How the ReStory® Institute compares to Narrative Focused Trauma Care (NFTC) at The Allender Center

Narrative Focused Trauma Care (NFTC), offered through The Allender Center, and ReStory’s Storywork training both believe your story matters. But they’re built differently, for different seasons of life and ministry.

NFTC Level I is a year-long commitment: four multi-day weekends spread across roughly six months, with a price tag north of $7,000. It’s a rich program rooted in Dan Allender’s decades of work, and many of our own ReStory facilitators have walked through it themselves. We have deep respect for that lineage. It shaped us too, and we affirm NFTC as real, valuable work.

ReStory took a different path, starting with how it was built. NFTC grew top-down, out of Dan Allender’s theological and psychological framework, then trained practitioners to apply it. ReStory grew the other way, from the ground up. The ReStory Institute actually began as in-house training for our own counselors and coaches. We needed a way to bring new practitioners up to speed in how we practice Storywork. Over time, others outside our walls wanted in, and what started as internal training became a program we now offer to counselors, pastors, and leaders everywhere. The methodology came from what worked in the room, not the other way around. That order matters. It’s why our training feels less like absorbing a theory and more like learning a craft. Many of our students serve in ministry or other faith contexts, and tell us the work resonates deeply with their lives and calling.

We built the ReStory Institute by and for practitioners: counselors, coaches, pastors, and leaders already doing the work, who need training that fits into a working life instead of pausing it. Our training is led by people who are in the room every week with real clients, couples, and groups. The program is just as rigorous and just as applicable as anything else out there. It’s simply built for working adults, so you leave each session with tools you can use the next day. Our price point is also a fraction of comparable training, making this work accessible without asking for a year and thousands of dollars away from your calling.

In fact, a good number of our students have already completed NFTC Level I. They come to us because they did the deep work of engaging their own story, and now they want to know how to actually do this with someone else. That’s the gap ReStory fills: less about another pass through your own narrative, more about the skills, tools, and confidence to guide others through theirs. It’s also the most common feedback we hear, that ReStory is kind, practical, and gives people a path toward practicing.

Ultimately, our goal is to get you doing the work. ReStory’s full path, Levels 1, 2, and 3, can be completed in about a year, getting you on solid footing as a practitioner of Storywork. NFTC’s training arc runs closer to three years to reach a comparable depth. We’re grateful for what NFTC has built and for what it gave many of us, but we built ReStory because the field needed a path that gets people equipped and practicing faster.

So if you’re trying to decide between the two: NFTC is a long-form, immersive journey into your own story, built from theory down. ReStory is a more hands-on path to using Storywork in your counseling room, your church, or your home, built from practice up, by people doing the work alongside you.