Why we need spiritual direction

Church growth strategies are based on the I wrote a column and accompanying blogpost a few weeks ago, where I described the way that the associate pastor at my church approached Lenten observance. She told us that she expected a certain practice out of us - a Friday fast - rather than giving us a buffet of choices and asking us to each select one.

In both my column and this blog, I expressed approval for her approach. By giving us a pastoral expectation, and giving it to the entire congregation, I thought she showed guts. And I thought she showed a mature understanding of the need for congregational (as well as individual) spiritual formation.

The responses I got from both the column and the blogpost were interesting. Some agreed with my point of view. But others thought that I was rejecting the need for personal discernment in favor of a sort of unthinking obedience to pastoral authority. I admit that I hadn't thought of it that way at all, although I could see where these folks were coming from.

On respondent on the Methoblog wrote:

"Wow, that's a new view for me, but I think it has some merit. While the point is powerful for those of us in the laity, it also has deep implications for those of us preparing to enter the ministry. I find it almost equally challenging to imagine myself asking my pastor what I must do to faithfully follow Christ ( and accept the answer without question) as to imagine a parishioner asking me the same question. This seems to assume that our pastors have a special knowledge and authority, rather than the model of pilgrims together on a journey which has become popular where I'm from. How does this traditional understanding ministerial authority jive with the emergent church?"

The interesting thing to me is that I wasn't trying to put forward anything like a "traditional understanding of ministerial authority" (a 'my way or the highway approach' approach, you might say). I was rather trying to suggest something along the lines of spiritual direction, which is not about towing the line, but is about viewing one's discipleship in such a way that admist the need for pastroal guidance and direction.

Another perspective will help. In Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor writes,

"I can better be comforted by my own considerations if another hand applies them, than if I do it myself; because the word of God does not work as a natural agent, but as a divine instrument: it does not prevail by the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only, but chiefly by way of blessing in the ordinance, and in the ministry[,] of an appointed person."

Taylor was a huge influence on John Wesley, by the way (and that is Taylor's portrait at the tope of this post). And I think his instructions here are helpful. We can read the word of God on our own, but it is only fully illumnated for us when it is explained by another person. The reason for this, of course, is that our sin gets in the way of our own interpretation.

This does not at all assume that pastors have all the answers. What it does assume is that each one of us is not really qualified to make all our choices about how to pursue the path of discipleship. The reason, of course, is that we are all shot through with sin and will tend to make selfish, sinful decisions. The pastor, too, needs someone giving her dirction about her path of discipleship. Because pastors are not immne from sin and selfish choice, either.

So our very condition makes spiritual direction a need for all of us. And spiritual direction is exactly what I think my pastor was doing at the beginning of Lent. Not beating us over the head with authority, but giving us instruction and expectation for our own spiritual benefit.