What is Spiritual Direction?

Spiritual Direction is one person hosting another to notice God’s loving presence in their life so that they can become more of who God has created them to be. It is the director’s job to cultivate a space of slow listening for the directee to experience God’s attunement to them and to grow in their attachment to God. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to guide the entire process.

“Opening our hearts to the presence of God happens through quiet meeting with him and noticing the small ways he comes to us throughout our days. These moments on their own might seem ordinary and uneventful, but it is the habitual practice of noticing them that begins to fill up our sense of his presence with us.”

Paraphrased from Discernment by Henri Nouwen

What Spiritual Direction is NOT


Spiritual Direction is not counseling, mentorship, teaching, or preaching. While of course there are overlaps, spiritual direction is meant to occupy a distinct space from each of these valuable practices.

  • In counseling, the primary relationship of healing is between the therapist and the client. In spiritual direction, the focus is on the relationship between the directee and God.

    Counseling is usually prompted by some sort of issue or problem in the client’s life. The counseling relationship is meant to promote growth or resolution to the presenting issue or problem. Someone may be prompted to seek out spiritual direction because of a certain hardship in their life, but the goal of spiritual direction is to meet God and to increase attachment and attunement to God in the midst of those problems and hardships.

    In counseling, the therapist keeps notes to develop a therapeutic plan for growth. In spiritual direction, the director does not take notes, rather the director’s focus is on the directee and God for the purpose of helping the directee attend to God’s activity in their life through the guidance of the Spirit.

  • In mentorship, the goal is for the mentee to observe and grow from someone else who is further along. This relationship can contain teaching, life shared, advice-giving, counseling, accountability, etc. In spiritual direction, the goal is for the director to host a space for the directee to be attentive to God. While some insights or suggestions may be shared, the primary focus and work of the director is to ask questions that create space for the directee to discern God’s movement in their lives and to grow in attachment to God.

  • Spiritual direction is not the director telling the directee what to do or what they think God is saying they should do. Rather, it is a time of the director helping the directee attend to their relationship with God based on who he reveals himself to be through his Word. The director creates space for the directee to slow down, notice, listen, and pray. The director becomes curious alongside the directee, listening to the directee and leading them both to listen to God together.

Resources

  • The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction by Adam S. McHugh

  • Sacred Companions by David G. Benner

  • Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson

  • Discernment by Henri Nouwen

  • Spiritual Companioning: A Guide to Protestant Theology and Practice by Angela H. Reed, Richard R. Osmer, and Marcus G. Smucker

  • Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

  • Experiencing the Trinity: Living Life in the Relationship at the Center of The Universe by Darrell Johnson

  • Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told Us About Surviving and Thriving by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman, and Donald C. Gutherie