Narrative Discipleship - Guiding Emerging Adults To "Connect The Dots" of Life and Faith

CEJ 8n2 text:CEJ 8-2 Fall2011
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CEJ: Series 3, Vol. 8, No. 2
Copyright 2011
NARRATIVE DISCIPLESHIP: GUIDING

EMERGING ADULTS TO CONNECT THE
DOTS OF LIFE AND FAITH

Nathan C. Byrd, III
Baptist Collegiate Ministries
Abstract:
The challenge of creating an effective, lasting, transformative Christian discipleship has
become more difficult in our current cultural milieu. During a narrative study of emerging adult
faith development, participants connected disparate life experiences in the process of developing and
discussing their faith biographies. These narrative connections created an environment for transformative learning to occur. In this article, I use narrative methods to inform the practice of emerging
adult discipleship to encourage transformation. This article forwards narrative as useful in developing an effective method of discipleship for emerging adults.
Key words: discipleship, transformative learning, narrative, narrative identity, emerging adults
Introduction
I never imagined I would be 25 and divorced, Anna reflected while discussing her faith journey since college. While participating in a narrative research study seeking to understand the faith experiences of emerging adults
moving from college into young adulthood, Anna made profound connections between formerly disparate experiences. These realizations provided
tools for her to use in reconstructing a new perspective of her experiences, her
identity, and her faith.
Anna chose to bring a journal with her to the first of two interviews. The
journal documented her thoughts and feelings surrounding a critical period
in her life. She purchased the leather bound tome after an argument with her
husband where she felt betrayed by his public actions and enduring contentious attitude. One Sunday morning while teaching a Sunday school class,
her husband, a minister, made a sarcastic comment implying that Anna no
longer read the Bible. This event occurred after his repeated attempts and
conversations to get Anna, an independent free-spirit, to change into what
she called a cookie cutter ministers wife. Writing in the newly purchased
journal was cathartic for her. However, after that first afternoon of pouring
her thoughts onto paper, Anna did not write in it again for over a year. She
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found the journal again after her divorce was finalized. She flipped the book
over and started writing anew from the back, reflecting on the changes she
had experienced in her life and denoting her new sense of self.
During the interview process Anna discovered associations between recurring themes in her life. Although Anna seemed to be a nearly perfect student, having been a leader in her small rural church youth group and later in
her large urban collegiate ministry group, she had a pervasively negative body
image. She explained, I was ridiculously, wildly, insecure about my body. I
was always very confident in who I was, I knew I was smart, I knew I was a likable person, but physically I absolutely hated myself. While Anna was a college student, Cindy, an adult mentor from church, told her that her negative
self-image was selfish. Anna said,
I will never forget how I felt in response to that statement. It literally felt
like I had been hit by a car, completely flattened, because when you are
that insecure, you feel like you are doing the world a favor. You feel like
you are supposed to feel that way, that everybody expects you not to like
yourself.
Cindy showed her Zephaniah 3:17 in the Bible: The Lord your God is with
you, he is mighty to save, he will take great joy in you, he will rejoice over you
with singing. Anna said of that experience, I know its clich, but I was
changed that night. I determined, No, Im not going to be a selfish person.
Im not going to allow my thoughts to revolve around me!
Growing up, Anna had a contentious relationship with her father, feeling
he was never happy with her. She said, I think he loves me, I dont think that
he likes me. Likewise, her husband, who had been very supportive of her free
spirit before their wedding, slowly pressured her to become a demure ministers wife. She admitted, I had a husband who loved me, but didnt like me.
So its hard to reconcile. How did I marry that? How did I commit to marry
someone that was so much like my dad whom I couldnt stand for years?
Anna established a vital thematic link during the process of narrating her
faith between the relationships with her father, her husband, and God. She
expounded,
Its not just a God who loves you, its a God who likes you, who really
likes who you are, who rejoices over you with singing. You dont do that
over something you dont like. Therefore, I like myself. Love hasnt really
been an issue for me; its liking someone like me.
