Becoming a Spiritual Director
If you desire to journey with people as they seek to deepen their experience of God, undertaking a formational Spiritual Direction course may be for you.
Sustainable Faith’s School of Spiritual Direction is a 2-year certificate program preparing you to serve as a spiritual director. The training is a deeply formative, immersive and integrated.
The School of Spiritual Direction
Sustainable Faith’s SSD curriculum is run in cohorts in a variety of locations and also online. Jonny will be teaching one of online cohorts starting in January 2026. This Year 1 cohort will predominately be run on a weekday evening. The times below refer to UK & EU-West Timezones (and may be accessible for those in adjacent timezones).
Schedule: Dates and Times
This format for the online School of Spiritual Direction will distribute the learning over weekly meetings. The curriculum will be the same as the in-person teaching with 5 modules covering: Story & Conversation, Self-Awareness & the Enneagram, Discernment & Group Direction, Stages of Faith.
Module 1 begins Saturday, January 17th, 2026 with a full days teaching online (9:00 – 5:00 pm) . The module will continue for the following weeks on Wednesday evenings 6:30 – 8:00 pm.
All other modules run on Wednesday evening (6:30 – 8:00 pm). There will be a breaks between modules of 1 or 2 weeks (and a longer for the summer period). Year 1 will finish on Saturday, October 3rd, 2026 for a half day of training, reflection and benediction to conclude the first year’s syllabus.
Note: there are 2 books of preparation reading to be reflected on for module 1 in mid-January 2026.
See sustainablefaith.com for further details about the course and how to apply. Cohort reference: “SSD1 2026 Online UK/EU – Norridge”
Choosing a spiritual direction course as part of your on going formation
There are now many good places to engage in the process of formation and training as a spiritual director. The breadth and diversity of SD training across denominations and networks is a delight to see, and expresses something the generative and generous character of God.
The emphasis of a good spiritual direction course is on formation rather than simply training. As the Retreat Association also notes, we live in a time where there can be an over-emphasis on “the task we are engaged upon rather than the person in front of us… on training in functionality rather than personal transformation.” And so any teaching of spiritual direction benefits from “a wholistic sense of the development of the person, including their inner qualities and disposition that will be manifest in their practice of spiritual direction.”
The excellent curriculum developed by Sustainable Faith is a course that exemplifies this formational approach. I have personally benefited from this — starting with being a student on the course in Amsterdam, NL (2015-2017). This has been followed by several years teaching cohorts in the UK (Oxfordshire, South Wales, East Yorkshire, Nottingham and the East Midlands), and now online.
Sustainable Faith Inc is a non-profit organisation based in the US with courses accessed by students across the world.
If you have any more questions please get in touch.