Spiritual Direction is a clergyperson’s best friend. Pastor
and author Eugene Peterson writes, “It is not merely
nice for pastors to have a spiritual director; it is indispensable.
”Spiritual direction is a beneficial practice for all Christians. For pastors, spiritual direction provides particular essential gifts. While spiritual direction will not save you from all the pitfalls and temptations that arise in pastoral ministry, it does offer tremendous benefits.
What do clergy need to know about spiritual direction?
Spiritual direction is a contemplative, confidential space to share your deepest longings, frustrations, prayers, and sense of purpose. One pastor told me, “When you are asked to sit with those who are searching for God, you should be sitting with someone who helps YOU in searching for God. I’ve learned so much about how to guide those entrusted to my care through having a spiritual director.” Pastors can’t lead people deeper and further into the things of God than they have gone. It’s not fair to ask parishioners to cultivate a love for God and neighbor that pastors are not willing to do. Spiritual direction provides one means of leading by example a passionate pursuit of God for pastors. The pastoral vocation can often be a lonely space. A visit with a spiritual director provides the gift of presence to you. There the Spiritual director has no agenda for you except holding space for turning your attention to yourself, tending to the needs and hungers of your own inner life.
Not all pastors enjoy or feel qualified to do extensive one-on-one pastoral care. In any congregation, there is a small percentage of people who are deeply engaged in the search for connection with God. They sometimes want and need a person to talk to about their spiritual path (or just their life) regularly. A spiritual director would serve them well. If a congregates needs are more spiritual than psychological, refer them to a spiritual director.
Most spiritual directors are happy to teach spiritual formation such as spiritual disciplines of prayer, discernment, forgiveness, etc. We enjoy teaching and holding workshops or retreats because we don’t do much teaching in spiritual direction (we mostly listen and ask clarifying questions) and we find that the more people learn about spiritual formation they sometimes want to be in spiritual direction or become directors.
I know that pastors are busy and may not want to develop a bustling spiritual direction practice, but going through a spiritual direction formation training program is an excellent way to learn tools for your current ministry. As a spiritual director, you will see people and situations in a different light. You become less eager to rescue or try to change people.
Again, Peterson writes about pastors and spiritual directors: “In the best of all possible worlds, no pastor would ‘get’ a spiritual director. We would already have one—not by our choice or inclination, but by assignment. For the very act of choosing a spiritual director for ourselves can defeat the very thing we are after. If we avoid anyone who we sense will not be tenderly sympathetic to the ‘dearest idols we have known’ and opt for conversational coziness, we have only doubled our jeopardy. But we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, in which someone looks after us in these matters, and the vocational/spiritual peril in which the pastor lives is so acute that, dangerous or not (but very mindful of the danger), pastors must get spiritual directors. Our spiritual sanity requires it.”
In Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, Eugene Peterson outlines three particular callings for pastors—prayer, opening Scripture, and spiritual direction. In the last section of the book, he outlines what it looks like for pastors to offer direction, and just as crucial to a faithful life, receiving spiritual direction.
No matter how clergy choose to use spiritual direction, I am convinced it can transform ministry.
adapted from an article by Teresa Blythe