For over 30 years, I have been a non-profit consultant, leading a small non-profit that primarily works in areas of prayer and community ministry. In the middle of that 30 some years, I worked as a full-time nanny for my two nieces from birth until they started school and then as a stay-at-home Dad for my two children until they went to school. My wife and I have been married since 1997.
In 2013, right before my first child was born, I discovered spiritual direction. It was what I needed at the time. I had been to seminary and graduate school, was ordained, and had served with churches helping develop their ministries, but I also knew there was more to the Christian life.
Anticipating my children going to school and having more time to devote to ministry, I started a spiritual direction training program to help others find the deeper spiritual life that spiritual direction had helped me to find as well. I completed a graduate training program with Spring Hill College in 2021.
I am convinced that part of what is lacking in many churches, and in many individual Christian lives is individual discipleship and attention to the spiritual life. The spiritual life is not something we do in a morning devotion or at church each week; the spiritual life is what motivates all of our existence. Spiritual maturity is not about the biblical or theological knowledge we can recite; it is about living the life God created us to live, finding God’s path for us, and living an integrated life.
I read a lot, and I write about most of it at Bookwi.se, including a long-running series on discernment. Over the past few years I have read more than thirty books on discernment, and that reading shapes a lot of how I think about spiritual direction.