Voicing this revelation appears to have allowed Anna to restory (Randall,
1996) her identity by providing her with a psychological anchor for previously unhealthy perspectives of God and self. As we talked, she realized the
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Christian Education Journal
similarities between her relationships with men, God, and self-image. During
the follow-up interview, conducted 11 months later, Anna demonstrated that
she had found new freedom and confidence in relationships and faith, a critical step in her transformative learning.
Narrative as Discipleship
The purpose of this article is to forward the use of narrative research
techniques to develop a method for conducting purposeful Christian discipleship with emerging adults (Arnett, 2000). Emerging adulthood refers to
the period of life between 18 and 30 (Arnett, 2004; Arnett & Jensen, 2002).
The practice of narrative discipleship appears to assist emerging adults to
identify themes in their journey of faith in order to establish a foundation for
transformative learning to occur. The further development and application of
these procedures could prove useful in providing an effective method of discipleship for emerging adults in this era of increasing pluralism. The sections
below will introduce the theories informing narrative discipleship and present additional discoveries from my work and research.
In the midst of a narrative research study examining the faith experiences of college graduates who had been student leaders in a university-based
Christian organization, I discovered that while narrating their faith, some
participants connected divergent experiences and recognized common
themes and threads (Riessman, 1993) of their lives through connecting the
dots (McAdams, 1996b, p. 306). The process of telling their stories provided
a context in which participants critically reflected on formerly disconnected,
yet profound, life events. While conducting and transcribing the interviews
from the 14 participants in the study, I began to wonder how I could use the
tools of narrative interviewing and analysis as a method of discipleship with
the emerging adults involved in our collegiate ministry and to assist local
churches in developing programs for discipling emerging adults through the
often tumultuous years following graduation.
Christian discipleship is the process of assisting a person to become
more like Jesus (Mulholland, 1993). Discipling involves elements of Christian
education, spiritual formation, and Christian counseling, as well as the skill
of coaching. Christian educators often have the goal of teaching biblical concepts and spiritual practices that lead to making disciples (Pazmio, 2010).
Steibel (2010) suggests similarities between Christian education and Christian spiritual formation even though they are not the same. Thus, these two
distinct educative practices often overlap; those who disciple often teach, and
those who teach often disciple. Because of the gap in research addressing
emerging adult faith experiences and development, some of the literature
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presented in this paper is located in Christian education, spiritual formation,

adult education, developmental psychology, and discipleship. There is a need
to connect all of these disciplines to assist in discipleship that speaks to the
needs of the whole person.
The practice of effective Christian discipleship may be in crisis in the
contemporary religious milieu. Teenagers and 20-something young adults are
leaving the churches of their childhood in record numbers (Astin, 2004;
Barna Research Group, 2006; The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,
2008). Despite some very ambitious attempts, most traditional churches are
not successful in keeping young adults in congregations or converting the
non-religious to become people of faith (Pew Research Center, 2010). While
there have been studies exploring why young people leave, why they stay
(Black, 2008; Hoge, Johnson, & Luidens, 1993), and what has been successful
in bringing some back to church (Rainer & Rainer, 2008), there is little research examining the faith experiences and developmental paths of Christian
emerging adults after adolescence and into young adult life in our postmodern era. The use of outdated methods to disciple these young adults at best
falls short of meeting their needs and may even drive away those in this critical period of life. Interest in this concept began for me as a young seminarian
when reading Where the Rivers Flow: Exploring the Sources of Faith Development (Walker, 1986). Walkers autobiographical narrative of his own faith development instilled the idea of using story to unlock Gods mysterious work
in my work with collegians.
Perhaps the success of two recent books among collegians can provide
insight into this method of discipleship. The Shack (Young, 2007) is a bestselling novel that narrates the faith experiences of a fictitious middle-aged
man after losing his daughter in a kidnapping and murder. In the story, the
man meets and converses with the three persons of the Trinity in a serene
mountain setting and comes to grips with his own faith story while learning
to forgive his daughters killer as well as those who had hurt him throughout
his life. While critiqued negatively by some Christian theologians, many readers identify with Youngs narrative as reminiscent of the stories found in the
Bible, where characters encounter God in the midst of their normal daily
lives.
