Recalling Our Own Stories: Spiritual Renewal for Religious Caregivers

While I won't give a long detailed academic review, I will tell you that this text is a must read. It is especially helpful for those in healthcare ministry and anyone who is experiencing burnout will find this to be a useful tool in discovering the origins of your burnout as well as developing strategies for renewal. This book just might change your life and your ministry!

One of the issues that clergy and other ministers have to face is the prospect of burn-out. Whether they are (by some definitions) sole ministers in charge of a church or chaplaincy, or whether they are part of a team, the prospect of burn-out is a very real one - this can happen in terms of physical well-being (some will work themselves too many hours a week without rest for too long, and suffer the effects), and sometimes it can occur spiritually, in terms of disillusionment, lack of direction, lack of focus, or a lack of the same kind of satisfaction of fulfilling a vocation which drew the person to ministry in the first place. In many ways, this book by Edward Wimberly is a retreat in a book. Wimberly has experience at leading retreats and workshops for ministers and religious caregivers to 'explore our deep convictions and beliefs about ourselves, our marriages, our families, and our lives in ministry.' Over time, Wimberly noticed certain patterns, and applied the idea of narrative interpretation (setting up one's own story and mythology) to understanding these kinds of patterns and influences in our lives. This text looks at many different issues. One issue is the idea of expectations - can ministers and religious caregivers live up to expectations? Are the self-expectations of ministers the same as those expected by members of the community or congregation? Another issue is that of cultural influences and our own interpretations of our lives - to what extent do we let the outside world define us? After an introductory chapter that opens the field in terms of biblical and church tradition, Wimberly looks at the issues of personal, marital, family and ministerial interpretations and meaning-making successively. Wimberly uses personal stories as well as others he has collected along the way to highlight ideas and perspectives, and each chapter also has a series of self-reflection exercises to help the reader gain insight into her or his own situation. The second half of the book (chapters five through ten) look at ways of reconstructing one's life in terms of story and narrative. Again these show examples of others who have been through this process, and the final chapter gives specific steps to follow, but also steps that are drawn broadly enough that the way in which any individual does them can vary widely. Wimberly also presents no illusion that this is a panacea or process that always works - the case of Douglas is a case in point here, of someone whose own stories were too resistant to change to work through any easy process; some of our stories are far too ingrained, and may require other processes to help us through them (and discernment can help us to identify when this is true). Wimberly's book is a wonderful text, a very good system for those who want to renew themselves and rediscover the satisfactions of following one's vocation. I came upon this book at a critical time in my ministry, when I was feeling the sti