evangelism? So maybe my years in campus ministry were just a waste of time?”
“No, of course not, Gracie. I didn’t mean to offend you. I know it would be naïve to suggest something like that.” Gracie gave him a conciliatory smile. Dean continued uneasily. “But . . . here’s what has been on my mind: Have you guys ever heard of spiritual direction?” He leaned forward as he regained his momentum and spoke with an almost conspiratorial tone.
“Sure,” Paul answered. “Spiritual direction is something practiced mostly by Roman Catholics, I think. I know it’s been around a long time. I seem to remember reading something Thomas Merton wrote about the subject. I don’t think you find it much in the Protestant part of the world.”
Dean started to get excited. “Yes! In my Spiritual Formation course Merton’s Spiritual Direction and Meditation is one of our textbooks. He talks about spiritual direction as a kind of joint effort between two Christians, where one talks and one listens. The listener isn’t an advice-giver, but instead listens for what God is trying to say in the life of the other person. The direction isn’t focused on controlling the person’s life. It’s about helping someone respond to what God is doing.
“And this isn’t really limited to Catholics. There’s a great series of books called The Starbridge Series, by an ex-lawyer named Susan Howatch. It’s a collection of six books that traces the lives of some Anglican priests from the 1930s through the 1980s in England. And spiritual direction is how they get the help they need when they get into trouble.”
Gracie looked puzzled. “I don’t get what this has to do with evangelism. Spiritual direction sounds like something Christians do for each other. How does someone who isn’t a Christian end up in that kind of relationship?”
“Thomas Merton would probably agree with you. He pretty much limited spiritual direction to those who were already Christians.” Dean hesitated. “I really like Merton, but I think that his limitation has to be challenged. I think we have to start realizing that God isn’t just at work in the lives of Christians. God’s at work in everyone, whether they know it or not.”
“So God was at work in Hitler?”
“Gracie, I’m not going to try to figure that one out. But if God really loves the whole world, like Jesus said, then that means something for every person, doesn’t it?”
“It’s prevenience.” Dean and Gracie both looked at Paul.
“It’s what?” asked Gracie.
Paul smiled. “Prevenience. It’s an old theological term that refers to God being at work in the world before any of us show up. It assumes God’s prior presence in all things—creation, redemption, salvation, everything. It’s funny—I’ve never thought about applying that to evangelism. I’ve usually thought about people being a kind of blank slate in terms of God until someone shows up to explain that God exists, Jesus died for them, and so on. The idea of God already being at work is interesting.”
“But that’s no big deal.” Gracie was getting impatient. “In campus ministry we always assumed that the people who responded to us were already being impacted by the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that the same thing? I don’t think this is anything new.”
“But don’t we usually think that way in terms of God preparing someone to hear our message? What if it’s much bigger than that?” Dean smiled as his own sense of discovery came to the surface. “What if God, who loves the world—even though it’s all screwed up—is still working to guide, to comfort, to redirect, to correct, and even to help people respond to the good news of Jesus? What if, instead of looking for people who want to sit still for our pre-recorded message, our role as Christians was to pay attention to the people around us, to look for what God is already doing, and then help people recognize that? What if our role was to cooperate with God instead of expecting God to cooperate with our programs?”
Paul had been writing while Dean spoke. “Dean, I think I’m getting your point. But take me to a practical level. We’ve got this church of busy, well-meaning people. How does this begin to happen for them? How do they start to take this on? If there is training for becoming evangelistic spiritual directors, or whatever, then haven’t we just created another program for evangelism?”
“Paul, how about if we just started re-teaching all of us what it means to be a Christian, to follow Jesus, to go where he goes? What if we started really teaching about spiritual formation, not as some new technique, but rather as how to order our lives so that we love God and love others? Maybe incorporating the art of spiritual direction into discipleship training would just give us a way to practically follow Jesus. Didn’t he say that he only did what his heavenly Father was doing? Why wouldn’t we want our approach to evangelism to look like that?”
Gracie had a distant look on her face as old images from her university days flashed through her mind. “I remember walking through my campus, wondering about all the students around me, many of whom were unresponsive to our evangelistic attempts. I so often grieved over them, considering them to be lost people. If what you are saying has any merit, Dean, then I might have been the lost one. I might have lost out on so many opportunities to spend time with people and look for signs of God’s presence. Instead of being a message-proclaimer, maybe I could have been more like a detective—learning to really listen to people and then sort of dust for God’s fingerprints. I have to really . . .”
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