In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing
My Life, Donald Miller (2009) suggests that Christians should understand
their lives as a story into which God has placed them. As the main characters
in the stories of our lives, Christians are active co-authors with God instead of
passive characters on an unchangeable printed page. Each person co-creates
the present and the future with every decision made and every action taken.
Christians then are also able to view the past in light of the present and
the promises of the future, giving new meaning to the static past. Miller
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encourages readers to embrace the idea of life as story and to begin to write
their own story of adventure with God.
Narrative discipleship uses methods and techniques of qualitative narrative research and analysis to illicit personal experiences and stories. Once the
stories are voiced, the discipler then guides the disciple in analyzing and interpreting his or her own stories in light of present conditions and experiences, the faith community, and the biblical narrative. This process can be relatively simple, accomplished in a few minutes, or intensive, occupying many
meetings and many weeks together.
Theories Informing Narrative Discipleship

There are multiple theories influencing the idea of a narrative approach
to discipleship. In this section, I will discuss theories of narrative identity,
adult learning, and transformative learning. Each of these schools of thought
plays a significant role in understanding contemporary Christian development among emerging and young adults.
Narrative Identity Theory
The ideas of narrative identity theory are not new to many Christians. In
evangelical traditions, adherents are often taught to construct a testimony,
the story of their faith experiences, which colors their life-journey with religious expressions and theological metaphors. As such, Christians learn to
view past experiences in light of current religious beliefs.
Narrative identity theory suggests that contemporary human identity is
understood through the stories that we remember and tell about ourselves
(McAdams, 1993, 1997; Polkinghorne, 1996). With each new experience, the
past is reedited to make sense of the old and the new while giving direction to
the future. The theory suggests that there are multiple dimensions of every
self. Depending upon ones context, one can have multiple, sometimes incongruent, and even contradictory selves forming ones sense of identity (James,
1892/1963; McAdams, 1993, 1996a; McAdams, Bauer, Sakaeda, Anyidoho,
Machado, Magrino-Failla, White, & Pals, 2006). McAdams (1996a), a psychologist who developed techniques to research and document narrative
identity through a lifestory, explained, The reconstruction of the past is always accomplished through the consideration of the present and the anticipation of what is yet to come (p. 140). McAdams (1993) declared that the
problem of such an identity is in the conflict of connecting the dots and
finding overall unity and purpose in human lives (p. 306). The process of
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revisiting stories of ones past allows for the reinterpretation of past events in
light of present experiences and current worldview.
Kenyon (1996) expounded upon McAdamss theories. He explained that
what people find meaningful in their lives is made real, expressed, and remembered through stories, metaphors, narratives, and autobiographies. The
narrative theory of identity suggests that we are our stories (Bruner, 2004;
Polkinghorne, 1996). There is nothing more meaningful to human experience than the stories we tell about ourselves (Kenyon, 1996; A. E. S. Wimberly,
2005). As a result, Narrative and stories are the way the world is for us; they
represent human reality, reality as it is for a situated, embodied, and selfcreating being (Kenyon, 1996, p. 25). Kenyon wrote that our lifestories are
situated, are never complete, are generalizable, and are complex. We are not
one story, but many stories. Furthermore, Kenyon elucidated, We are private
or economic stories, inner stories, public stories, physical stories, family stories, emotional stories, and cultural stories (p. 26). These selves represented
in our stories may appear to be separate roles or even distinct, context-bound
identities.
As humans mature, stories from the past inform the way meaning is created in the present. However, as new experiences broaden ones perspectives,
past stories may be reedited in light of the present understandings and meanings. The next section will explore learning in adulthood and the possible
transformations through the development of a lifestory.
