Supervision

Supervision for Spiritual Directors

You Accompany Others. Who Accompanies You?

Supervision is the quiet, essential practice that sustains spiritual directors for the long work of ministry — and helps ensure that those in our care are truly served.

Coming Spring 2027

What Is Supervision?

Writer Mary Yerkes in her library writing

Supervision is not evaluation. It is not a performance review or a credentialing requirement to survive. It is something far more generous than that.

In the tradition of spiritual direction, supervision is a reflective space where a director brings her own inner life — her questions, her blind spots, her consolations, her fatigue — and looks honestly at what is happening between herself and those she accompanies. It is a place to ask: Where am I getting in the way? Where is God at work that I almost missed? What is this directee stirring in me, and why?

Good supervision keeps the director’s own soul attended to. It protects directees. It deepens the ministry. And over time, it shapes us into more transparent, more prayerful, more honest companions.

Who Is Supervision For?

Supervision is for spiritual directors at every stage of the journey — those just completing formation, those years into active ministry, and everyone in between. If you are accompanying others in their relationship with God, you need someone accompanying you.

Whether you are navigating a complex directee relationship, wondering if a particular dynamic is transference or something spiritual, carrying compassion fatigue you can barely name, or simply longing for a space where your own interior life is honored — supervision is for you.

What Happens in a Supervision Session?

Each session is shaped by what you bring. You might come with a specific directee situation that is weighing on you. You might come with a broader question about your ministry or your own prayer life. You might come uncertain and simply needing to sit with someone who understands the work.

Together, we will:

Reflect on the movements within your directee relationships, with attention to what God may be doing in and through them
Explore your own interior responses — what is being evoked in you, and what that reveals
Gently examine any patterns, resistances, or gifts that are emerging in your ministry
Tend to your own life of prayer and spiritual health as a director

Sessions are typically 60 minutes and held via Zoom. I welcome both individual and small-group supervision formats.

overhead shot of a woman writer writing in her journal

My Formation as a Supervisor

I completed my training in spiritual direction, Ignatian direction, and supervision through Sustainable Faith’s School of Spiritual Direction — a rigorous, Spirit-attentive formation program that has shaped my approach to this work at every level. Sustainable Faith’s spiritual direction graduates are eligible for a year of free credits toward a Master of Arts Degree in Spiritual Formation and Direction at Richmont Graduate University.

That formation, combined with more than a decade of active ministry as a spiritual director, grounds the supervision I offer. I bring to this work both the skills of a trained supervisor and the knowledge of someone who has sat in the director’s chair — with all the beauty and weight that comes with it.

I am affiliated with Sustainable Faith and the Institute for Ministerial Wholeness (IMW) and am committed to ongoing formation in this ministry.

A Word About Approach

My approach to supervision is contemplative and relational. I am not interested in telling you what you should have done differently. I am interested in helping you see more clearly — what God is doing, what you are carrying, and where the two intersect.

I hold supervision sessions with the same qualities I hope characterize my work as a director: unhurried attention, honest reflection, and a deep trust that the Holy Spirit is already at work in you and in those you serve.

Begin the Conversation

Supervision is most fruitful when there is a genuine sense of fit between supervisor and director. I invite you to schedule a brief introductory conversation so we can discern together whether this would be a good match.

Schedule a Conversation

Or reach me directly at mjyerkes@gmail.com