Meet with a
Spiritual Director.
Our Sr. Spiritual Directors are pastors, coaches, and soul friends that have been trained by Drs. Bill & Kristi Gaultiere in their model of spiritual direction that’s Christ-centered and psychologically informed.
They offer the empathy, guidance, and prayer you need for healthy emotions, loving relationships, and effective work or ministry.
Thousands of people have connected with Soul Shepherding for spiritual direction.
Spiritual direction can provide care and guidance for you with:
- Experiencing God’s love
- Personal and relational difficulties
- Stress and discouragement
- Family concerns
- Discerning God’s leading
- A Dark Night of the Soul
- Effectiveness in your ministry or work
As a child of your Heavenly Father, you have been given the Holy Spirit as a guide and comfort—and a spiritual director can help you experience the Spirit’s presence and encouragement in new ways.
How Can a Spiritual Director Help You?
Your spiritual director offers you the gift of holy listening—reflecting Jesus’ love and empathy for others to help you experience God and follow the Spirit’s leading in your daily life, relationships, work, and prayers.
In fact, the real director of your spiritual direction process is not the person hosting the conversation, it’s the Holy Spirit. The human director simply serves as an ambassador to the Spirit of Christ by ministering God’s continual friendship to you (2 Cor. 5:20).
What Happens in a Spiritual Direction Session?
The format of spiritual direction sessions is not a fixed program–it’s fluid and customized to meet your individual needs. The goal of each meeting is to foster a healthy and supportive setting for you to explore and discover greater intimacy with Jesus and love for God and others.
Here are some general guidelines for a “typical” session in spiritual direction.
Sessions are conducted at a time that’s convenient for you through video conferencing (Zoom), using our convenient online scheduling system.
It is remarkable to experience how the Spirit of Jesus draws the director and client together over diverse geographic areas and time zones–truly God knows no bounds!
Spiritual direction sessions may open with conversation, prayer, or a brief time of being quiet in God’s presence, depending on your comfort and desires. It is helpful for you and your director to take a moment to “set apart” your time together from the busyness of your day.
For the majority of the session, you can share important life experiences related to your concerns and relationship with God. Your spiritual director will listen to you with empathy and ask clarifying questions to guide your thinking, prayers, and steps. You will learn to discern God’s presence and leading by exploring those areas of your life that give you joy and those that may bother or trouble you.
Before the end of the session, your director may recommend resources or spiritual discipline practices for you to consider exploring. Often your spiritual director will conclude the session by praying intercession or blessing over you.
The foundational spiritual direction question for the director to ask is, “How have you been experiencing God’s presence?” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction by William A. Barry and William J. Connolly).
But Dallas Willard suggested that a great spiritual direction question is simply, “What is bothering you?” That guards against the conversation being “spiritual” in an idealistic or intellectual way and promotes it being real and authentic to the client’s actual life. Paul wrote, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15). That’s wording for the empathy that invites the real talk that is the heart of a great spiritual direction relationship.
Sr. Spiritual Directors
Soul Shepherding has a team of experienced Sr. Spiritual Directors who are available to give you the empathy, guidance, and prayer you need. They’ve been trained in our model of spiritual direction that’s Christ-centered and psychologically informed.
If you sense the need to be heard, known, and loved by a spiritual companion who will reflect the workings of the Spirit of Jesus in your life, take the first step by connecting with a spiritual director.
New to Spiritual Direction? Not sure who you will connect well with? You can talk to our program coordinator to learn more and find a director that’s especially suited for you. Click the button below to book your free 15 minute consultation!
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Spiritual Direction FAQ
Our Sr. Spiritual Directors have been trained by Dr.’s Bill and Kristi Gaultiere to help you thrive with Jesus in your life, relationships, and ministry. All of our spiritual directors have completed the Soul Shepherding Institute and received their Spiritual Direction certificate.
We define spiritual direction as an emotionally honest conversation with a mature Christ-follower who helps you appreciate God’s presence in your life. As you talk about your circumstances, problems, hopes, relationships, work, and ministry you learn to pay attention to how you’re experiencing the Spirit of Jesus (or not) and respond to his grace and guidance with growing trust, prayerfulness, and love.
