S7E1 — Known Ministries

Season 7 Episode 1: Counseling is Story Work

Alex (00:04)

Well, we're in season seven and we're titling season seven story matters because we're going to talk about really one of my favorite things to teach, which is the grand narrative. This has just been something that I've had a lot of fun with over the last several years, not just learning, but then also teaching. And so we're going to unpack what all that means grand narrative, or sometimes I call it God's big story. But today we just want to start off talking about the fact that

Counseling, discipleship, walking with others really is story work. We might not think of it that way. That might seem like a weird concept but when I say the word story work Brenda, I think I just wanted to start off with like what are some stories that you love?

Brenda (00:50)

Oh my goodness, I think there's so many. I am actually a real movie person and I enjoy novels, but I find that when I read a book, I can't get away from the book and it takes a lot longer to read a book so then I might not do anything else for a week. And a movie I can just sit down and be done in an hour or two or a show. There's so many, what I was trying to think of is like, what are the stories that I'm willing to watch over and over and over again? Because I think that might be the most

Alex (01:07)

Mmm.

Oh yeah.

Brenda (01:20)

of a really good story because I do take in, I watch a lot of movies and documentaries and all that, but I mean a few that just come to my mind or I mean Forrest Gump has to be at the top of my list. I never tire of watching Forrest Gump. I can watch it again and just that line, I love you Jenny. I mean I just, and of course I, you know, love all the actors in that movie as well. Another one that comes to my mind is The Shawshank Redemption. That's one that I can watch

Alex (01:22)

Hmm

Oh.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brenda (01:50)

I just seem to never get tired of just a good love story. And then I guess I was also just thinking about a classic, like it's a wonderful life. The Christmas story that is just one that I always come back to as well. So, I mean, there's so many, again, I just love movies, I love stories. What about you? Do you have any that come to mind as your favorites?

Alex (01:55)

Mm-hmm.

Well, I'm going to go a different direction because I'm a reader. I have.

Reading's probably always been my favorite hobby, my favorite pastime. I do love novels, I love fiction, and I think I've mentioned even before on the podcast that I love David Pallison, who is a biblical counselor who's gone before us because he loves to say that in a good story, we learn more about human nature than we do even in a psychology textbook. And I agree with them about that. I think a good story really a lot, really just takes you in.

Brenda (02:43)

Hmm.

Alex (02:49)

and so some of my favorite authors I love always love Jane Austen I think she has a unique way of phrasing and seeing the world and was way ahead of her time modern authors I love I love Pat Conroy I think Elise was Patrick and I talked about that his stories are hard often hard to read but they're beautifully lyrically written

Brenda (02:50)

Mm-hmm.

Hehehe

Alex (03:17)

beautifully lyrically written stories about very tough family dysfunction. So it's a really odd combination. I do tend to gravitate towards stories that have good character development and that show family interaction and relational brokenness. I really do love those stories and I love to see the redemption in those stories.

Brenda (03:23)

Hmm.

Alex (03:45)

I think we're at an age where books, although they're changing with electronic books, we just have access to so many authors, so many books. And I do love movies, I enjoy movies, but if I really want to relax, if I really want to just do something enjoyable to me, I'm gonna be in a book and I am a person who can block the entire world out when I read.

I don't hear anything. Mason can have ballgames on, people can be talking to me, and I go into another place. I had a friend in high school who used to tease me that I can't read in the car, like I get sick in the car. And he used to say, you know, God did that because we would never see you if you could read in the car too. Your face would be in a book 24-7, so at least we can talk to you when you ride in the car with us.

Brenda (04:14)

Mm-hmm.

Hehehehehehehehehehe

Alex (04:43)

So I do love good stories and I think it's really fun to be able to bring this topic of story and marry it with what we love in counseling and to show how walking with someone in a discipleship relationship, even our own lives, are stories. And so as we start to unpack that, I think we should even maybe think about what are some of the components of a good story? Why do we like the stories that we like?

