A tissue of truths: The story-weaver

Abstract

Drawing on some original research in the Diocese of Canterbury, this paper explores the vital role of the priest as the shaper of a congregational culture in which both spiritual and congregational growth can thrive. It examines the importance of understanding and articulating the ethos and mythos of a particular faith-community, that shared narrative from which values and perceptions intuitively arise and which gives a congregation its unique character. It analyses the process by which individuals become socialized into faith-communities in a cyclical encounter with questions of identity, a community of faith and Christian tradition. It demonstrates the skilled task of the priest’s role in facilitating this vital process, in which the threads of an individual’s story become first entangled with and then woven into the story both of the wider Christian tradition and of a particular congregation until a transformation of identity takes place.