Without regularly meeting with a Christlike spiritual director, soul friend, or counselor most people are not able to sustain intimacy with God, emotional wholeness, and fruitful ministry. You’ll be vulnerable to discouragement or burnout.
Soul Shepherding offers traditional spiritual direction ministry according to the guidelines of the Evangelical Spiritual Directors Association. Additionally, our spiritual directors offer Sabbatical coaching, leadership coaching, pastoral care, and soul care coaching.
Our spiritual directors serve as assistants to Jesus in caring for your soul. They minister empathy and prayerfulness to help you sense God’s compassion, grace, and wisdom. They also specialize in helping you make use of Soul Shepherding’s practical resources that foster intimacy with Jesus, emotional-relational health, Scripture meditation, spiritual renewal (to prevent or recover from burnout), and leadership effectiveness.
The benefits of talking with a Soul Shepherding spiritual director include:
- Receiving God’s empathy
- Help with spiritual dryness, burnout, or when God feels distant
- Developing intimacy with Jesus
- Discerning God’s will or guidance for your life or ministry
- Understanding your journey with Jesus (e.g., stage of faith)
- Soul care and spiritual renewal
- Growing spiritually through lectio divina, Ignatian meditation, breath prayers, solitude and silence, and other spiritual disciplines
- Improving your emotional and relational health
- Increasing your effectiveness in ministry or leadership
Spiritual directors do not diagnose and treat psychological disorders like psychotherapists do — they help you grow in your relationship with God. In both spiritual direction and therapy you discuss your struggles, hurts, stressors, and hopes and expect to receive empathy, confidentiality, and support for making positive changes in your life. But in spiritual direction, everything you share is listened to prayerfully and put into the larger context of your experiences with God in prayer and daily life.
Spiritual directors do not diagnose and treat psychological disorders like psychotherapists do — they help you grow in your relationship with God. In both spiritual direction and therapy you discuss your struggles, hurts, stressors, and hopes and expect to receive empathy, confidentiality, and support for making positive changes in your life. But in spiritual direction, everything you share is listened to prayerfully and put into the larger context of your experiences with God in prayer and daily life.
Many of Soul Shepherding’s spiritual directors also offer coaching for leadership, Sabbaticals, or soul care, but they define success differently than most other life and leadership coaches. Typically, coaching focuses on reaching your goals to achieve more of what you want in your business, relationships, or life. In contrast, spiritual direction focuses on discerning God’s will for you and how that shapes your desires and goals for your life, work, and relationships. In other words, spiritual directors are less directive (contrary to their title as “directors”) than coaches — they help you talk through your life events and feelings in order to be directed by the Spirit of Jesus.
Some of our spiritual directors offer Sabbatical coaching. They help you pray about, plan, and implement a Sabbatical for rest and renewal. They are trained to help you make the most out of our Sabbatical Guide, which is our all-in-one toolkit for a great season of replenishment. We help you get approval from your board or supervisor, prepare your staff and community or organization, incorporate your family, and plan for re-engaging your work or ministry after your time away.
In the first meeting, your spiritual director will briefly introduce Soul Shepherding’s approach to spiritual direction and answer your questions. Then you’ll be given a safe and confidential space to introduce yourself and what you need from spiritual direction. Your spiritual director will ask you key questions to gently guide the conversation. You can ask for your sessions to include opening prayer, Scripture meditation, quiet prayer, or a closing prayer of empathy and blessing. Our spiritual directors do their best to customize the sessions according to your feedback and needs.
We offer spiritual direction sessions on Zoom, a phone call, or in person at an office or other mutually agreed upon location. (Some of our spiritual directors offer all these options and others may offer only one or two.)
The cost is $90 for a 45-minute session. (If you need a reduced fee you can ask about this.) Typically, meetings are monthly, but can be arranged more or less frequently. You can schedule single, multiple, or ongoing meetings.
If you are a spiritual director, pastor, coach, therapist, small group leader, or soul friend and agree to our Statement of Christian Faith and Doctrine then you can join our Soul Shepherding Network. As part of your membership you will receive a listing with your photo and bio on our online directory, access to the extensive vault of Soul Shepherding ministry tools, and the opportunity to participate in an exclusive forum for community and training.