Thank you for your interest in spiritual direction. We at UMin, in partnership with North Park Theological Seminary, are offering interested students an opportunity to participate in spiritual direction with trained directors from the seminary. 

People seek out spiritual direction for a number of different reasons. They are feeling stale in their walk with God and need help in finding new ways to pray. They are coming up to a big decision in their lives and need help in discerning the best way to go. They want to deepen their already growing relationship with God or are going through a season of doubt. Spiritual direction is for anyone who wants to grow closer to God and to hear God’s voice more clearly.

In spiritual direction, a person meets regularly - usually once or twice a month - for a set period of time with a trained spiritual director in order to be able to listen together to where God is moving in the directee’s life. The directee brings her/his regular, daily life to talk about with the director. Together they watch and listen for the presence of God. A North Park student who did spiritual direction last year says, “I was dealing with some spiritual and emotional baggage as I tried to decide how to approach the next step in my life, and I felt the need to talk to someone wiser than myself, who was outside my immediate circle of friends.  [Spiritual direction] gives you the chance to be heard by someone whose perspective is different than yours, who can often offer insights you might not receive elsewhere, or ask questions that help you probe deeper into what you are experiencing.”  

Spiritual direction is not counseling. Counseling focuses on revealing how past events influence our lives today and works towards healing from those events. Spiritual direction looks at today - in the midst of our complicated, busy, ordinary lives, where and how is God at work. Direction does have elements of healing and it can come in contact with the past because we all have a story to tell, but spiritual directors won’t dig around in the past as counselors do.

What do you as a potential directee need to have in order to be successful in a spiritual direction relationship? 

     · A desire to grow spiritually. 
     · A willingness to be honest and to dig below the surface.
     · An openness to new ways of experiencing God.
     · An openness to the possibility of transform in this process. 

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