecting team.” If the group has more than six or seven members, four or five are asked to serve as the reflecting team; otherwise, the whole group serves.
During this exercise, the boundary between the presenter and partner holds firm; there is no cross-talk between the presenter/partner and the group. First, the presenter talks with the listening partner for 20 minutes. Then the presenter and listening partner overhear the reflecting team discuss what they have heard. The boundary remains in place.
The reflecting team listens for sparkling moments, for alternative narratives, and for connections with their own stories. They do not offer advice or correction. They offer optimistic, deep attentiveness that one of our participants has called “holy listening.”
After 15 minutes, the presenter and listener respond for 10 minutes to what they have overheard. Then the whole group speaks together. The entire process lasts about an hour. While the reflecting team format is counter-cultural and takes practice, it can change the way people give and receive help and healing. It is a move from a critical-diagnostic-treatment model to a collegial “we are all members of the same body” model.
Our project’s narrative approach cuts us loose from certainty, from knowing, from the expert position. Instead, we are taken up into stories of difficulty and impasse where the direction is not clear. In these narratives we search for small clues to alternative narratives in which people have solved other problems, been courageous, acted with wisdom, and become aware of God’s constant work in their lives.
Kelli Walker-Jones is associate director and Dick Hester is director of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Project at Triangle Pastoral Counseling in Raleigh, N.C.
|
|
Send mail to
webmaster
with questions
or comments about this web site. |