Narrative and Myth

Since 1984 I have been an ordained minister and in that time served in a number of congregations. Common to each has been the presence of an unwritten code that, apart from matters of doctrine or faith, defines the taboos of the congregation in their organizational life. Its proscriptions determine what is permissible and codifies what is acceptable. My perception of this phenomenon is that its influence upon members is equal to or greater than that accorded their Faith.

Without exception this code is bound up in a story or stories, a narrative about or of the group that serves to plot (Whitebrook, 2001) their shared life within the greater structure of stories created about themselves (Denzin, 2000). These come from relationships and are the memory of particular events that in their causation are thought responsible for the organization being what it is. As such, memory and all that term entails, becomes their keeper and the primer from which neophytes are inculcated in the norms of the organization.

I have observed that the narrative of organizations, which in every sense of the word is what congregations are, become mythical: the stories behind the story of the organization. As do the myths within social fabric everywhere, these also explain, provide cohesion, legitimize, communicate unconscious wishes and conflicts, mediate contradictions, and anchor the present in the past (Bolman & Deal, 2003). It seems that our pleasure at and need to live within imagination makes myth necessary and in it we construct devices that help (Tanasoiu, 2005) to center us.

Tanasoiu (2005) held that truth cloaked as myth is cosmic in its generation, that is, neither real nor unreal but imaginary but that becomes social in its breadth. When handed down in this manner, the story of the organization forms a paradigm that achieves clarity due to being thought of as bearer of some essential truth. This makes myth privileged at least and possibly even sacral in its esteem as the revealer of the organization’s fundamental values and guarantor of its cohesion. For these reasons our myths resist change: their explanations being well protected against debate and argument (Abma, 2000) and their actions legitimated by the sacredness of their content.

Myth, like the narrative it supports, is integral to our organizing and presents beliefs about what is important and why it is so. What I’ve discovered in leading congregations is that to effect lasting organizational change I must first learn the myths and the narrative supported by them.