Brenda (05:03)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Well, I did a little research before our podcast on some of the top grossing movies worldwide And I think they may give us some clues as to the kind of stories were drawn to so worldwide the avatar movies The Marvel movies the Star Wars movies Titanic Spider-man Lion King. These were all movies that worldwide have appeal to mankind in general and so when we think about those kind of movies what type of

Alex (05:17)

Hmm.

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Brenda (05:41)

themes or characters do we come across and one of the things I just think about is we innately love the battle for good versus evil.

Like we like that, we're drawn to those kind of stories. Now we call a story that ends with the evil winning a horror story. And I personally don't like those stories at all. I know some people can stomach those, but I don't like those stories. But the hero story, the good versus evil, the stories with sacrificial commitment, I think those are some of the themes that run through the stories that we all tend to love.

Alex (05:55)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

I was talking to a friend of ours last week and she was telling me that John Geiger, who was the headmaster at the school where my girls attended and you know John, he was challenging his students that they could not watch a movie, like you know any movie, without finding the theme of redemption somewhere in the movie.

Brenda (06:48)

Hmm.

Alex (06:49)

and that her son went back to him one day and said, Mr. Geiger, I watched this movie, it was terrible, I hated it and there's no redemption in it. And he said, there is something in that movie that is going to tell a story of redemption, go back and watch it again. And so I love that idea and it really makes you think, as we think about the stories we love, we are.

waiting, we are longing for redemption in some aspect of the story. And the stories we love are usually stories that clearly show us a redeeming and a restoration in the story.

Brenda (07:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think that we're wired that way, Alex. There's something about the way that God has hard wired us. He's put eternity in our hearts. He's put a longing for heroes in our hearts. We know somewhere, you know, just in our creative design that we want the good story. We want the good ending. We want to know that somebody sacrificed something for someone else and there was goodness

Alex (07:38)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (08:00)

I just think about how much God loves stories that he gave us the Bible that is a story. We're going to be talking more about how the Bible is primarily one comprehensive unified story. We're going to talk about how it's a true story. We're going to talk about how it's a great story, a good story. But not only do we have like this one story, but there's all the stories within the stories.

Alex (08:04)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (08:30)

all of these different stories. And in any one of our lives, there's stories within the lives of our stories. And so I just think there's story upon story upon story and there's all these twists and turns. I mean, that's when God writes his stories, if you look at all the lives and the way people, I mean, even today, these are sad stories, but I got noticed today that two people that I know had people in their lives who had a heart attack today. They're two women. And I was just thinking about, wow, how quickly a story can change.

Alex (08:36)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm, oh wow.

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (09:02)

But just this idea that God loves stories and he's a story writer. He's the author of the greatest story that's ever been told, the story of redemption. And I love the idea because I love stories so much that God loves stories. And I think that's one of the ways that we image him is that we love stories too.

Alex (09:17)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Yeah, I think as Paul Tripp that says that God created us as meaning makers, that we are people who are constantly making meaning. We don't just see facts, we look at facts and we are making meaning. I'm looking outside right now and I see the sun shining, the sky is clear, and I'm making meaning of that, that it's a little bit warmer today than it was yesterday when it was gray and cloudy. I'm immediately making meaning and the way that we make meaning is we tell ourselves a story.

Brenda (09:27)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (09:50)

We might not think of it that way, but I'm telling myself a story that it's warmer today and I'm gonna enjoy my walk when I go outside because I won't be as cold. And so we really are wired to make meaning and we do that through the process of telling a story and telling ourselves a story. And we do that in relationships too. We tell ourselves stories.

Brenda (09:51)

That's right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, one thing we want to do in this series, which I hope will be really helpful, is when we talk about counseling, walking with people, meeting with them, sometimes we go straight to the idea that there's only problems and solutions.

