The Wayne E. Oates Institute has just published Narrative Research in Ministry: A Postmodern Research Approach for Faith Communities by Carl Savage and William Presnell. Drs. Savage and Presnell reflect:   We are in a real sense, our stories. Who we are, what we think, and how we act are all shaped by the many large and small stories that make up the discourse embedded in our multi-sensory social experience. It is this postmodern understanding of identity and reality that has prompted the authors to fashion a new way of thinking about doing research in faith communities today... It is our belief that, in order for faith communities to define themselves and to know what to do in ministry, they must first understand the multiple stories which intersect with a given ministry situation in their specific context.

Leonard Sweet comments in the forward:

I know of no work like the one you are about to read. Its richness and rarity comes from an uncommon combination of the particular and the universal.
The particular is a laser-like focus on the authors’ proposed shift from a problem-solving methodology to a conversation-starting, metaphor-exegeting, story-catching/storytelling, systems-thinking, preferred-futures approach, or what they call a postmodern narrative approach to ministry research. The universal is a wide-angle view of the changes taking place in culture today and the need to reinvent the ways in which theological education delivers ideas, information, and best practices to the tens of thousands of religious leaders who have the closest day-to-day contact with people.

The book is available for purchase through the Oates Institute Bookstore for $16.95 as a quality paperback or $8 to download it as an eBook.  It is 148 pages. For more information and to order, click below.

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