Celebrating the Release of my New Book

Reposted from the Christian Theological Seminary Website:

Rev. Dr. Suzanne Coyle, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Marriage and Family Therapy and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, will celebrate the release of her newest book on March 7. The book, Spirituality in Systemic Family Therapy Supervision and Training, published by Springer Publishing Company, builds on aspects of her vocation as a pastor, marriage and family therapist, professor and supervisor, and proponent of narrative therapy. The book is the newest in Springer’s “Focused Issues in Family Therapy” series.

Coyle has long been compelled by the dynamics of narrative practice, having first been exposed to it years ago at a Kentucky Association of Marriage and Family Therapy conference. There, learning from prominent scholars and practitioners in the field, Coyle was struck by what she discerned to be its “uniquely spiritual flavor.” This led her to pursue further training at narrative centers around the world, including the Evanston Family Therapy Center, the Dulwich Centre in Australia, and the Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy.

Coyle then integrated into these foundational trainings her experiences as a pastor in several Indiana congregations. She explained, “The richness of the pastoral environment was a fertile ground for developing narrative ideas,” which led to her first two books, Re-Storying Your Faith and Uncovering Spiritual Narratives.

Perceiving the need for more work on spirituality in therapy for a wider context, Coyle set out in her newest book to offer a “spiritual/theological methodology” to the secular clinical world. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, in the book Coyle weaves together pastoral theology, liberation theologies, narrative practice, and systemic family therapy. In the model that emerges, she explained, “social justice is seen as a starting point in the therapy room and teaching environment through spirituality. I contend that a robust spirituality is firmly grounded in everyday life, beginning from immanence and stretching toward transcendence.”

The new book focuses on theory and practice regarding spirituality in systemic family therapy, and it includes chapters geared specifically to students, faculty, supervisors, and practitioners. Although her own training and practice is in marriage and family therapy, Coyle wrote the new book to be helpful to psychotherapists, psychologists, mental health counselors, social workers, and psychiatrists in addition to family therapy.

Grateful for her nearly twenty years on faculty at CTS, Coyle said that the seminary has been “the environment that sustains me in further pursuit of new ideas. CTS is through and through the book.”

Order a copy of Prof. Coyle’s new book here.

Learn more about the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at CTS here.

What a weekend!

My weekend began Friday with an ominous e-mail from COAMFTE with the heading of Action Letter. From both joyful and painful reactions opening that such an e-mail, I asked myself, “Do I really open it? Do I wait until I have some writing done?” Since July, when my colleagues and I submitted our response to the stipulations, I really thought we did what we should have. But you never know!!!!!

A part of my brain since July has been marked COAMFTE! COAMFTE! ALERT! DO NOT ENTER! AND me yelling at the top of my brain, “I need to write!!” AND since July, I struggled with my desire to do some phonebanking in the election. What should I do! I threw caution to the wind and worked the phonebanks.

Then, that letter!! I opened the e-mail, “Stipulations removed!” And the election was called!

What a weekend!

An author's life

Wow! I realize that I wrote my first blog when I set up my website in 2015. Then, nothing!!!!! What has happened since then! Well, CTS sold its campus. President Boulton resigned. I believe Dean Francis began her tenure. We began preparing for the COAMFTE Site Visit which was in Fall 2019. No wonder my brain has been under siege.

And during that time, I wrote one book proposal and then another book proposal before getting my book contract with Springer Nature. I also wrote a chapter for a peer reviewed book to which Dr. Davis contributed. And I wrote an article in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy in an issue devoted to spirituality.

Now I’m in the midst of my writing for my book Spirituality in Systemic Family Therapy Supervision and Training for Spring Nature, a division of Springer International. It’s in a book series edited by Dr. Russ Crane, Focused Issues in Family Therapy.

I’ll have a new blog on each Monday and hope you’ll sign in with me. For now, if you’d like, think of how you connect social justice, diversity, and spirituality which is what I’m writing about.

See your writing thoughts soon

A glimpse at my book

When is a story just a story? When is a story much more than a story? When is the story we think we know obscuring a much richer story? These questions and more lay at the root of my lifelong quest to understand the power of story. Growing up in a southern rural community, I learned the art of storytelling from my family and neighbors. I often heard with some admiration, “She sure is a good storyteller.” I also heard with disapproval, “He sure can tell some big stories!”

I instinctively knew from both statements that some stories were cherished and brought forth life. Other stories were tall tales of deceit. My upbringing taught me that stories were a part of everyday life, stories influence your personal values, and stories influence how you value others. The “take away” for me was that stories tell us who a person is and is not. In my journey, I found it difficult to figure out how to identify and separate “good” stories from stories that were “tall tales.”

My love for stories drew me to pastoral care because listening to others’ stories carried such power. Those persons who had supportive stories in their lives seemed able to look to the future with at least a glimmer of hope. Those persons who focused on the stories of loss in their lives seemed to be unable to look, even for a second, at future possibilities.

Further complicating this caring for others through stories was my growing awareness that some stories were labeled as pathological while other stories were labeled as “normal.” Never being one to value normality, I found this labeling more and more distressful. Pastoral diagnosing to an extreme seemed to negate the power of a living God who cares for us and struggles with us through pain to hope.

Listening for unique stories that tugged at me personally was part of who I was. However, I was quite surprised when I experienced a call to ministry in college. I was well aware that women were not expected to be ordained as 1Southern Baptist ministers. Yet, my calling to the ministry was unmistakable. My home church, Beech Fork Baptist Church in Gravel Switch, Kentucky, ordained me after I graduated from seminary and began ministry. Soon, my world was shaken when the church was disfellowshipped from its association because I, a woman, was ordained there.

You can purchase my book Uncovering Spiritual Narratives in the sidebar on the right.