Alex (10:28)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (10:28)

and somebody has a problem and we need to have a solution. But I think if we can begin to think about counseling more as story work, that God has a story, and it's a beautiful story and it's a good story and he's invited us into that story, but that throughout our lives, you know, we make decisions or things come into our life that get us outside of God's story. And so what we wanna do is continually be bringing people back into his story, but we're gonna have to really unpack that, right? Because I think we can say, like, God has a story,

Alex (10:56)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (10:58)

we need to connect our lives with God's story or I really want to live out of God's story. I think this whole idea of God's story and connecting to it and living out of it is kind of a thing we hear, but what does it really mean? Like how do we connect ourselves and others to God's story so we can live out of the fullness of His story?

Alex (11:06)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's gonna be fun for us to unpack because we, we're not just living a story in the present, we're living out of a story from our past and we're really telling our, always telling ourselves a story about our future. So story is past, present, and future. So we have that going on here on this plane and then we have God's overarching big story

Brenda (11:41)

Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

Alex (11:46)

And so I do think that if this is a new concept for people, it can be a little bit overwhelming at first. And I always encourage people to just continue to expose themselves to teaching about the grand narrative, God's grand narrative, God's big story, expose themselves to the idea of what is their story and how does that fit in there. Because each time you hear it, each time you interact with it, practice it, you're more

fit together in your brain. It's gonna make more sense and I feel like even though I don't I don't know maybe I've been studying this for

Brenda (12:18)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (12:25)

five, six, seven years, I feel like I'm still seeing, not only seeing and understanding things about my own story, but I'm also understanding how this fits together and what the implications of life as story are. So if this feels weird or uncomfortable, hang with us.

Brenda (12:43)

Hehehehe

Yes, stay with us until the end, because I think little by little it will make more sense as we can flesh it out and we're going to and we're going to be doing that, but I like what you touched on even in our own lives today. Today I'm living out of my past story. There are things even today from my family of origin or what I bring into the situation that are going to impact decisions I make today. And then there's my present story. There are influences currently on my heart. I've been struggling.

Alex (12:48)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (13:15)

with some sort of sickness and my husband's upstairs sick right now and you know there's other pressures that are coming into to my world today and then there's the future story like is how I'm feeling today going to affect how I'm going to be able to teach this coming Friday or even today was how I felt today going to impact how I was going to be able to podcast today and it's interesting because it's not like we parse all of those stories out in our brain they're happening all of that thinking is happening simultaneously but I think if

Alex (13:19)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (13:45)

we can again see it as these are stories that are going on in our in our minds that can be helpful as we begin to really think about our struggles in life and the stories we tell ourselves past present and future when we're in a sin struggle or when we're in a suffering struggle. I was thinking about a woman that I met with that her husband died after 35 years and they just had a you know a beautiful just a beautiful marriage and so when she comes to

talking about the story of loss and the grief story of the actual loss of her husband. But there's more than just that story we're going to talk about. In the time that we've been spending together, we've talked about the fact that her father died when she was pretty young. And so now the death of her husband and leaving her children without a father has really impacted

Alex (14:24)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Brenda (14:45)

So there were all these plans and dreams, and there was the life that she had imagined. There was that story, and that story got completely derailed. There was the story of this beautiful life they shared together, so there were all the memories of their past, and then the longings of their future together. What's been happening since his passing, that's a story in and of itself, and what she's been telling herself, the fears about finances, the fears about loneliness, the fears about purpose,

Alex (14:50)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Brenda (15:15)

what is, you know, how to make meaning of her life now. Where's I think she says, where is the me and we, you know, when you've lived a life like that. And then also there's the story of her children, right? Her children and how they're dealing with it is intersecting with her story.

Alex (15:21)

Hmm... Mm-hmm...

Hmm.

Brenda (15:29)

And so again, I think just as we think about it, it's not just the problem of the suffering that her husband died, but there's all of this context and fullness of the story around. And how do each one of those parts of her story then begin to map onto God's story? What does God's story have to say, Alex, to every part of her story? Because he is speaking and he does have a lot to say to every part of her past, her present and her future.