Learning in Emerging Adulthood
Traditional models of discipleship and Christian education often follow
the banking model critiqued by Freire (1993), where the teacher makes a deposit of knowledge and the students are responsible for keeping the knowledge, holding it, and divulging it when the teacher asks. Borrowing from
trends in adult education (Kolb, 1984), Christian educators realized that students needed a more participatory role in learning and developed an experiential model (D. E. Miller, 1987; Parks, 1980). While helpful in engaging
learners in faith, the focus on the learners experiences was not sufficient in
communicating orthodoxy, or the fundamental doctrines of religious practice and faith. Leyda (1989) and Kiesling (2008) explored the impact of the
changing nature of human development on Christian education and learning. Parks (2000) proposed a mentoring model of discipleship for early
emerging adults where an older campus minister, youth minister, professor,
or another adult used questioning to assist young adults in reflecting on life
and faith to form a thoughtful adult faith. Parkss model is based on Fowlers
(1984) theory of faith development, Kegans (1994) process of human
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growth, and is informed by Loders (1989) ideas of religious transformation,

as well as Parkss own experiences as a campus minister. However, her methods were not widely adopted by practitioners, perhaps because of the intensive one-on-one, life-on-life relationships needed for such a method to be
successful.
Research into this area is not limited to the United States. Schweitzer
(2000, 2004) called for a perspective and model of educative practice that is
relevant in the postmodern era. In a small but informative study, Driesen,
Hermans, and de Jong (2007) surveyed 151 Roman Catholic Christian adult
educators in the Netherlands. The purpose of this study was to understand
the educators preferred and most effective method of teaching basics of religious education in an increasingly pluralistic culture that does not automatically defer to religious traditions and values as normative. Most educators in
their study preferred mediated learning where the content, method, and aim
of learning is negotiated and defined between teacher and participants. The
specific model presented was the hermeneutic-communicative model of
Christian education developed by Maex (2003b) while researching for her
dissertation in Belgium. The teachers expertise and the participants experiences were both important and critical in the process of educating Christian
adults. Maex (2003a) explains that to be effective in contemporary Dutch society, religious educators must consider the many factors of identity construction. She posits that it is no longer enough for educators to focus on the
religious subject matter, but they should also help developing Christians to
construct mature adult identities that incorporate faith into all of life. Maexs
model is premised on the theory of narrative identity where the teacher, class
participants, and individual learner co-construct meanings from their stories
and experiences in the process of education (Dominic, 2000; Driesen et al.,
2007). This theory could be attractive to contemporary Christian educators
who value the disciples experiences and knowledge while seeking to teach
specific doctrines and traditional spiritual disciplines and practices. In discipleship, the knowledge and experience of the discipler is essential in teaching
and training the disciple. This is also true of narrative discipleship where the
discipler is able to assist the disciple in identifying and ordering themes that
emerge.
Transformative Learning
Growth and development in Christian education, faith development,
spirituality, and discipleship are often viewed from the perspective of conversion, or dramatic religious change. Such change includes cognitive and active
dimensions. One theory that has had a major impact in adult education is
Mezirows (1978a, 1978b, 1990, 1991, 1997, 2000a, 2000b) understanding of
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transformative learning. Mezirows (1978b) model, developed after studying

women returning to college as adults, included a complex process of encountering a disorienting dilemma where ones perspectives were challenged, followed by critical reflection, and the adaptation of a new perspective. Many
have critiqued Mezirows work as not being culturally relevant, relying too
heavily on cognition while ignoring other aspects of learning and the impact
of socialization (Dirkx, 1997, 2001; Kegan, 1980, 2000; King, 2009; Kovan &
Dirkx, 2003); however, the theory continues to be widely used in exploring
transformative change for adults of all ages. For his theory of contemporary
human development, Kegan (1994, 2000) adopted transformational learning
as the lens through which to understand growth and change for postmodern
adults. Much of Parkss (2000) later work is based on Kegans (1982, 1994)
understandings of development.
Transformative education is not relegated to the classroom, but is also
used to prompt therapeutic change in psychological counseling as well as
transformative learning in medicine. Christian educators can learn from the
work of Buchanan, Dzelme, Harris, and Hecker (2001) who explored how
therapists assisted clients who were religious and who practiced alternative lifestyles to narrate their past in an effort to reframe their negative selfperceptions and identities, which led to transformation. Gale (1992), a marriage therapist and researcher, discovered that the process of reflecting upon
and narrating experiences proved more helpful than the formal process of
traditional marriage therapy for one couple. Similarly, physicians have also
found success using narrative techniques to educate patients dealing with a
difficult diagnosis and adjusting to living with a terminal or long-term illness
(Brendel, 2009).
