Session 6 Facilitator Guide

WhyzMen · Rewire Retirement · Session 6 Facilitator Guide · r10

SESSION 6 · FACILITATOR GUIDE

Read My Story

Redemption & Continuity

Deck Session_6_Read_My_Story_r9 · 23 slides · Guide r10 · 90 minutes · Participant Guide r8 · 13 pages · Homework Packet: The Compass Worksheet r2 · Values Inventory r2

Session at a Glance

Session 5 handed each man the instrument — his own story — and sent him home to write it in two layers. Session 6 is where the writing is read: silently by the man himself, for its arc; aloud to two witnesses, for what they hear in it; and backward, with Joseph, for where God was in the turns. Three movements of work sit inside a frame that opens and closes on the same sentence — you are the story you tell — so that the morning is not an exercise in literary criticism but a session about identity.

The session turns on one distinction. A life can be told two ways: as contamination, where good things sour and the wound gets the last word; or as redemption, where hardship turns, in time, into growth, depth, or unexpected gift. Most men have been telling one of these for decades without naming it. This morning they name it, and they hear which one two other men heard.

Four outputs leave the room: a marked Read My Story sheet (a contamination turn, a redemption turn, the thread), a §1.1 draft that has been heard by two men, the witnesses’ words written down, and the Compass Worksheet understood — two essays, then 3–5 values circled where they collide, then the Life Theme: Charter §1.2 My Compass, part 1, over the three Christmas weeks before Session 7 (Monday January 4). Slide 12 is the heart of the morning; slide 4 and slide 22 are its bookends.

Before you begin · setup

Cards and tools this session: E1 comes back. The witness move, “What I heard…”, is Reflect it back, the practice on E1’s back: point to the card once before the threes. No card comes out.

THE 90 MINUTES

Run of Show

Cumulative starts; ends at 1:29 with one minute of buffer. Two new slides this revision (19 Readings, 20 Practice of the Week) took one minute from the tiers slide (18, 2→1) and one from the buffer. Protected blocks are marked ★ — they are never the place you save time. Slides 7–10 are one eighteen-minute block: three minutes to open pages and orient, then three prompts at five minutes each.

Movement 1 · Re-entry and the Frame (0:00 – 0:22)

Review is re-entry, not recap. The men talk before they are taught, and the first thing they talk about is the writing they just did. Then four frame slides that must do one job each and get out of the way of the sheet.

Slide 1 · Cover · 1 min · 0:00

Up as the doors open. Walk the tables and say one thing to each man: “draft out, map out.” The sheet and pen are already at every seat. You will know in the first minute who came without a draft; do not make it a moment.

Slide 2 · Check-in · 7 min · 0:01 ★

Two questions at tables, in order, then the practice check-in. The first is the usual sentence. The second is new and it matters: what did the three sittings of writing show you that you did not expect? McAdams observes that what a man revises between drafts is as revealing as the draft; this question opens the morning on the writing process itself, before anyone reads a word aloud.

SAY “One sentence — how are you arriving? Then one more: one thing the three sittings showed you.”

EXPECT A man who did not write. No shame at the table. He will read from his sheet at slide 12 and still get two witnesses. Find out privately this week whether “didn’t” means “couldn’t” — it is usually the valley.

GUARDRAIL Seven minutes, hard. Nobody reads his draft at a table; that is slide 12, and to two men only.

PRACTICE OF THE WEEK The slide’s last line checks Session 5’s practice. After the two questions, go round once:

SAY “Tell us one moment with this week’s practice: Ask for a story.”

One moment per man, no commentary — inside the seven minutes. Then the Session 5 check-off, one short line each, still inside the seven: the three sittings — done / not yet; §1.1 — “open to §1.1” (draft and Life Map are already on the table, slide 1); Why We Write Our Story — two or three men give one sentence that helped them write; VIA top 5 — taken? bring it to Session 7, where it is used; and the question they carried from Session 5 — what has your story been fleeing, and what has it been seeking? A word from one or two men, or a show of hands; it feeds the Compass essays. The new practice comes at slide 20, and it is this morning’s witness skill taken home.

Slide 3 · This morning’s question · 2 min · 0:08

Read it aloud twice, slowly. Do not explain it. Let it sit.

