Your Story Matters
Our stories are not isolated incidents to be shelved, rather they are histories to remember and steward.
Online certificate course for care-providers.
A course in the Theology of Story curriculum
Story work, creating a path forward
Is the art of storytelling new? Is it simply the latest fad? Theology of Story will demonstrate that it’s not. The Bible is mostly narrative, God’s stories progressively unfolding truth. History is His Story, the story of God moving among His people.
Story work draws us into God’s presence
His stories tell us of His covenant, His promise of relationship. As the supporting actor in His redemptive plan, our stories fit into His. Story work inevitably leads us to God as it directs our attention toward Him. In articulating out stories, we’re essentially pleading to know Him.
Story work carefully considers the traumatic impact
In story work we’re asking the hard questions, “Where were you, God? How could this happen? What does it look like to heal? To forgive? To “move on”? Scripture demonstrates how God’s people wrestle similarly. It provides a language, words that give voice to experience. It confirms God’s presence. It promises He will never fail us.
Are you a care-provider who is curious about thinking creatively about biblical care and contemporary methods? How can you enhance your methodology for providing education and care? Your Story Matters gives answers.
Our experienced instructors, Melissa Affolter and Ann Maree Goudzwaard have developed a comprehensive course that will increase familiarity with concepts and terminology to help you build your biblical model of crisis care for one-another ministry.
Questions Answered
Story, in our context, is an account of events, people, and the dynamics of a crisis. Care-providers are instructed on how to gently guide those impacted, to document behaviors, actions, and typical responses. Building a timeline of these accounts is extremely beneficial for both legal and personal records, but also for closure, healing, and overcoming. Through our study of Theology of Story, we also look for God’s redemptive purposes as well as the ultimate source for our hope.
Stories can be implemented for different purposes at different times.
- Helping others remember events validates their experience
- Remembering truthfully, finding accurate descriptions and biblical language to describe the situation, promotes whole person caregiving
- Story work helps those in crises learn trigger points and then develop strategies for conquering distress
- Helping others articulate their story assists your efforts to identify God’s perspective
- Stories can help educate sufferers of specific beliefs that fear, toxic shame, and harmful teachings caused
- Story work helps one find their story of suffering, oppression, and fear in His story of hope, healing, and restoration
- Helping others lament and grieve the details of their story moves them a bit further down the path toward healing
Ann Maree Goudzwaard
Ann Maree is the founder and Executive Director of Help[H]er. She holds a Doctor of Ministry in Counseling and is a trained domestic abuse advocate (CTP), with advanced trauma-focused training through the Global Trauma Recovery Institute. Her work focuses on advocacy, education, and resource development for women impacted by abuse and institutional harm, particularly within faith-based contexts. In this course, Ann Maree teaches the theological foundations of story and the careful handling of lived experience within Christian care.
Melissa Affolter
Melissa is a Counselor and Content Director at Fieldstone Counseling. She is also the course creator and facilitator of ReStoried, a support group for women who have experienced abuse and trauma. Melissa has earned an MA in Biblical Counseling and received further training with the Global Trauma Recovery Institute as well as CCEF. She is a guest on Help[H]er’s Safe to Hope podcast.
Most certainly! Click here Syllabus – Your Story Matters
Reading Assignments:
- Jim Wilder, Michel Hendricks, The Other Half of Church, Christian Community, Brain Science, and Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation, Moody Publishers, 2020.
- Dr. Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores, New Growth Press, 2015
- Leslie Leyland Fields, Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing, and Living the Truth of Your Life, NavPress, 2020
Once enrollment reopens, a link/button will be provided on this page where you will be guided to the payment process and welcomed to the Theology of Story course.
To receive an email notification, please subscribe to our mailing list. (Subscribe form is on this page.)
Student: $295
Group: Group rates are available and vary based on the number of participants. To inquire about group packages, contact the H Institute at learning@helpher.help.
Scholarships: Please contact us.
Groups may purchase multiple student seats so participants can learn together while engaging personally with the material.
Packages include a set number of individual learner seats; each student receives their own login, full access to course materials, and a certificate of completion.
Group rates are available and vary based on the number of participants.
To inquire about group packages, contact the H Institute at learning@helpher.help.
Dr. Heather Evans
Safe to Hope podcast
Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing because you are highlighting information that Christians and the church desperately need. The way that you’re going about doing it is giving us an invitation to bear witness. And when we bear witness, people are changed. The one who is giving the testimony courageously, vulnerably sharing is providing an opportunity for them to find their voice again. So you are creating that setting. Ann Maree, I can’t thank you enough for the work that you’re doing.
Dr. Diane Langberg
Suffering and the Heart of God
You cannot call or talk people out of suffering or trauma or addiction or of great grief. You must go to them and sit with them and listen and understand. And then little by little you can begin to walk with them toward a new and different place. You cannot help if you do not enter their darkness.
Rachael Denhollander
Safe to Hope podcast
If we’re going to say all these wonderful, lofty things from the pulpit about the importance of truth and justice and who our God is—His righteousness and His holiness—then that must inform how we understand those who have suffered so deeply. Our theology should shape our care.
