Why is Spiritual Direction a Ministry?

Spiritual direction is a ministry because it is an activity that should not be done apart from the church. It is an activity of the church. In the reading we had for this class, Congregation for the Clergy, the authors referred to spiritual direction as having another name: spiritual accompaniment. Spiritual direction under different names has always existed in the church. This makes it a ministry of the church, having been birthed and formed within the church as a way for individuals to get unstuck while on the faith journey. The best way to define spiritual direction is “it is an educational and psychological art calling for deep responsibility in the one who practices it. Whereas for the one who receives it, it is a spiritual act of humility and trust.” It would be difficult to call an activity that requires this much intimacy anything other than ministry.

The nature of trust required for spiritual direction has a basic level of accountability that cannot be underemphasized. The type of work that a spiritual director will be doing involves helping a directee to determine a spirit of truth from a spirit of error. The church alone can hold a director accountable and judge if the spirit of truth is in their work or if the director is leading people away from God and into apostasy. The spiritual director is not making a spiritual journey for his or her directees. The spiritual director accompanies and follows the spiritual journey of those they are accompanying. The spiritual director has the authority to counsel and guide the directee in humility and trust, leading the directee to prayer gently; so as not to discourage the people that have been entrusted into their care by the church. In class, it was discussed that one cannot call something a ministry unless people know what you are doing.

In spiritual direction it is very important that people know what we are doing and why it is important. Our faith as baptized followers of Jesus Christ is always done publicly. Baptism itself is a public act. People come together publicly to identify with the crucified, dead, and risen Lord Jesus Christ. We who are baptized remember our own baptism each time we baptize new people of all ages into the faith. Proclaiming an outward sign of an inward grace, baptism screams out that before we ever chose Christ he was and is choosing us! Spiritual direction is an extension of this ministry. A ministry always open to accountability that has an expected standard of care, ethics, and supervision by a qualified director for the spiritual director. People who go to a spiritual director should be doing so with the expectation that their faith is stuck; but that getting direction to become unstuck does not only happen for their own personal benefit. It will help them personally, but the release from the stuck place will release them into the body of Christ at work in our world. They are being released from their stuck place for the world’s benefit. Spiritual directors too, do not offer spiritual direction as a guru, a para church offshoot, or lone mystical prophet (like yoda). Spiritual directors as I stated at the beginning of this essay have always existed in the church, for the church.

My training has helped me to see the importance of having the church recognize and embrace spiritual directors as a part of the overall work of the Kingdom of God at work in their local community.