Slide 4 · Last session’s claim · 2 min · 0:10 ★

The opening bookend. Session 5 made McAdams’ claim from the front — you are not a man who has a story; you are the story you tell. This morning turns it over: if that is true, then how a man reads his story — contamination or redemption — is not a comment on his life. It is his identity, being decided. Without this slide the morning is a writing workshop; with it, the morning is about who he is.

SAY “Last session I told you that you are the story you tell. This morning we find out which story that has been. Not the facts — the facts are settled. The reading.”

GUARDRAIL Two minutes. Do not lecture on McAdams; a one-line credit is fine (Session 5 already names him). If a man asks where this comes from, point him to the Reader’s Companion.

Slide 5 · Last session, you wrote it · 2 min · 0:12

Honor the work: three sittings of raw writing and a 250-word draft is more than most men have ever written about themselves. Then the pivot in one breath — a story is what happened plus the meaning you gave it since; this morning is the second half of that sentence. First cut if you are behind.

Slide 6 · Two ways a story can bend · 8 min · 0:14

The discipline is brevity and concreteness. Two plain words and nothing else. Teach the cards, then a thirty-second example of your own — you are modeling the read, not lecturing.

SAY “Some of us have been telling a story of contamination for forty years: the good things got taken, the wound is the headline. Some of us tell redemption: the hard thing, in time, grew something. Same life. Which way has yours been bending?”

THEN “For years I read [chapter] as the thing that ruined [x]. When I read it again last year, I saw it was the thing that gave me [y].”

GUARDRAIL Say now, once, that some chapters are still only loss and naming that honestly is faithful work. You will say it again before the silence. Credit McAdams or Adler in a sentence if it helps; do not teach “narrative identity.”

Movement 2 · The Read-Back (0:22 – 0:40)

Eighteen minutes, silent, on paper. Shoulder-to-shoulder before face-to-face: a man marks his own story before he is asked to speak it, and the sheet gives him something concrete to hold when he is.

Slide 7 · Mark your story · 3 min, inside the 18 · 0:22 ★

Draft and Life Map out; the sheet in front of him. Explain the sheet once — navy column left for contamination, gold column right for redemption, the white band across the bottom for the thread; slide 6’s glosses are printed under each heading so nobody looks up mid-thought. Then silence. Music low or none.

SAY “Eighteen minutes, three prompts, silent. Nobody shares yet. And hear this before you start: some chapters are still only loss. Write that true. You do not have to find a silver lining this morning.”

CHARTER The sheet goes home. It is the outline for this week’s §1.1 touch-up and it tucks into the Charter beside §1.1. Say that once, so nobody leaves it on the table.

Slides 8–10 · The three prompts · 5 min each · 0:25

Prompt 1, the contamination turn — where did something good sour into grievance or regret? Prompt 2, the redemption turn — where did something hard become growth, depth, or an unexpected gift? Prompt 3, the thread — what has been true of him in every chapter, and where is God in the turns?

EXPECT Men who appear to finish early. Do not rescue them. If the room gets restless: “Stay with it — some of you are close to something.” Then let silence return.

PASTORAL A man who writes one line in the navy column and stops, pen down, is not stuck; he is there. Give him the room. Check in at the break, never at the table.

CHARTER A check worth naming at prompt 3, quietly: did the arc he wrote in §1.1 actually account for his valley moments, or did it route around them? That is why Step One sits on the facing page of the Charter.

Movement 3 · Tell It (0:40 – 1:09)

Session 5 promised the men what would happen to their writing: each man reads his §1.1 draft aloud; two witnesses answer. Keep the promise exactly — the draft was sized for it. Then the debrief the Session Process requires: material, breakout, debrief.

Slide 11 · How to listen · 3 min · 0:40

Witnesses need something to listen for, or they default to fixing. Three words, three questions: coherence — does it hang together, or is it a list of jobs? Complexity — does it admit the hard chapters? Resolution — does it land somewhere, or leave room for God to finish it? The lens is Jonathan Adler’s; you may credit him in a sentence.

GUARDRAIL Resolution is not a happy ending. A story that leaves a chapter open — “and I am still waiting to see what God does with it” — has resolution in Adler’s sense. Say so, or the tidy men will win the room.

