It has been a while since I last posted. This has been a truly busy, but yet fruitful time. I am teaching a course on spiritual direction in the Schools of Divinity and Psychology and Counseling here at Regent this semester. This wonderful oppertunity to spend some time with emerging and bright ministers, counselors and psychologists has helped me to focus my thinking on the relationship between spirituality, spiritual formation and leadership. What is the role of a spiritual director? I have been taken by two really good descriptions of the role of a spiritual director.Barry and Connelly describe it as follows:
“We define Christian spiritual direction as help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.”
Barry Augustine think of the role of a spiritual director in the following way:
“The Director is not to teach his own way, nor indeed any determinate way of prayer, but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper to them…”
These two erudite descriptions open the way for us to consider the prophetic way of humility, mutuality and service in authentic Christian leadership.
