by Joe Steinke

The ministry of spiritual direction invites a personal practice of open, honest, respectful dialogue in a relational atmosphere of love and trust. This unique space is nurtured by mutually honoring the value of the other person – director to client and client to director. In this conversational space of holy listening to God together, there is a healing path that begins to light up the neural pathways of our brains and we start to experience the peace of God in fresh ways. Our primal fight, flight, or flee impulses are dialed down as we sense we are safe and heard, known and loved.

If we bring this aptitude into a leadership team environment where we share a mutual practice of open, honest, respectful dialogue in an atmosphere of love and trust, our collective clarity and understanding allows us to think higher thoughts, not entangled in the drama of our personal myopia and dissonance of our relational dysfunction. 

The vulnerable work we do in our personal lives, offered and established in the holy listening environment of spiritual direction, can imprint us with a quiet and more reflective disposition that we carry into our relationships. This is particularly important for the ways we show up in a leadership team, courageously bringing our true selves to one another and offering our best contribution from a place of mutual respect as we seek to understand one another and collaborate together. 

We all know the principle of how things tend to flow from the internal to external, individual to global, and self-knowledge to mutual knowledge. We could continue to brainstorm a long list here, citing the mustard seed principle of the kingdom of God, trinitarian love as the basis of all relationships, and add some fun fractal theory just for a bit of esoteric emphasis. So, our individual interior soul work is a vital, if not the most critical thing we attend to if we are called into a role of leadership. 

Ruth Haley Barton has a mantra she is known for that has become in some ways her default mission motto: 

“Truly, the best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is our own transforming selves.” ― Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry

With these things in mind, let’s imagine this scenario for a bit together. 

You’re on a ministry team with a leader who has just been awakened to the need to attend to their own soul care and is curious about this mysterious practice called spiritual direction. They ask around and get a bit more comfortable with this idea and decide to take it for a spin, to see if it’s a good fit for them as they seek to be more attuned to their inner life with God. One week at a team meeting they announce that they’ve found a really wonderful way to grow in their self-awareness and to the invitations from God that the Holy Spirit is highlighting through having a few sessions with a spiritual director.  They are so enthusiastic about it that they encourage everyone to seek out a spiritual director as a vital way to sustain their soul care as a ministry leader. 

You ask – “ Would you be willing to tell us a bit more about how this is impacting your personal journey with God?”

They pause and you can sense their hesitation in sharing this part of themselves in a work environment, and if they open up this part of themself, it might be a bit vulnerable. 

Your team leader says – “Well, it is a personal and confidential conversation and I’m not comfortable sharing too much here with you all. But it seems to be opening me up to some things that I’ve been a bit blind to in the way I relate to God and others, and I sense the kindness of God’s invitation to gently guide me into some potential changes in the way I relate to everyone, including God.” 

You can now sense in the room a cautious inhale and then, a deep exhale of relief. You think to yourself – “Perhaps this could be the beginning of a new culture being nurtured among us if our leader is willing to do this work.” 

One of your more pragmatic colleagues asks – “So, if this is such a great thing you’re doing as a leader, should we consider doing it as well? And if so, could the resource of having a personal spiritual director be included in our staff-development package? How much does it cost?” 

Your team leader is still bright and nodding. You can tell they’re thinking through the implications of this, the value it would bring to everyone being weighed against budget priorities and staff development line items. Still nodding…your team leader says – “Ok, this is something I’ll bring to the board at our next meeting. I need someone to research a good resource website or ministry that is doing this as their focus and has thought through how to serve a team like ours with spiritual direction.” 

You and your pragmatic colleague volunteer to research this and find that there are so many awesome ministries that have popped up in the last couple of decades that are deep into the resourcing of spiritual formation for leaders and it is impressive and a bit overwhelming to sort out at first. The Find a Spiritual Director pages of their websites scroll down, populated by 25-50 spiritual directors with smiling faces, great bios, and credentials. You say to one another, “I wonder if anyone offers not only spiritual direction resources but also an online community where we could be in peer-to-peer conversations about their spiritual formation journey?”  You type into the Google machine Spiritual Direction and Online Community and more than a few things pop up. But, as you scroll, there’s this one that intrigues you titled: Soul of the Shepherd. Click. 

“Here it is. Wow, they offer not only some great written reflections by spiritual directors but also guided prayers and it looks like a membership-only free online community. I think we should share this as one of our options for resourcing our team. I think the board would really resonate with this Soul of the Shepherd site, its connection to trained spiritual directors who specifically work with ministry leaders, and the Online Membership.” 

Well, 6 months later, your entire team is enjoying the benefits of being companioned in their spiritual journey with a spiritual director. There’s a sense of personal care and concern that has been noted in conversations amongst your team. Your leader is starting to introduce some new prayer practices into the staff meetings and is calling for a team retreat hosted by a spiritual director to guide a formation weekend together. Obviously, the board got on board with this as a way to honor their responsibility to bring oversight to the spiritual care of their ministry team.

Now, 3 months later, you’re at a retreat together and the spiritual director has mapped out a weekend of personal and group times that includes shared meals and table conversations, guided prayer times, group spiritual direction sessions, and some silence and solitude for personal reflection. By the end, the team is really opening up to one another and has become a leadership community where they share a mutual practice of open, honest, respectful dialogue in an atmosphere of love and trust. 

At your next team meeting, a time of silence and prayer opens the time together where everyone feels at ease having a sense of familiarity with this prayer practice. There is now a relaxed feeling in the room for reporting with questions being asked without fear or reactive self-protection, the mutual respect and honoring of one another offers some honest reflections about how the demands of  ministry are impacting personal and family life in troubling ways, and the team leader pauses and says – “Let’s pray into this together and invite the Spirit to bring creative solutions to these tensions.” 

And you walk out of that meeting shaking your head saying – How did we get here?! 

Perhaps you’d like to consider how a spiritual director might be a trusted guide who could accompany you on your journey of faith. If you’d like to have a conversation with us to explore what this might look like, please contact us and we will follow up with you. Contact us here: Soul of the Shepherd.