The Pastor and Fiction: The Integrity of the Pastoral Narrative and the Implications for Pastoral Supervision and Education

This article examines the experience of pastors when their functioning appears incongruent with their imagined or desired narrative for themselves, leading the pastors to feel, or consider themselves, inauthentic. The author addresses holistically the threat of "fictional" experience to pastoral well-being and functioning. In response to a pastoral case, the author examines three types of fictional experience related to worldview, identity, and sense of belonging and argues that narrative restructuring can be conducive to authenticity and integrity. Finally, he proposes the broad outlines of a strategy for pastoral supervision and education.