Slide 12 · Read My Story in threes · 18 min · 0:43 ★

The heart of the morning, and where McAdams says the transformation actually happens — in the telling to someone who is listening, not solving. Pre-assigned threes, all running at once. Five minutes a man; call the rotations from the front at 5, 10, and 15.

SAY “You have one job — tell him what you heard. If you find yourself about to say ‘what you should do,’ stop.”

EXPECT Groups of four: the fourth witnesses twice and reads first next time, or, if the threes are running fast, reads too. Twelve men is four threes; fourteen is two threes and two fours — never a two.

GUARDRAIL Walk the room; be present, not intrusive. A witness who fixes gets a hand on the shoulder and the sentence again. Sixty-second warning before each rotation. Remind the men to write their witnesses’ words in the guide — the Compass Worksheet asks for them.

PASTORAL Tears, in the threes, are the likeliest of the semester. Do not rescue the room from silence. A hand on the shoulder at the break beats a public comfort in the moment.

PARTICULARITY Light callback, and the slide’s new bottom line: “Witness in scenes, not summaries.” When a witness drifts into summary (“you’re a hard worker”), ask for the scene he heard: “Tell him the one scene, not the summary.” Meaning lives in the particular. The Participant Guide carries the line beside the witness table.

Slide 13 · What Surfaced · 8 min · 1:01 ★

Whole room. Three or four men, one thing each — not the story, the thing that surfaced. Witnesses first: what did you hear in his story that he did not hear himself? Then a teller or two: what surprised you about being heard?

SAY “Not your story. One thing that surfaced.”

YOUR JOB Allender’s reading with them. When a man cannot see the redemptive thread in his own story, reflect it back — offered, never forced. And when a man says his chapter is still only loss, honor it out loud: “That is an honest reading, and it is not over.”

WATCH-FOR The man who tells his whole story at What Surfaced. Ninety seconds, then: “Hold that — it goes in the Charter.” Say it warmly.

Slides 14–15 · Genesis 50:20 and Joseph · 7 min · 1:09

Read the verse slowly, twice; let the room hear “you intended to harm me” plainly before it hears “God intended it for good.” Then Joseph in five minutes: he could not undo it; he re-read its meaning. Sold, imprisoned, forgotten — for years every chapter read like ruin. Then he read it backward, and saw God. In the Hebrew the same verb — ḥāšaḇ, to reckon, to weave, to intend — is used of both the brothers and God: one act, two authors, two meanings. That is the redemptive read in its purest biblical form, and it is Session 5’s co-author claim with a face on it.

GUARDRAIL Teach it as Joseph’s reading of his own story, not as a doctrine of suffering. Never say or imply that God endorsed the harm. The redemptive read is not positive thinking; it is trust that the Author is not finished.

Slide 16 · Sit with this · 2 min · 1:16

Two minutes of silence. The forward read: the thread that has held you is still being woven — where is it carrying you? This is the seed of the Life Theme in §1.2. Do not fill the silence.

Movement 4 · The Hand-off and the Bookend (1:18 – 1:30)

Twelve minutes, seven slides, one job: send men home knowing exactly what to write, how long it takes, and what happens to it — and close the loop you opened on slide 4.

Slide 17 · Three weeks — the Compass Worksheet · 3 min · 1:18 ★

The Session 6 Homework Packet. Two essays from Burnett & Evans — what is work for, what is life for — about 250 words each. Then the compass: read them against each other; where they agree there is a bearing, where they collide a value is hiding — circle 3–5 candidate values on the Values Inventory. Then the Life Theme, which closes sitting 3. Define it once, out loud — Life Theme: the thread that runs through your whole story, named in one or two sentences — what has stayed true of you in every chapter. That is Charter §1.2 My Compass, part 1: essays about 90 minutes, values about 20, the theme about 15. The two Core Values finish §1.2 at Session 7.

SAY “This is the one place in Part One where we ask you to write long before you write short. The essays are the marble; Session 7 is the carving. Don’t skip to the carving.”

WHY For you, not the room: Bloom’s Understand — the interpretive step between Remember (§1.1) and Apply (the values that finish §1.2). A man who skips it picks his industry’s values at Session 7; the Source Question in §1.2 exists because that happens.

CHARTER Optional, not counted: touch up §1.1 with the sheet beside the draft, after the witnesses. One evening, not a rewrite. It sits in slide 18’s Optional line.