While transformative learning has been found to be an important, if not
essential, aspect of significant religious growth and change, there has been little work done in developing a method of promoting or assisting such religious transformative change (Cook, 2004; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 1998).
Writing from the perspective of adult education, Randall (1996) suggested,
The transformation in transformative learning can be conceived as restorying (p. 225). Restorying may free participants from the restrictive bonds of
experiences, perspectives, and self-conceptions of their past lives. Educators
can assist students to restory their lives. In this vein, educators can be similar
to therapists and help others see their story with an unusual profundity and
focus (p. 239). This is accomplished through asking questions to help learners transform or restory amid transitions. In Randalls theory, there are three
stages of restorying ones life: narrating the story (simply telling the various
stories or storylines), reading the story (stepping back and examining it from
a distance), and rewriting the story (learning to restructure the stories to
make new meanings in light of present circumstances). With the educators
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help, learners can fashion an inside story that is more reflective of the
breadth and complexity of their actual existence and more in harmony with
their expression to the outside world (p. 242). Learning through narrative
may provide the basis for students to enter into the future with renewed confidence, unhindered by their previously restrictive narratives.
Methodology
Fourteen participants were purposefully selected for this narrative study
(Riessman, 1993, 2008; Rossiter & Clark, 2007), which examines the faith experiences and life transitions of graduates of a large Southern university. The
participants also served as leaders in the denominational collegiate ministry
where I served as a minister. Since meaning is co-constructed in interview
settings, our relationship affected the data collected (Dominic, 2000).
This is not a full report of the research study. In this article I present data
from four of the participants to illustrate how these alumni recounted their
journeys and made thematic connections from previously disparate life experiences using a narrative process. These associations helped the participants
restory, resulting in new understandings of their past and present, and a synthesis of faith and life. The participants were told in advance the purpose of
the interview and were asked to select and bring a memento or artifact to the
interview that represented their faith or their faith development.
The study used narrative inquiry as the method of conducting the research, employing narrative interviews to collect the data. Two face-to-face
interviews were conducted with each participant using a research protocol of
open-ended questions based primarily on McAdamss (1985) lifestory questionnaire and Fowler, Streib, and Kellers (2004) life tapestry exercise. The
transcripts were analyzed for themes and threads of meaning (Kramp, 2004;
Riessman, 2008; Rossiter & Clark, 2007). The second interview allowed for
dialogue about findings from the first conversation, where the theories presented in this article were discussed. I constructed faith narratives or faith biographies (Parks, 1980; Streib, 2004) using the participants own words organized chronologically and according to the themes and threads identified
during the analysis. For this article, the original transcripts were reanalyzed
seeking to discover ways participants may have demonstrated narrative transformative learning during the interview process.
Examples of Narrative Discipleship

Reducing faith biographies to a few paragraphs is no easy task. Annas
story was presented above. In this section, readers will meet three more
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emerging adults who have selected the pseudonyms of Bryson, Kate, and
Braxton. During the process of telling and discussing their faith story, each
emerging adult encountered changes made possible through narrative
discipleship.
Brysons Story
Bryson, a farmer who practices sustainable agriculture, brought a small,
topless hula doll, complete with grass skirt, to our meeting. Laughing, Bryson
explained his pun: Shes naked. The one word that describes my faith journey, I think, up until this point is exposure. During the interview, all of his
allusions, including people and experiences, revolved around exposure to exotic places and different points of view that challenged his conventions. While
in college, Bryson attempted to avoid such challenges. Now he relishes meeting new people and traveling to new places. Bryson has learned that diversity
in community is a vital aspect of faith. In the small, country church where he
is a member, people are aware of his radical ideas about certain issues, but
they love, accept, and support him as a member of the community and
church family. As a result of learning through exposure, Bryson seeks to expand the worldviews of others. He and his wife employ interns who live and
work on the farm with them for 6 months. Most of the interns are not Christians. Brysons goal is not necessarily to convert them, but to show them that
not all Christians are judgmental. He seeks to live out the kind of loving acceptance modeled by Jesus while teaching the interns the joy of living in and
being a part of a small, rural community.
