While I think it is also true for laypeople, I would guess that few active clergy experience someone really listening to their spiritual journey. Occasionally they may be asked to share the story of their receiving God’s call in their life, but how often does someone sit with a member of the clergy and really listen to where God is active in their current life. My guess is that that is a powerful experience that a judicatory could help facilitate.
The first step would be to develop some guidelines for that conversation. The purpose of that is to create a framework that would encourage a person to really listen in depth to his or her colleague without either challenging or interfering with the flow of that conversation. In depth listening is an art and it can be assisted by some simple rules at the beginning. Many counselors and spiritual advisors are trained in this and might help develop such a framework.
The second step would be to deliberately pair people who otherwise might not share such a conversation. This is delicate and would need to be done openly and by invitation. The rationale is that people who experience their faith from disparate contexts may allow the listener to hear something from a fresh perspective. The diversity might be from several perspectives: race, gender, theological persuasion, size of church they serve, etc. Individuals would be called by a staff person and asked if they would be willing to enter into such a conversation.
The listener would write a summary of what s/he heard from the conversation and share it with the one to whom they listened. They would also add to the report anything that had particularly touched their own spiritual journey as they listened. If, and only if, the two people agreed, the faith story could be collected and shared with the whole presbytery at a later date. The cumulative sharing of such stories could strengthen the faith of the body.
