Spiritual direction

Spiritual direction is a regular conversation with a trained companion who helps you pay attention to God in your life. If you have begun to pray more seriously (see how can I experience God?), or you sense God stirring something in you and you are unsure what to make of it, a spiritual director can walk beside you. The practice is ancient, and Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Orthodox Christians, and Catholics all offer it today.

What happens in spiritual direction?

A session usually lasts about an hour, often once a month, in person or by video. You talk about your life with God: your prayer, your questions, the events of the past few weeks, what brings you joy and what troubles you. The director mostly listens, asks questions, and may suggest a way to pray, such as contemplative prayer. Many sessions begin and end with a short prayer or a few minutes of silence, and everything you say stays confidential.

The old name can mislead, because directors do not give orders. A director’s task is to help you notice where God is already at work and how you are responding. Directors often say that the real director is the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called “the Counselor” who “will teach you all things” (John 14:26).

How is spiritual direction different from therapy?

A therapist helps you heal from psychological wounds or manage a condition such as anxiety or depression. A pastoral counselor helps you through a particular crisis. A spiritual director accompanies your relationship with God over months and years, in good seasons and hard ones. Good directors know these limits and will encourage you to see a therapist or doctor when you need one. Many people see both, and the two work well together (see is anxiety a sin?).

Is spiritual direction in the Bible?

Scripture shows people helping one another hear God. When the boy Samuel heard a voice calling him in the night, he ran three times to the old priest Eli, until Eli understood what was happening:

Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down. It shall be, if he calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD; for your servant hears.’”

1 Samuel 3:8–9

The call came to Samuel. Eli’s gift was to help Samuel recognize it, and every good spiritual director shares that gift.

When Philip met an Ethiopian official reading the prophet Isaiah, he asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The man answered, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” (Acts 8:30–31). Proverbs describes the art of listening well: “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:5). And on the road to Emmaus, before the risen Jesus explained anything, he “came near, and went with them” (Luke 24:15).

Where did spiritual direction come from?

In the fourth century, Christians who went into the deserts of Egypt and Syria to pray sought out experienced elders, called abba (father) and amma (mother), and asked them, “Give me a word.” The elder answered with a short saying, a story, or a task meant for that one person (see the Desert Fathers and Mothers).

The Orthodox Church has kept the practice in the spiritual father or mother, sometimes called an elder (geron in Greek, starets in Russian). Kallistos Ware, the English-born Orthodox bishop who taught at Oxford, wrote that “there are spiritual mothers as well as spiritual fathers,” and that an elder may be “a simple monk, not in holy orders, or even a layman.” Ware also wrote, “Spiritual guides are ordained, not by human hands, but by the hand of God.” The Orthodox tradition has also prized direction as a safeguard for those who pray deeply, because a wise guide can tell true prayer from spiritual delusion (see Christian mysticism).

Western Christians kept the practice too. Ignatius of Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises in the sixteenth century to be given by one person to another, and they taught generations to notice the movements of consolation and desolation in their prayer. After the Reformation, Martin Luther wrote many letters of comfort and counsel to troubled believers, and John Wesley gathered early Methodists into small weekly classes where each member told the others how their soul was faring.

Evelyn Underhill, the English writer on prayer, received direction from the lay theologian Friedrich von Hügel, and after his death in 1925 she became an Anglican spiritual director for hundreds of people. The Anglican priest Kenneth Leech’s book Soul Friend (1977) helped renew interest in direction among Protestants. In 1973 the Episcopal priest Tilden Edwards founded the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C., an ecumenical center for contemplative prayer that began training spiritual directors in 1978.

What do the mainline churches offer?

The United Methodist Church’s Upper Room ministry runs the Academy for Spiritual Formation, and the church’s Board of Higher Education and Ministry offers a certification in spiritual formation that includes coursework in direction. Many pastors in Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal congregations offer direction themselves or can recommend a director. Retreat centers, monasteries, and campus ministries often keep lists of directors as well.

Spiritual Directors International, a network that grew from a gathering of directors at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, in 1989 and was founded in 1990, keeps an online directory of directors. Its members come from many religious traditions, so if you want a Christian director, say so and ask how the director prays.

How do I find a spiritual director?

Start by asking your pastor or chaplain. Then meet with one or two possible directors for an introductory conversation. Ask how they were trained, whether they meet with a supervisor or peer group about their work, how often they would meet with you, and what they charge.

Trust your sense of the person. A good director listens more than talks, respects your freedom, keeps your confidence, and helps you hear God for yourself. If a director tries to control your decisions or makes you feel afraid, find another. For a young adult, a campus minister or youth pastor is often a good first step, and many directors are glad to meet with people who are just beginning to pray (see how do I know God’s will?).

The best spiritual directors point beyond themselves to God, who has been speaking all along. A collect from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer asks God to be the guide of every Christian life:

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake our Lord. Amen.

Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Book of Common Prayer (1662)