Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction is a practice in which you engage with a spiritual director who offers space and time for you to discover personal answers and new questions. Invite direct encounters with Christ through conversation and exploring your lived reality.

Through a spiritual direction relationship, God’s presence and leading is discerned in an atmosphere of quietness, stillness and prayer.

The role of spiritual director in this process is to listen, to affirm the quest for meaning and to give priority to questions over answers so that you can express and live what is truly happening in your spiritual journey. You are invited to be still, be centred, and be willing to share your recent experiences of God – in prayer practices, through relationships, in nature, in Scripture. During spiritual direction, you will learn to pay attention to the presence of God in all parts of your life.

Spiritual direction holds an important place in the life of a follower of Jesus because it encourages them to a deepening relationship with God that:

• is grounded in the whole of our lives
• awakens us to the reality of our actual and lived spirituality
• reveals the images of God we hold
• creates room for correcting or refining these images of God
• teaches the gracious act of Christian hospitality through community

Certainly! Having a companion in your spiritual journey can happen in person at our ministry office or from any private place you would choose to have a video call. We can use FaceTime, Skype, Zoom and Google Hangouts.

Like all relationships, at first we explore “fit.” This will be an opportunity to meet in person for an hour, talk about your spiritual journey and how you see God moving in your life. You will have a chance to discern how safe, comfortable and ready you are to begin meeting in this atmosphere of prayer. After meeting initially you have the opportunity to go away, reflect and pray. If you’d like to return for further sessions you can correspond to set up a next date and time.

Our current suggested donation to Boundless Vancouver per single, one-hour session is $50.

We believe that Spiritual Direction should be accessible. We ask that you would give a donation with the consideration of how much an hour of your time is worth. In this way, our spiritual direction support is embedded in the practice of discernment – listening to God and being generous to support the ministry for yourself and for others.

There are considerable costs in training, preparation and facilities that you may be able to pay forward for someone else who has fewer resources.

While spiritual direction and counselling are both helping services and ministries, there are distinct differences between the two. While counselling is usually focused on an issue/problem/crisis with a goal of gaining health, the focus of spiritual direction is on noticing, paying attention and praying with a goal of becoming more like Christ. A counsellor will act as a facilitator and a spiritual director will act as a listener and a pray-er.

Sessions are limited to one hour and time is kept by the spiritual director (you don’t need to be concerned about time keeping). At times, a session may be shorter if together the directee and director sense that all that needs to be discovered, discerned and prayed in the time together has been fulfilled.