Alex (15:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think even in my own growth as a counselor, I used to think, when I began to think of counseling as story work, I used to think of somebody telling their story and me connecting them to God's story. And that is certainly a huge part of what we do in counseling. But what I realized is that telling our story is not as simple as I thought it was. And you're touching on one reason why, it's because there's so many intersections of many other stories, many other people

Brenda (16:21)

Hmm.

Alex (16:28)

stories, the story keeps changing, but also because of the fall and because of our fall-ness, even in our minds,

it's a lot harder to tell our stories truly than we think it is, right? Like to really name things well in our own story because it's hard for us to see ourselves. It's hard for us to understand our own behavior sometimes. It's hard for us to see sometimes the people that we're really close to. And so counseling for me has not just been about connecting someone to God's story, but it's also been helping someone tell their story in the most true way.

Brenda (16:45)

Yep.

Alex (17:10)

way that they can. I always say like is that how God would tell your story? Would he call that that? Would he say this is good? Would he say this is not good? Because when we can tell our story more truly then we're more able to connect to the truths of scripture. We're more able to clearly connect to God's story. And so it's interesting how even my own understanding

Brenda (17:12)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (17:41)

And we're going to keep throwing this word story work around and even the word story stewardship as we talk about what it means to be able to tell our story well, tell our stories well because we usually have more than one.

Brenda (17:56)

Yeah, there's so many redemptive stories.

within our big story of redemption. And I think you bring up a really good point when we talk about how would God tell our story? Because I think even that is a lot of times something that we don't know how to answer. Because we think that God is just gonna like say, oh, that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good, and so we should all be good with me, right? Instead of seeing those parts of our broken stories like God says, actually God says that's not good. And so I can say that's not good. So I know we're gonna delve in,

Alex (18:13)

Mm-hmm.

Right? Mm-hmm.

Brenda (18:28)

podcast really where we just talk about telling your true story and why it's important and how to do it and the kind of things that are the stumbling blocks or the things that keep us from being able to authentically or wholly or fully or truly tell our story. You know I think just as we're talking more high level even about story I just want to say that when we're talking with people when we begin to enter into one place of their story let's live we need to be

the story takes us because it might actually be that that's where the Holy Spirit wants to lead us to have more conversation with them, to walk with them, to ask more questions. And then I just also think that as we move in, less as problem solvers and more story shapers, that we see a ripple effect. That it's not just like how this one story in your life impacts the other stories in your life, but then there's this whole ripple effect that when you begin to see how

Alex (19:00)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (19:28)

truly sees your story, you begin to connect your story with his story and really live more in light of the fullness of that story, there is a spilling over effect into the lives of those around you where now you become a catalyst to change other people's stories. So it's that little thing of you know the just that ripple effect and boy there's things that are in science that I don't even understand but you know how like one thing can be touched it sets off this chain reaction this you know bigger and broader and huger than we the

Alex (19:40)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Butterfly. Mm-hmm.

Brenda (19:59)

So there is that sense of a butterfly effect and that...

That gets me so excited. I think that makes me feel less pressure about counseling, about needing to be the person that knows everything, and more excited about like, I could actually be an influencer, and the best use of that word, you know, for the kingdom, and come alongside, and even by encouraging, influencing, walking with somebody, and helping them understand, see their story more truly, see God's story more truly, connecting that,

Alex (20:06)

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (20:33)

effect that could have is so exciting. And yeah, and just that, just that possibility of what God might use and how He might change that person and the people beyond them is, is a bigger story than that we get to be a part of. It just even... no, go ahead. No, no, go ahead.

Alex (20:35)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So bro, go ahead. I feel like I cut off your thought.

I was just thinking when you were talking just broadly, we're naming three things. We're naming God's story, we're naming our story, and then we're naming other people's story all as categories of things that we need to steward well, that we need to care for, that we need to manage, and that are entrusted to us. I remember that...

