Training in Spiritual Companionship
An eight-month cohort designed to develop the vision and skills for spiritual accompaniment in your church
“The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose”
The Training in Spiritual Companionship (TSC) is designed to support the work of spiritual formation in your church by cultivating the skills of spiritual accompaniment among your members with zero tuition.
Program distinctives
TSC’s free curriculum gives local churches an accessible option for equipping small group leaders, lay ministers and others in your congregation for the work of spiritual accompaniment.
Run a cohort on-site, led by a trained spiritual director.
Instill practices of spiritual companionship, the vision of the spiritual journey, how spiritual formation happens, and more.
Create a community of practice for deep listening and spiritual companionship in monthly cohorts.
Deepen community connection through regular personal sharing.
Equip members in your congregation to begin exploring a shared rule of life or to continue training as spiritual directors.
Time commitments
For each monthly module, most cohort participants can expect:
Readings or videos, plus reflection and journaling (1-2 hours/week)
A half-day cohort retreat (4 hours/month)
Alternatively, participant churches can elect to meet twice monthly for shorter periods.
Modules
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• Understand and value the presence and influence of our diverse spiritual contexts, influences and experiences.
• Listen to the spiritual climates of others’ experiences. -
• Understand the vision, character and practices of spiritual friendship and spiritual companionship.
• Begin to apply basic practices of spiritual friendship and spiritual companionship.
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• Understand how transformation begins with an experience of the love of God.
• Articulate one's own story of transformation, how God participated, how they participated.
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• Understand how what prevents us from loving and receiving love may be different.
• Articulate what they can notice about what gets in the way of love in them.
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• Discuss the interior work that shared practices can do.
• Articulate their own experience through interior attentiveness.
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• Discuss the dynamics of discerning interior movements.
• Begin to identify these movements and appropriate responses.
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• Discuss the skills of contemplative listening.
• Begin to apply these skills with individuals and groups.
Program texts
The TSC program engages with the following texts (around 60-75 pages most months), some of which participants will acquire and from some of which excerpts will be provided.
Armas, Kat. Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength.
Benner, David G. Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction.
Benner, David G. Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality.
Boyd, Jared Patrick. Finding Freedom in Constraint: Reimagining Spiritual Disciplines as a Communal Way of Life.
Colón Delay, Lisa. The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice.
Holmes, Barbara. Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church.
Lee, Cindy S. Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation.
Thibodeaux, Mark E., God’s Voice Within: The Ignatian Way to Discover God’s Will.
FAQs
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We can think of a spiritual companion as a person who helps someone to notice the realities of their spiritual life (what’s “going on” inside) and nurture the work of God’s formational love in them.
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Spiritual directors are historically a highly trained vocational ministry in the Church. Today, this usually involves two to four years of training, plus hours of practice. It should typically also involve some significant study of theology, allowing directors to assist with difficult discernment, seasons of crisis and pastoral care of the soul.
In contrast, a spiritual companion is a less formal lay ministry. Whereas spiritual direction is about being formed into a certain kind of person with a particular gift of ministry, spiritual companionship is about having a baseline skillset and loving disposition as a spiritual friend.
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How your church deploys trained spiritual companions depends on your leadership’s vision for spiritual formation in your congregation.
Some churches will use TSC to train small group leaders who can steward conversation toward deep places for its members. Others will pair members with spiritual companions for one-on-one meetings to process their formation experience in the life of the church. You can bring your own imagination to this, and we’d be happy to be a conversation partner as you ideate.
Trained spiritual companions may also make good candidates to train as spiritual directors who can serve your congregation.
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Spiritual companions are not a certified ministry, and the Order of the Common Life does not offer any certification or other endorsement for those who complete training in your church.
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Cohorts can be virtually any size; however, groups over 10 people will need to be facilitated by dividing them into breakout groups, each of which should be facilitated by a training spiritual director.
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TSC cohorts (and breakout groups, depending on cohort size) are designed to be led by a trained spiritual director. If your church doesn’t have one or more spiritual directors in your congregation in whom you have a high degree of confidence, or that you can invite onsite from another church, we might be able to help connect you with one.
Since the skills of spiritual companionship in this training are learned through modeling and practice, it’s important that it be led by someone who has developed the ability to exhibit these naturally.
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We offer TSC free of charge to churches so they can offer it without cost to its members.
Note that there will be some cost for required reading unless acquired through a lending library.