Abstract
The direct relationship between persons’ suffering and sociopolitical contexts has attracted increasingly close pastoral theological attention over the last forty years, largely prompted by books such as Archie Smith’s The Relational Self: Ethics and Therapy from a Black Church Perspective (Abingdon, 1982). There Smith challenged a false separation between personal pain and structural realities, arguing that the etiologies of many concerns needing pastoral care are the direct result of the contexts in which people live. Contemporary pastoral theologians have taken up Smith’s challenge to rethink many of our assumptions about affliction, and significant theological and theoretical progress has been made. However, our attention to practices has not kept pace, and pastoral caregivers have struggled to bring theory to the ground in their everyday ministries. With this book Karen Scheib helps close that gap. In proposing a model of narrative, ecclesiological, theological (NET) pastoral care, Scheib highlights the practice of “story-companioning” that is personally focused, attentive to context, communally driven, and theoretically and theologically funded.
Scheib begins with the importance of the stories that give shape to our lives—even substantiate our very selves (8). She lays out the basic elements of the narratives we tell, and offers insight into what makes some life-stories “work” while others are problematic. Scheib then offers a review (“Theology 101,” 31) of the stories the Christian tradition has told of God, including an introduction to (Methodist) understandings of personhood, grace, sin, atonement, sanctification, and salvation. She argues that the church and its members have a particular role in proclaiming divine love, fostering persons’ growth in love, and healing the consequences of the failures of human love through pastoral care (57). (While some readers may find Scheib’s review just that, it will be extremely valuable for teaching those who join our seminaries, divinity schools, and churches with little or no formal experience in any religious tradition—an increasingly common phenomenon. Non-Methodist readers will be served by clarifying their own theological perspectives.) While contextually derived “master” narratives can support life-giving personal narratives, often they do not (for example, when master narratives are negative, exclusionary, or oppressive, as in the cultural “story-o-types” perpetuated about women, people of color, and other targeted groups, 89). Having laid this groundwork, Scheib invites pastoral caregivers to understand more adequately the stories (both personal and collective) we hear.
While the practice of being a story-companion is accessible (“anyone” can do it, 14), it is by no means simple. Effective story companions actively engage the stories they are told, listening for whether they are adequate to bear the complex realities of the narrator’s life and accompanying persons as they seek to develop more coherent, meaningful, and hopeful stories. In the second portion of the book, Scheib provides a detailed “how-to” for these practices. She describes concretely how to listen well and what to listen for, and offers suggestions for supporting persons’ work to “re-story problem narratives,” particularly after trauma, transition, or loss. To illustrate her points Scheib offers useful vignettes; to support meaningful discussion, she suggests questions readers might engage.
With this book, Scheib has given pastoral theologians and practitioners a gift, and there is much in it to commend, including the theoretical and theological sophistication, the exploration of the power dynamics inherent in story-companioning and the ethics implied, the invitation to examine one’s own stories, and the illuminating exploration of the ways master narratives inform personal narratives. (Further analysis of the ways engaging personal stories of pain can lead to identifying and changing oppressive sociopolitical structures would be welcome.)
Readers along a spectrum of expertise will find Scheib’s book useful: pastoral theologians and practitioners-in-training will find a comprehensive grounding in the field and its best practices of care. Experienced professionals will find useful reminders about why they are committed to their vocation and tools for refining their practice. Teachers will find a useful text to introduce students to the discipline and skills of pastoral theology.
On a formatting note, despite Scheib’s clear and accessible writing, the text is not an easy read. The small font makes engaging her careful explorations laborious, requiring more effort of the reader than necessary. This is unfortunate, as the book deserves a large audience. (I have already begun to imagine how I will adapt several courses to incorporate Scheib’s contributions). Teachers will want to calculate how much reading can be assigned each week to factor in the slower pace students might need to meaningfully absorb the material. But assign it you should: this book is both intellectually sophisticated and eminently practical—as valuable as it is rare.