Slide 18 · Before Session 7 — January 4, three weeks · 1 min · 1:21

The one closing list, honest minutes, three weeks (Christmas) — Session 7 is Monday January 4. DO: §1.2 My Compass part 1, the two essays (90); the Values Inventory, 3–5 circled (20); the Life Theme (15). VIA: already taken — bring the top 5. READ: Genesis 50:20 twice (5). PRACTICE: Reflect it back (5). About 135 minutes, about 45 a week. DEEPER, say “optional”: §1.1 touch-up, Designing a Meaningful Second Half, Burnett & Evans ch. 2, Brown. No CliftonStrengths here.

SAY “Three weeks is room, not slack — Christmas will take some of it. About forty-five minutes a week. Bring whatever you have to Session 7 on January 4. A half-finished compass still points.”

KEEP OUT Do not assign the Values Card Sort, Spiritual Gifts, or Big Five this morning. Session 7 runs the values work in the room from §1.2 part 1; the rest belong to later sessions. The old five-assessment battery is retired.

Slide 19 · Readings — This Week’s Reading · 1 min · 1:22

Point, don’t teach. Recommended: Genesis 50:20 — this week’s Scripture, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good”; say where it lives (binder / shared folder) and that the plan reads it twice in the first week. Going Deeper, once and lightly — optional, never assigned: Designing a Meaningful Second Half (WhyzMen reading on Dave Evans’s Hidden Brain conversation; its “Craft your story” section is this morning in miniature: Joseph, redemption and contamination) · Designing Your Life, ch. 2, “Building a Compass” (Burnett & Evans) · Dare to Lead, pp. 185–197 (Brené Brown — a library copy is enough). The same two sit in slide 18’s Optional line.

Slide 20 · Practice of the Week — Reflect it back · 1–2 min · 1:23

SAY “What I heard you say is…” in their words, before your own. One minute now: try it once on the man beside you.

Read the practice: Reflect it back. Name its skill and section: “It is section 1, Listen, in your Toolkit — the card is the menu, the Toolkit is the kitchen.” Then one minute, in pairs, right now: The man beside you says one sentence about his week; you answer, “What I heard you say is…”, in his words. Then swap. Out of time? Each man names the one person he will try it with this week. The tracker is weekly, not daily: “Tried it this week ☐” and one moment line on the card. Rooted in this morning’s witness practice, taken home.

CHECK-IN Session 7 opens: “Tell us one moment with this week’s practice: Reflect it back.”

Slide 21 · Carry these · 1 min · 1:24

Three questions to carry, not write — over coffee, on a walk. They compost into the Life Theme the men write in sitting 3 of the Compass Worksheet. Point at the guide and move.

Slide 22 · The claim, read back · 2 min · 1:25 ★

The closing bookend. You are the story you tell — and this morning two men heard which story that has been. Same life, two readings. The invitation is not positive thinking; it is to read your life the way its Author reads it: Joseph’s way, backward and redeemed. Then hand off to Session 7 in one sentence, because it is the reason the compass matters.

SAY “Session 5 said you are the story you tell. This morning you found out which story you’ve been telling. At Session 7, after Christmas, we ask what it has been for — and what you will not compromise to keep being it. That is where values come from.”

Slide 23 · Benediction · 2 min · 1:27

Read it as a blessing, not an announcement. Pray briefly — courage to read the story honestly, trust that the Author is not finished. Announce Session 7: Values, Monday January 4 — bring §1.2 (the two essays and the Life Theme), the circled Values Inventory, and their VIA top 5. Send the deck and guide to any man who missed this morning.

WATCH-FORS

When Men Get Stuck

Framework Rationale · for you, not the room

The frameworks stay below the waterline; the men experience only the encounter. They hear two words — contamination and redemption — three listening questions, and one person: Joseph. McAdams and Adler may be credited in a sentence (Session 5 already names McAdams); their frameworks are not taught.

The redemptive self — the engine of the session

Dan McAdams, Northwestern. Adults who narrate their lives with redemption sequences — suffering that turns toward growth, insight, or communion — show markedly higher generativity and well-being than those whose stories run as contamination sequences, where good scenes are spoiled. Narrative identity is not fixed; the same events can be re-read. This morning’s silence is a guided re-read. (The Redemptive Self; The Stories We Live By.)

