Lindsay's Practicum Completed :: Joining the ESDA

Well, after a year and a half of rigorous training and lots of classes on how to be a spiritual director, I am happy to announce that I have completed my training! :) As of last month, I have finished training and am able to "do" spiritual direction as a vocation.

What is spiritual direction, you might ask?
"Christian spiritual direction is primarily a ministry in which one Christian (the director) helps another (the directee) to discern God’s presence and activity in the directee’s life and also the directee’s reactions and responses to God’s activity. It is often said that the real director in spiritual direction is God, while the human spiritual director is more of a witness, one that points to God’s activity on behalf of the directee. Spiritual direction can also be done in a group context, in which a group of Christians together prayerfully seek to discern God’s activity in the life of a fellow believer." -- ESDA

A few of the things I love about this ministry are:
*there is a high expectation that a spiritual director will understand and initiate proper self-care (physically, emotionally and spiritually) so that the ministry to others will not be hindered by burn out, exhaustion and other things that can accumulate from an over-filled life/schedule/etc.

*there is also an ethical mandate to stay in some sort of supervision, i.e. peer accountability, in which the spiritual director can work through issues that surface through the process of giving spiritual direction with another trained spiritual director or directors.

*the possibilities of using this training (largely in listening, discerning and asking questions) are endless -- I hope to meet one-to-one with people, with groups, offer retreats, and serve the church in whatever ways seem appropriate.

Now that training is complete, I have joined a group of Evangelical Spiritual Directors, ESDA. From their website (in collaboration with the Evangelical Center for Spiritual Wisdom), they offer a list of how to find a spiritual director in your area. I am now officially on the list of spiritual directors. If you're interested, check out the list here.