Referring to his favorite author, Wendell Berry (2000), Brysons goal in
life is to make a difference by paying attention to the small, often unnoticed,
useless things in peoples lives that are needed and that make others lives
better. He said he would be successful in being the servant leader Jesus modeled and taught if I could just focus on doing small things, if I could be very
good at being generous in small ways every day. Later he imagined, If I
could listen at my funeral, to have people look at different things that are just
small and insignificant maybe, and say, Hey, he did that and we really appreciated it, it was really nice. Bryson wants to pass along what he has learned
about living his faith in all areas of his life. During the second interview,
Bryson realized that he had been accomplishing this goal for the past few
years with his interns. It was a revelation for him. Bryson had not noticed that
he was already offering these young men and women opportunities to expand their worldviews by providing new experiences for them and sharing
his own knowledge as they conversed while working together.
Bryson began to restory his faith experiences around the metaphor of exposure (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). During the interview Bryson made spiritual connections between various life experiences that seemed unrelated to
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religion. However, he recognized that the diverse experiences and relationships he has had have influenced his worldview and his faith. For Bryson the
most important meanings were sought and found in the small things that go
unnoticed, but that make life full for him and for those around him.
Kates Story
The narrative interview process was compelling for Kate. She explained
that she was excited about participating in the study because she wanted to
begin examining faith again. After a coworker raised intellectual arguments
against the existence of God and the hypocritical actions of many Christians,
Kate pushed her once vibrant faith into her subconscious. She enjoyed the
freedom of not thinking about things. Recently, she had begun to listen to
her collection of Christian CDs and thinking about God again. However,
while the old music was oddly comforting, it also brought back deep feelings
of discomfort of her former judgmental Christian life and made her feel
silly. At one point in the interview she apologized, Im sorry if Im so frustrated. Im not really. I dont think about this much, so Im trying to put it
into words, like, for the first time. She explained, Its just so big for me to
grasp right now, in what I actually feel, and what I actually want to do about
it. I dont know. So instead of really figuring it out, you know, I hide it from
people.
Kates artifact was a broken candle. I keep it because I like the way it
smells, because you cant even burn it. Its so cheesy because its like me now,
she continued while running her finger across the broken rim of the smoked
glass. Kinda rough around the edges, it used to burn bright, and now its a
little more reserved. Its confused. I dont know what it is really. During the
interview, Kate described a faith that used to be lively, but that had become
dormant, pushed to my subconscious. The wick, though visible, was broken
and buried beneath once-melted wax.
Even though Kate insisted that her beliefs about God and resulting
morals and values are the same, her practice of faith disciplines has changed.
To avoid working through her doubts and questions, she pushed God to the
background. For her, God patiently understands what she is experiencing.
She explained, Hes almost like sitting back and just like, shell figure this
out. She knows that God has blessed her tremendously, though she does not
always thank God enough. She summarized, Im just trying to figure out this
relationship with God. The interview provided an opportunity for her to begin voicing the affective dimensions of her faith in order to initiate action for
her desire to process her faith cognitively.
The process of narrating her faith biography was a desired return to critical thinking about matters of faith for Kate. In the process of discussing her
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artifact, she demonstrated that her spiritual life was broken; however, she also
reflected on her theological beliefs and noticed the ways her thinking about
God had changed and how it had remained the same.
In Kates follow-up interview, she commented that she has begun praying more and thinking about God more. She noticed a connection between
healthy human relationships and her relationship with God. As she reflected,
Kate recognized that when she was content relationally, she was much more
apt to pursue her relationship with God. The process of narrating her faith
led Kate, an extreme extrovert, to understand that she requires both divine
and human relationships to be in good spiritual health.
