Customer Reviews

Soul Stories

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Soul Stories offers a practical model for teaching adults. The author engages the reader through the use of storylinking, in conjunction with reflective excercises and activities.This book is easily adaptable for all teaching styles. You'll find the real life stories enlighting.Can be used for any audience.

Book Review: Soul Stories

Name of Book; Soul Stories: Author; Anne Streaty Wimberly: Number of Pages; 155. Anne stories' are about " The Soul's Search for Liberation and Vocation" in African Americans. She is an Associate Professor of Christian Education and Church music at Atlanta's Interdenominational Theological Center, an experienced teacher and researcher. Based on her years of teaching across all ages and cultures, especially in the African American Culture, she feels she has developed and reintroduced a "new-yet-old" teaching style. Anne further believes this type of teaching can be resourceful and successfully implemented when "working with black children, youth and adults in their struggles to experience themselves as whole."

Anne Argued that this model and style of teaching are best demonstrated by a process of linking Christian Faith Stories with every day life experiences. In this exercise, the participants are encouraged to reflect critically on historical events, along with current life experiences. As a result they are able to discern the liberating activity of God and accept his calling for their vocations. According to Anne, this model can be both encouraging and inspiring in the lives of those who are faced with life circumstances with which they can identify. Anne listed" five primary assumptions undergird the story- linking model in Christian Education". (1) The reclaiming of the story-linking process found in the early slave community. (2) Story-linking model is appropriately undertaken in an intergenerational Christian educational setting. (3) Similarity between the issues as well as the contexts that are addressed in Scriptures and the issues and the contexts African Americans address today. (4) The model can be appropriately used in traditional setting, such as church, bible study settings, homes, communities, and across ages. (5) The model holds importance for Christian education leaders, teachers and participants alike.

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading of this book. If I had to rate on a scale from 1-5, I would give it a 4.5. As a reader, I didn't find research, other than her case studies, to support her argument. However, I would recommend this book especially to Christian Educators. The model of linking Faith Stories to Everyday life experiences, in my opinion, could be utilized cross- cultures. At some point in our lives we can all reflect back to a time or a crisis in our life. By linking it to a Scripture could be a form of liberating us from our problem, or having a better understanding of what is going on in our life.

Soul Stories by Anne Streaty Wimberly explains, by use of case studies and activities, a four step process of Proclaiming the story to our youth in Christian Education. This African American view of Christian Education, offers instruction to adults for a "How to..." when teaching other youth. Dr. Wimberly states the importance of understanding the liberation thought of the early African American Educators and it's importance to the art of vocation. The book is laid out for the reader to engage in study of the African American prespective of educating the Christian Faith. Using four primary pahses, the reader can examine the everyday story, the Christian Faith story in the Bible, the Christian Faith story in African American heritage and in Christian Ethical decision making. These processes will enhance a person's understanding of the biblical text in how it liberates one to follow the call to a God inspired vocation.

It would be easy for someone who isn't African American to skim over this work while perusing through titles on Christian education, thinking, "OK, this one doesn't apply to me," and I admit, the book's title, though accurate, does seem to limit its audience. The purpose of my review here will be to try to convince those who are either not Afro-American or who don't work in a community with a sizeable Black population to still read it.

Wimberly is writing the revised edition of her book at a time when the Black family is under crisis, and she tailors her work to not only help individuals grow in faith, hope, and liberation from oppressive structures and life circumstances, but also to strengthen the family unit, including the intergenerational church family. She proposes that a way churches can help do this is through the practice of "story linking"--sharing stories from Scripture, church history, and their own past and then connecting them to the here-and-now. Through the sharing, listening, reflecting upon, and personalizing of these stories of faith, trial, victory, and hope, we can find the "liberating wisdom" they possess, and then go and apply that wisdom to our own lives and communities.

Wimberly's book is eminently practical, as she thoroughly breaks down each process, using multiple examples to show how her model works in "real life." Her work is populist in that it emphasizes the fact that everyone has valuable lessons to share, bringing validation to parishioners regardless of class, age, gender, formal educational level, etc., as she creates a communal narrative theology. She shows how one can incorporate cultural resources such as spirituals and Gospel songs, using them as "links" with the Biblical past, and there is no reason why more contemporary cultural expressions, including hip hop, couldn't serve the same generation-bridging purpose.

Although Wimberly writes from a Black liberation theology perspective, there is no reason why the praxis of her book should be limited to a particular ethnic group. In fact, I wish Wimberly herself had done this some more; my only criticism of the book is it seems to take too much of an ethnocentric position at times, as if every sermon has to come from that place, which would be difficult to maintain in an increasingly multicultural society anyway. I do believe, though, that any conscientious Christian minister could benefit from studying her clearly explained story linking principles and apply them successfully in their own cultural setting. I find her method of linking Biblical and historical stories with contemporary situations very helpful, and gained more insight into some African American experiences in the process.