Humility and Courage
It takes both humility and courage for worship leaders to admit that while they are guiding others in spiritual matters, they are coming up empty themselves. In fact, I would go so far as to say that spiritual direction as a practice for leaders is a practice of submission.
Since Protestants are known by what we protest and since we are a very independent lot, we rarely submit to anything or anybody. But when we enter into spiritual direction, we admit we are looking for something we do not yet have. We are willing to say we have hit a limit. We might even be willing to admit that we are powerless to take the next step on our spiritual journey without help and that we don’t even know what the next step is! We submit to someone else’s leadership and guidance because we have seen something in them we would like to learn. We want to be shaped in some new way and we don’t want our over-identification with ourselves as leaders to get in the way.
A spiritual director does not take this place of authority in our lives; we willingly give it because our longing for deeper levels of transformation and our desire to bring a transforming self to our leadership is stronger than our desire to remain in control. We present ourselves to them as honestly and as openly as we are able, submitting to their love and guidance. And that in itself is transforming.
This article on corporte worship, and our needs beyond it, originally appeared here.
