Trauma and the narrative life of congregations

Abstract

This chapter explores the narrative life of congregations and their vulnerability to trauma. It also suggests ways in which congregations might be helped to become more resilient in the face of the shock events to which all communities will tend to be exposed. The chapter takes as its point of departure the innovative work on congregational narrative produced by James Hopewell in his book Congregation: Stories and Structures. It extrapolates from Hopewell’s claim that congregations carry strong internal narratives and that those narratives tend to fall into one (or at most a mixture of two) classic types of genre. The chapter proposes that understanding of the genre of congregational narrative might be particularly important in understanding the damage done to a community by a shock event and that inhabiting all four genres of story in the performance of Scripture might be important to congregational health and resilience.