Story Care Online Class
Story Care: Attending to Life Stories
Rev. Dr. Karen Scheib will be leading a five-week online class on Thursdays, Aug. 15 to Sept. 12 from 6-7 p.m.
Story Care provides a means to attend to life stories: our own and those of others. Learning to “read” our life stories builds a deeper appreciation of who we have been, who we are, and who God is calling us to be. Through reverent listening to each other’s stories, we become Story Companions, accompanying each other in joy, sorrow, and through the rhythms of daily life. Story Care pays particular attention the story God is weaving through our own and other’s life stories. The goal of Story Care is to foster the flourishing God intends.
The course content will be presented through mini lectures (PowerPoint slides), group discussion, brief written reflections, and practical exercises.
Click here to register for the class.
August 15: Session One - The Stories We Are
This session provides and introduction to Story Care, which understands that human beings as formed and shaped by story. We live in a network of stories, including the stories of our families, religious tradition, and the larger culture. We not only have life stories, in many ways, we are the stories we tell.
August 22: Session Two - God’s Story and Our Story
Just as our own life stories develop and we gain new experiences and grow in maturity, so to our stories about God (our theology) changes and develops. Sometimes, significant life experiences challenge our stories about God, and we need to come to new understanding of who God is and how God is at work in the world.
August 29: Session Three - Becoming Story Companions, The Gift and Power of Story Listening
We often underestimate the power of reverently listening to another’s story not for information or to offer a solution but simply to honor the story. We will explore specific practices of story listening and how to become story companions to one another.
September 5: Session Four - Story Care, “Reading” Life Stories
We can learn to become better “readers” of life stories, both others and our own and discern which stories help us flourish as God intends and which leave us floundering.
September 12: Session Five - The Practice of Restorying
We cannot change the past, but we can come to new understandings and interpretations of it. We will examine practices that help us and others come to new understandings of life stories and promote growth in grace.
About Rev. Scheib
Rev. Scheib is Emerita Professor of Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, where she taught for twenty-two years, following five years at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri.
While at Candler, she served for five years as Director of Women, Theology, and Ministry Program and six years and as the Co-Chair of the Religion Public Health Collaborative. Dr. Scheib is the author of several books, including, Pastoral Care: Telling the Stories of Our Lives (Abingdon Press, 2016), and Attend to Story: How to Flourish in Ministry (2018), as well as book chapters and articles in scholarly and popular publications. Much of her writing explores the role of life stories in identity formation and fostering wellbeing in self and others.
She continues to co-lead semi-annual workshops on clergy flourishing for Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Rev. Scheib is an ordained elder in the United Methodist church. Prior to her teaching career, she served as a pastor in San Diego, California, and Nashville, Tennessee. She currently serves as a part-time pastor of congregational care at Messiah Lutheran Church on Skidaway Island, near Savannah Georgia.