220 - Holding the Story: Chaplain Eva Bleeker on Suffering and the Ministry of Listening

In this episode, Joey and Lynne sit down with Dr. Eva Bleeker, known to her students as Chaplain Eva, a board-certified chaplain who spent a decade doing pastoral care in hospitals and now teaches chaplaincy at Denver Seminary. Her work centers on the power of story, and in this conversation she unpacks why simply receiving someone's story, without needing to fix it, can be the ministry itself. Eva walks through what she calls "narrative identity theory," the idea that the way we listen...