Becoming a Spiritual Director
If you desire to journey with people well as they seek to deepen their experience of God, undertaking formational training in the art of Spiritual Direction may be for you.
There are now many good places to engage in the process of formation and training as a spiritual director.
As the Retreat Association advocates — the emphasis is really on formation over training: “In a world where there can often be an over-emphasis on doing rather than being; on the task we are engaged upon rather than the person in front of us; and on training in functionality rather than personal transformation… We advocate the terminology of formation rather than training because this seems to best encompass 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.”
We live in a time where there has been a resurgence of this art and charism being taught and passed on in many places. The breadth and diversity of these across denominations and networks is a delight to see, and seems expresses the generative and generous character of God. I won’t list them all, you could check out courses listed by LCSD, Sarum College, and Launde Abbey, but I will highlight the curriculum I’ve had the pleasure of teaching developed by Sustainable Faith.
Sustainable Faith’s School of Spiritual Direction is an excellent 2-year certificate program preparing you to serve as a spiritual director. The training is a deeply formative, immersive and integrated. Sustainable Faith is a non-profit organisation based in the US. The curriculum is run in cohorts in a number of locations and also online. From 2017 — 2024 I taught in these Schools of Spiritual Direction in the UK, with cohorts located in: Oxfordshire, South Wales, East Yorkshire, Nottingham and the East Midlands.