Photo illustration by Jessamyn Rubio

January 29, 2009 | Nearly every night, the Rev. Jim Wallis tucks his sons, Luke and Jack, into bed. It is a routine so important to him that he arranges his considerable appearance schedule around it. There, amid scattered storybooks, toys, tangled sheets and homework, Wallis engages in one of the most important acts of his day -- perhaps of his entire spiritual life. He listens to his sons’ prayers.

Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, a Christian magazine and related ministries dedicated to social justice, says making a habit of hearing his children’s bedtime prayers is chief among his spiritual practices “because it distills the essence of Christ’s love back to me. Their prayers and my conversations with them -- well, they are just formative for me.”

Wallis is not alone in his dedication to spiritual practices -- daily acts of Scripture reading, devotion, Christian meditation and, of course, prayer. Christian leaders from a variety of backgrounds revitalize their relationships with God by employing these ancient techniques of tapping into the Holy Spirit. Through such daily engagement, these men and women say they come away not only with their hearts, minds and souls refreshed in God, but also with a renewed strength and passion for living the gospel in their roles as leaders, mentors and examples to others.

“You can’t just preach it,” Wallis said. “You have to have a set of personal spiritual disciplines that deepen your personal faith.”

Come to me with your minds as well as your hearts

For many years, spiritual practices were rarely engaged in many mainline Protestant traditions. Reformed Christianity, for example, emphasized an intellectual approach to God. Even many evangelicals have frowned on spiritual practices as “works,” counter to the belief that salvation comes by grace alone.

But today centuries-old Christian exercises are growing more popular among mainline Protestants. Some credit the change to charismatic renewal that spread through the Catholic community in the 1960s and was adopted by some Episcopalians. Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” was very influential in popularizing contemplative prayer. Others point to Trappist monks Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, Thomas Merton and William Meninger, who advocated Christian centering prayer and meditation.

Regardless of the exact spark, mainline Protestants soon began to reach back to the spiritual practices of the pre-Reformation church in search of a more personal and intimate experience of God. They turned for inspiration to church mothers and fathers, many of them mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, who engaged in contemplative and counted prayer, Christian meditation and spiritual communion with the Holy Spirit.

The Rev. Tony Campolo, a professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University who has written about spiritual practices, was inspired by the emotional connection to the Holy Spirit he witnessed in the Pentecostal community. But as a Baptist, he found the Pentecostal expression ultimately unsatisfactory. So he turned to the mystical writings and life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and practices such as the prayer of examen.

Campolo sees the mainline Protestant community moving away from the head-based faith of Calvin and toward the more heart-based faith of John Wesley. “As we move into the postmodern era, I think it is the era for the triumph of Wesley and his sense of subjective surrender to the indwelling of the Spirit and the ecstasies that can bring,” Campolo said.

Phyllis Tickle, who promotes the keeping of the fixed-hour prayers of the church in her book series “The Divine Hours,” also points away from the Reformers’ strictly intellectual approach. “The theology is patent in Christianity itself. The Lord says come to me with your minds as well as your hearts, and what I think is happening is a correction back from thinking too much from the head.”

Indeed, the foundation for such practices is present throughout the Bible. It is foremost in what Jesus called the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Advocates of spiritual practices say that ignoring this commandment results in an incomplete experience of God, which should be one of the whole person, heart, soul and mind.

The writings of the Apostle Paul are the theological cornerstone of such practices. His letters are full of references to letting the Holy Spirit in, to allowing the Spirit of God to move within one’s life -- the ultimate goal.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God,” Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:12-14). And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.