Practice Matters

Abstract

In recent years, pastoral and practical theologians have embraced a number of qualitative research methods in order to elucidate lived religious experience. Current streams of work within this trajectory include pastoral ethnography and qualitative studies of religious practices, work that explicitly plumbs the intersection of empirical and theological analyses of the church, and narrative research that foregrounds the development of personal and communal narratives as sites of transformation. This essay explores these avenues of inquiry and affirms the basic claim that for pastoral theology, practice matters. Looking ahead, the author notes the burgeoning creative, therapeutic, and justice-oriented potential of narrative qualitative research. In this evolving work, something akin to the practice of narrative therapy, which engages “narrative means to therapeutic ends” (Epston and White, 1990) can be found. The author proposes a way to move forward that involves employing qualitative research as a narrative means to pastoral theological ends.

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