Years ago, I heard Ed Welch say that when we sit with someone and we hear their story, that our goal in counseling is to be able to tell their story back to them in a way that they say, yes, that's me. Yes, that's you got it. And

Brenda (21:35)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (21:37)

to be able to do that well with God's story, with our own story, or with another person's story is really a sacred privilege. I always say when we are in those places, we're on holy ground and we need to remember that act of listening is sacred, that act of retelling someone's story is sacred. And I love what you said, Brenda, because that does take me to a place where

Brenda (21:47)

Yep.

Alex (22:07)

Of course I want to be in the Word, but I used to feel like I needed to be in the Word to store up knowledge so I could answer a particular that someone was going to bring me. And where this idea of story stewardship has taken me more to a place of being with someone, listening well, asking good questions, and it's far less of a focus on me or my knowledge and far more of a focus on who they are, what their struggle is.

Brenda (22:32)

Mm-hmm.

Alex (22:37)

that well and loving them well in the midst of their story and that just I just I just love that enables me to sit with anybody no matter what their story whether I've experienced it or not. I can still sit and listen to them.

Brenda (22:53)

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that and I also think any story in anyone because even the stories of non-believers are sacred. If we think about something sacred being something that's set apart and every person is made by God and for God whether or not they acknowledge it and their stories are God's way of interacting with them and drawing them and wooing them and showing up for them.

Alex (23:05)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (23:27)

entering into the lives of somebody who's not a Christian.

there is something really sacred that God is working and I think even the person knows. Like we know when somebody shows up to really care about our stories and listen to our stories and want to know us through our stories. And so I think as we look at stories as being sacred, these are ways that God is connecting with us. We connect with one another. We connect people with God. There's a fullness and a richness and I

supernatural, in fact that goes on, particularly for those of us who have the Holy Spirit, you know, as we enter in. And it is such a divine way of showing love.

Alex (24:04)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brenda (24:12)

to be able to take on people's stories. And I know we're gonna get in a lot more to story work and what's commonly called as holding stories. But I know that you've done a lot of story work. You've done a lot of story work training. Before we end this wrap up this first episode, is there anything else that you would want to share as we begin to approach this topic?

Alex (24:37)

I did do three years of training on what's called narrative-focused trauma care. So it was connected to the stories of our wounding, not always capital T traumas, many times little T trauma. And the interesting thing about that training is it's unlike any other training I've done in that it's not engaging knowledge. It was us learning how to engage our

engaging, particular stories. And one of the things, I couldn't even begin to name all the things I learned. Probably one of the few trainings in my life that I could honestly say changed my life. But some of the things I learned particularly about story and going into a particular story, like a particular memory that has like a beginning, middle, end,

We find emotion in a story. So we can say, I had a difficult relationship with my mom. I had a, you know, my dad and I didn't get along, but.

And we can brush through that without connecting to the emotion of that story. But when we tell a particular story that highlights that difficult relationship, that highlights the conflict, that highlights the brokenness, then we're, we almost can't back away from the emotion. We have to enter into the emotion of the story. And so telling those particular stories helps to bring a lot of healing as we're able to process through the emotion.

emotions that are there. And the other thing is I would have told you that I did not have many stories.

Brenda (26:25)

Hehehehe

Alex (26:26)

I'm not a person who really remembers a lot about I'm a very present focused person. I got to get it right now. I don't think a lot about the past in so much as I think about memories or stories and so I would have told you I didn't really have many childhood memories and yet as I began to write the stories and interestingly include sensory detail like what

room look like when I grew up when I would remember that I like stories would open up and I would remember things that occurred there and so as I began to write stories more stories came I had more memories more things that I realized were impactful and then I'm living out of today and so I really have come to love story work as a tool because I think we go there very quickly

Brenda (27:09)

Hmm.

Alex (27:26)

Like we go to the emotion, we remember things that we're probably living out of that we had not remembered. And the last thing I'll say is that it's amazing to see how even in a particular story, it might be an incident from when you're six, seven, four, five years old, doesn't matter, and it could have a very distinct beginning, middle, end, and it may seem like why do I remember this or why do I have so much emotion in the story? But as we begin to unpack that with some

else, we begin to see patterns in relationships that we can name. We begin to see particularly, I think, lies that we live out of are embedded in particular stories and that probably surprised me more than anything. To be able to see lies or another way we would say it is places that I'm not living out of God's story and recognizing that they were connected to very particular stories.