Adler’s three marks — the listening lens

Jonathan Adler, Olin College, studied under McAdams. Coherence, complexity, and positive resolution are narrative qualities that track with well-being; the arc a person gives an experience — not its content — predicts outcomes. Session 5 named the lens on its Session 6 preview slide; slide 11 hands it to the witnesses. Resolution in Adler’s sense includes an honestly open ending — say so.

Continuity

Alongside redemption sits the thread — the identity that persists across every chapter. Naming it answers the quiet fear of retirement (“without my role, am I still me?”) and it is the raw material for the Life Theme in §1.2 and, later, the §2.1 mission. Redemption tells a man his story can change direction; continuity tells him he is still himself while it does.

The theological layer

Where the social science reads the story, Scripture authors it. Reading one’s life as a story being told — wound and all — is the heart of Dan Allender’s To Be Told, and “reading with them” is his description of what you do at What Surfaced. The redemptive read is not positive thinking; it is the conviction that one’s life is being written by a faithful Author who, as Session 5 said, is a better novelist than we are.

Accuracy Guardrails

Genesis 50:20. The verb ḥāšaḇ (“intended,” also “to reckon, devise, weave”) is used of both the brothers and God — one act, two intentions. Teach it as Joseph’s reading of his own story; it is not a general doctrine that all suffering is sent for good. Romans 8:28 (in the Allender reference) says God works all things toward good; it does not say all things were good.

McAdams. Redemption and contamination sequences are his terms and the generativity finding is his; “we are the stories we tell” is his line. The claim on slide 4 is a paraphrase built on it — do not attribute the exact wording.

Adler. Coherence, complexity, and positive resolution as narrative qualities tracking well-being (Adler et al., 2016). “Resolution” in his work is positive resolution; the program’s gloss — leaving room for God to finish it — is ours, and pastorally necessary.

Burnett & Evans. Workview and Lifeview essays, about 250 words each, and the compass built from reading them together are theirs (Designing Your Life, chapter 2). The theological prompts in the worksheet are the program’s additions.

The Life Theme question. McAdams’ Life Story Interview II, section F, quoted verbatim in the worksheet.

In the facilitator’s kitchen

Sources to draw from and ration: McAdams, The Redemptive Self and The Stories We Live By · Adler et al., “The Incremental Validity of Narrative Identity” (2016) · Allender, To Be Told · Burnett & Evans, Designing Your Life · Genesis 37–50 with an NIV Study Bible · and Eliot, from the Companion: “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” This morning is that arrival, for the story. Keep it kind.

What’s Due When

Tees up · Session 7 — Values

Session 7 opens with the compass already in hand and spends its room time narrowing the 3–5 circled values to two, and on the Source Question — whose values are these: Christ’s, the family’s, or the industry’s? — with the VIA results as the other half: the compass says what matters; his strengths say what he is wired to do about it. §1.2 part 1 is the on-ramp. A man who wrote the essays arrives with a theme to hang values on; a man who did not arrives with a list that is his industry’s. This morning’s witnesses are the ones who heard the theme first — send the men home with those words written down.

Open items for Dave

•Threes: settled (D2) — triads form at Session 10; the facilitator assigns threes for the morning. This guide assumes pre-assigned threes; a group of four works, a two does not.

•r11 (Oct 24): hand out the Values Inventory r2 with the Compass Worksheet r2. Both now say §1.2; the Life Theme is written in sitting 3; the Domain Grid and Synthesis are optional. Session 7 starts from the 3–5 circled values.

•r10: Designing a Meaningful Second Half moved here from Session 3 as Going Deeper (slides 18–19, Participant Guide, Readings Ledger). Its file is r2 in Recommended Readings, with the Charter reference corrected to §1.2; archive the unversioned original.

•The Compass Worksheet is delivered as its own packet with the guide; if you want it bound into the participant guide, say so and it can be merged.

•Reader’s Companion entries named in the guide (“Redemption & Contamination,” “The Thread”) are not yet written; “Poiema” exists.

•The Architecture doc still numbers Read My Story as S5; the deck, guides, Charter, and worksheet all say S6.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

THE MORNING ON ONE PAGE

Cue Card

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” This morning every man in the room finds out which way he has been reading his own life — and hears two other men read it back to him. Your job is to keep the silence, keep the clock, protect the man whose chapter has not turned, and get out of the way.