Braxtons Story
The follow-up interview was revelatory for Braxton. In our first meeting,
it was obvious that Braxton desired more from his family of origin than he
had received. In particular, he wanted his father to have mentored him and to
have taught him specifics of being a Christian man. Braxtons narrative is replete with efforts to mentor younger men and boys as well as the search for
older men to mentor him. His favorite books are Wild at Heart: Discovering
the Secret of a Mans Soul (Eldridge, 2001) and Fathered by God: Learning
What Your Dad Could Never Teach You (Eldridge, 2009). Both of these essays
suggest that men need one another to learn true biblical manhood. Eldridges
experiences were similar to Braxtons experiences. In the books, Eldridge uses
his own story punctuated with biblical examples to demonstrate what he
learned about being a man.
As Braxton related his faith journey, he told of working as a camp counselor in high school and college. He began a Bible study with some of the
other counselors and recruited Christian friends from college to come work
alongside him each summer. He still returns to the same camp each summer
(7 years after he was last on staff) to encourage and support a new generation
of counselors, some of whom were in his cabin when they were campers as
boys. Braxton also teaches a Sunday school class for middle school boys. At
work, Braxton seeks out the interns each year to pour into them and teach
them that one can work in the sports business world and be morally upright.
As a husband and a parent, Braxton attempts to be fully engaged in his home
life. He tries to provide the fatherly guidance and involvement that was missing from his own childhood. Unlike his parents example, Braxton also seeks
to be a best friend to his wife.
Not only does Braxton seek to provide guidance to others, he purposely
selects men to give him advice and support. He has a group of Christian male
peers that he meets with regularly for support and encouragement through
Bible study and prayer. The books mentioned above were book studies for the
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group. Recently, Braxton sought out and secured an older mentor from his
church for monthly meetings. Together they chose topics to cover for their
first year. Each topic comes with homework as well as a book to read and discuss. When I asked Braxton about the image or manifestation of God that
meant the most to him, he immediately responded, God as father.
When I reviewed the obvious father-image theme during our second
conversation, Braxton was aghast that he had never made a connection between all of these experiences. His lack of a father who fulfilled his desires for
guidance was fulfilled by the divine image of a loving and powerful FatherGod and by groups of men and boys within the context of his church. Braxton left our meetings with new confidence to pursue his passions, sensing that
his life was not happenstance, but had a specific, perhaps God-ordained, thematic direction and purpose.
Conclusion and Implications

Narrative discipleship is a process to elicit a persons faith story and to
help him or her to identify themes and threads in life and faith and to connect the dots (McAdams, 1996b) to find new meaning for the present and
the future. This process is often obvious to the careful listener and observer.
Most of the themes are not deeply hidden, but are readily present in the stories told about faith, church, heroes, villains, friends, family, and significant
experiences.
Personal Narratives
Understanding that meaning is constructed may assist the mentor or
minister in the process of educating his or her mentees or parishioners
(Kenyon, 1996). Self-perceptions develop over a lifetime. An essential aspect
of narratively discipling others is awareness of ones own narrative journey.
Being conscious of ones own subjectivity is essential for the discipler to be
able to listen fully to the story of another without unconsciously seeking to
force meaning out of anothers story in light of ones own experiences (E. P.
Wimberly, 1997).
While care must be taken not to manipulate meanings, sensitive facilitation by an educator, a minister, or a mentor may assist an individual to see
connections between previous disparate stories. Walking with a young or
emerging adult through the process of narrating his or her faith journey takes
time as well as skillful questioning and listening (Dominic, 2000; Parks,
2000). However, learning to use the techniques and skills of narrative inquiry
has provided me with a new method of facilitating discipleship for the
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emerging adults with whom I work. By using terminology with which emerging adults are familiar, I have been able to guide young (college undergraduates, 1823) and late (graduate students and alumni, 2430) emerging adults
to narrate past experiences in light of current circumstances. They are then
able to see Gods process of working in their lives, to make sense of difficult
relationships, and to put painful situations into manageable perspective. The
person or group that facilitates and listens to another persons faith narratives
may also learn from the process and experience.
