In a wonderfully engaging, reflective, and useful way, Karen Scheib captures something absolutely essential to pastoral care and yet often overlooked - the utter centrality of storytelling/listening, the power of stories to heal, and their vital connection to bigger stories told within religious communities. This book is a real milestone, reclaiming the importance of "narrative knowing" and grounding care not only in community but also within a comprehensive theological framework.
-Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore,
E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, The Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, TN
Implementing narrative personality and therapy theories and anchored in ecclesiology and Wesleyan theology (NET), Karen Scheib's book advances a long awaited and holistic approach to pastoral care. Her NET approach presents the embodiment of pastoral care by emphasizing both narrative and paradigmatic knowing, proposes the subjectivity of our stories in pastoral care by pointing out the interchangeability between us and our stories as subject and object, and underscores the dynamic process of pastoral care through the interconnection of the storyteller, listener, and context. Scheib's image of story companion contributes to the field as a new paradigm of pastoral care and promises to be a significant resource in generating hope and growth in love for both pastoral caregiver and receiver.
-Angella Son,
Associate Professor, Drew University, Madison, NJ