Brenda (28:09)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Alex (28:26)

in my own life. And so I really love story work as a tool. I don't think it's our only tool as counselors in the sense of like, I don't think that every counseling session has to be somebody reading a childhood story to me. But I do think there's great value in someone taking the time to write down some key stories of their life and unpacking that with someone else.

Brenda (28:28)

Hmm.

Well, that's so good. I know that your experience is going to be key as we move forward in this series and the training that you've received. So I'd like to give everybody just a little peek preview of where we're going to go in this series. We're going to spend a episode talking about

the grand narrative, God's big story. And basically, you know, that gives us a framework for our story work that if we look at God's story as kind of the prototype, if you will, for all good stories and the best story, we're gonna have a special guest, our friend and pastor and known board member, Adam Coppick, and your pastor, Alex, as of late, has become ordained to be your pastor. And you know, Adam has done a lot

Alex (29:31)

Mm-hmm.

Brenda (29:37)

of training, not only as a pastor, but as a biblical counselor, and he has a heart for counseling, and we know his heart for counseling because for a long time he was a youth pastor with our children. That's right, any person who will stay in that for a long time, you know, has a real heart. We're going to spend an episode talking about the power of telling your story, and not your story, Alex, but our story, you know, your story. Boy, that gets confusing, doesn't it?

Alex (29:47)

That's right. Counseling them.

Hahaha

Brenda (30:07)

and what keeps us from telling our truest stories.

We're going to take an episode and talk about competing stories. Like there are a lot of stories that come to us through cultural influences or personal influences. What are they? How do they impact us? We'll take one episode and just have some fun talking about some different ways that we use the grand narrative or God's big story to help us understand the Bible and to help us understand people and make those connections. And then we hope to have at least one or two guests on where we can really look

real counseling situation and talk about how we would use the components or the framework or the hook or ladder handle whatever you want to call it of this idea of grand narrative and God's story components when you're actually counseling someone as you've said not the way but a way a helpful resource to be able to go into somebody's story and to help them identify where they're out

able to identify and tell their true story by knowing God's true story, by knowing those competing voices. So I feel like in some ways we're attempting to do something that we've both said is this possible to do in a podcast format because a lot of times we have charts and graphs and we have drawings that we use when we're teaching this material but we hope that we can break it down and just a simple enough way that our listeners can really

Alex (31:23)

I know.

Brenda (31:40)

through this. If you have questions, if you really feel like y'all weren't clear about that at all, let us know because we could always do a Facebook live or we might could do a visual to help. So, you know, I feel like our listeners can help us by giving us some feedback and letting us know if there's places that we need to come back and maybe give more clarification. But my hope is as we go through, it'll just be a layering process to understand what we're talking about and to be able to use it.

Alex (31:46)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's good. So to wrap up, I'm gonna kind of summarize where we've been. You told us where we're going. Where we've been today is that all good stories followed the pattern of God's big story, his hero story of redemption.

And that counseling is story work. It's not just problem solving, that oftentimes when we sit with other people, we're doing story work whether we know it or not. And because of that, we need to steward stories well, and we need to steward really three stories, God's story, our own story, and other people's stories. And we're gonna continue to hopefully help our listeners

big story and how to dive into their own story and how to listen to other stories well. So I'm excited about this season as you said Brenda it feels like a challenge to take material that we really love and that we often teach in a really interactive way and only be able to talk, only have our words to explain it. But I think it's gonna be fun and I hope that we'll get a lot of feedback during this whole series so we know how to best

Brenda (33:10)

Hehehehehehehehe

Alex (33:21)

give supplemental material that helps our listeners understand.

Brenda (33:26)

I agree. All right, well thanks Alex. We'll see you next time.