Narratives in Community
While each individual constructs his or her own meaning by interpreting
the past through the eyes of the present with an eye toward the future, meaning-making is also a social process that often occurs in community, in conversations, and may even occur during an interview. Wimberly (2005) demonstrates how shared narratives can be helpful in building community among
African American Christians. Further research should be conducted that
specifically addresses the use of narrative in transformative learning of
emerging adults in more traditional Christian education settings such as Sunday school and small groups. As a campus minister, I am in the process of using narrative discipleship with undergraduates. Simultaneously, I am considering ways to conduct narrative discipleship in pre-marital counseling with
couples as well as with adult and emerging adult groups at church. While the
narratives above were elicited in conversation, I believe the process could also
be done using written faith biographies.
If collegiate ministers and those ministering to emerging adults in local
churches or parachurch groups adopt this process, it is possible that church
members could attain new depths of personal faith and meaning. The result
could be the retention of more emerging adults as well as attraction of new
members. This could become one tool to assist the church in addressing the
problem of emerging adults and young adults leaving the local church.
Biblical Narrative
The idea of narrative in Christianity is not new (A. E. S. Wimberly, 2005;
Setran, Wilhoit, Ratcliff, Haase, & Rosema, 2010). We often speak of the Bible
as the biblical narrative. We talk about Gods story, and we ask believers to be
aware of their journey of faith. All of these are literary terms that can teach
believers to view their faith as a story. Helping believers to see their faith as a
narrative is not a difficult task. Though different in purpose from Wimberlys
(2005) story-linking process, a similar component of narrative discipleship is
helping the believer connect his or her experiences with similar themes and
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stories in the biblical narrative. Both the discipler and the faith community
can be valuable in assisting in this process. Often believers feel they are alone
or unique in their experiences. When experiences are constructed and verbalized to one or more fellow Christians in a safe environment, the occasion is
created for others to share similar personal experiences.
As demonstrated in the above examples, the process of narrating ones
faith journey can be catalytic, leading one to connect the dots (McAdams,
1996b) in ones experiences, providing the basis for transformational learning.
During the interview process, Anna learned to reframe her self-image by understanding that her long-held assumptions about the love of God and the
men in her life were wrong. After accepting the biblical promise of Gods love
for her, she now understands that God not only loves, but also likes her. Bryson
learned that he is helping others gain a larger vision of the world and a new appreciation for Christians, for small town life, and for sustainable living. He has
connected with the agrarian settings of many biblical stories. Kate, an extrovert, learned that she needs healthy relationships with other people to enjoy a
healthy relationship with God. The many stories of community found in the
Bible have been helpful for her to reframe a need for Christian relationships.
Braxton now understands that his need for male examples in his life is connected with the frustration he experienced over his own fathers lack of involvement in his childhood. He finds validation in biblical stories of mentoring and of passing the faith from generation to generation.
Many Christians proceed through their lives with a faith that is unexamined. As a result, they struggle with inevitable transitions and adaptations.
Their childhood or adolescent faith does not work at providing meaning
amid adult roles, responsibilities, and identities. Many people leave the
church and their once-vibrant faith after discovering that it no longer fits the
life they lead. Learning to narrate meaning in the midst of life and to apply
disciplined critical reflection and prayer in the midst of confusion is a helpful
skill in this rapidly changing milieu of cultural and religious plurality. Helping adults restory (Randall, 1996) their beliefs and practices can be an integral step in transformation and in creating a religious conversion sufficient
for the demands of contemporary adulthood. Perhaps the use of narrative
discipleship may assist ministers, educators, and volunteers in making faith
more relevant for contemporary emerging adults after college graduation.
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AUTHOR
Nathan C. Byrd (Ph.D., University of Georgia)
is a campus minister for Baptist Collegiate
Ministries (BCM) in Athens, GA. Email:
nathan.byrd@gmail.com
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CEJ 8n2 text:CEJ 8-2 Fall2011

CEJ: Series 3, Vol. 8, No. 2