A Love Mission
A Love Mission by Emily Turner
Paul Burns is a Rev. Dr. in the Presbyterian Church and served as a pastor for more than 12 years before resigning from this post in February 2020, just a month before the pandemic hit, to launch a long-time dream of his – Soul Metrics. While his choice to leave a secure job could seem a bit peculiar, it might actually be divine timing.
Burns says he thinks we have a love problem in our country. And, while this has become clearer in the past several months as political rhetoric and racial tensions have overtaken news cycles, this is something he saw coming long before COVID brought many of these fractures into focus.
“As a pastor, I noticed that the majority of people were stuck,” says Burns. “Most churches measure success based on how full the pews are, how many people are signing up to serve, enrolling in Bible studies, tithing, etc. And, while these are good things, they do not specifically tend to the interior of a person, nor does it create framework for transformation or a greater outpouring of love.”
He also noticed that many of his congregants had gotten used to how life had always been for them and says it was like they were okay with mediocre feelings towards their marriages and jobs, how they felt about themselves and even their relationship with God.
“A lot of people have the sentiment of oh, this is just how it is, and everything will be better when I die and go to heaven,” says Burns.
Depending on your view of heaven, this belief can get pretty complicated.
As a spiritual director who has been trained to sit and listen to individuals share the inner most part of themselves and also as someone who has been in church my entire life, I hear what Burns is saying. I’ve noticed in others and also in myself a real sense of burnout. It is like we are on a hamster wheel of “more.”
Sign up for the event, put your name on the list, respond to every text and email, the ongoing pressure to say yes appears to be mounting, inside church walls as well as outside of them.
But this type of “more” doesn’t seem to translate to more peace, love and joy, which from a Christian faith tradition and many other faith traditions and even for those of none, is the main idea. People want to love life, but we don’t always know how to access this flow. Something or multiple things prevent us along the way.
So then, what gives?
Burns and I recently connected via ZOOM where I gained some insight.
Soul Metrics
In my spiritual direction practice, I’m trained not to prescribe or fix situations but to listen and notice where the Holy is in someone’s life. The word metrics makes me think of measurement, which kind of raises questions. What exactly is it?
It means exactly what is says it means. It’s a tool that gives us metrics of our spiritual life. As a minister, I was noticing that very few churches have curriculum or programs that give insight into people’s spiritual heath and generally, the church offers these five things:
Read the Bible
Pray regularly
Give
Acts of service
Attend worship
But someone could do all of these things for years and still avoid spiritual heath and growth.
I heard the same thing week after week: “Yeah, yeah, we get what you’re saying, but what difference does it make?” I began to get frustrated. For Christians, the Gospel of Jesus teaches us that transformation here on earth is possible. But I was seeing very few people who were living transformed lives.
Spiritual Checkup
This makes me think of the part of the Lord’s prayer “On earth as it is in heaven.” I believe that we can experience the kingdom of God in the here and now. That freedom Jesus talks about. A lot of my spiritual transformation (and it is a work in progress) came and still come from sessions with my spiritual director. We talk about encounters with the Holy, notice and celebrate these things and generally reflect on my sacred story. But this idea of having metrics related to my spirituality is intriguing. How is it measured?
“You can measure the success of the church - giving, filled seats, etc., but that doesn’t measure the condition of the heart,” says Burns. “We go to the doctor to get checkups. Why not get a spiritual checkup?”
We have to know where we are spiritually so we can see what areas need tending, and the GPS Spiritual Inventory which provides a spiritual inventory to those who take it and is one of the main offerings of Soul Metrics, does just that.
What areas of our spirituality does the GPS specifically measure?
GPS stands for God-Personal-Social. It assesses the depth of your relationship with God, the level of your self-differentiation, and your capacity for empathy towards others.
The full, spiritual life is about living in relationship with God, self and others. If we are clogged in one of these areas, it limits our ability to receive and give God’s love. The GPS assessment basically gives us a glimpse inside of our spiritual plumbing. To use imagery, consider a pipe, and think of your soul as the pipe. If you’re hooked up to God’s love without blockages, the love is running out into all areas of your life, and this is what transformed living looks like.
Finding My Flow
I’ve done quite a bit of inner work through study of the Enneagram as well as other personality tests. I’m kind of a personality text junkie! I also meet with a counselor and spiritual director regularly, but I found that the results of this assessment gave me new information. I consider myself an Empath, someone who picks up on the feelings of others, which can be extremely helpful in working with people in spiritual direction. I have found this helpful in knowing how to love others well, too. If I can sense where they’re hurting or feeling joyful, my empathy allows me to be with them in that space in a really full way. But the results of my assessment showed that I have work to do on loving others - I was kind of bummed about that. Can you help me understand my results?
Wow. I love to hear that the GPS gave you new information, especially as someone who has done a lot of inner work. Its important to remember that this spiritual assessment is different than personality tests, etc., because the GPS results can change depending on what is going on in your life. And the fact that you took this assessment during a pandemic is also important to remember. Just like a normal checkup at the doctor, it shows us where we are right now, and what needs our current attention.
That gives me some consolation! So, what is the connection with my self-differentiation score and my room for growth when it comes to loving others?
Your self-differentiation score is the “Personal” measurement portion of the GPS. It gives insight into your ability to possess and identify your own thoughts and feelings and distinguish them from others. It’s a process of not losing connection to your self while holding a connection to others, including those you love whose views may differ from yours. So for example, even if you grew up in a loving household, we all get to a point, where you have to forgive your parents for not being perfect parents and for doing the best you can. Self- differentiation is our ability to move away from the systems we’ve been a part of that might have hurt us and forgive them for not being perfect. This part of your life directly effects your “Social” ability - or the part of you that can actively love others. Sometimes a low to medium “Personal” score indicates that there might be some type of wound that still needs healing as well.
This is exactly what I uncovered with my spiritual director when we were looking at this part of my assessment. I was able identify two events in my life - an unexpected job loss as well as an emotionally unbalanced relationship, although both two years past, were still causing hurt. I thought I had forgiven those who contributed to this hurt, but it seemed I still had a deeper level of forgiveness to work through.
That’s so great you were able to pinpoint what was still clogged. As an empath, you are likely to go into preservation mode if you’re still carrying around trauma from these incidents. Meaning, it is not that you don’t love people, you are just protecting yourself from taking more of an active loving role towards others, until you fully heal from these things, because part of you is still afraid of getting hurt. Now that you have some new information from the GPS, working more with your counselor on these areas could be really helpful.
RX for Healing
In addition to receiving a spiritual GPS score, each person who takes the assessment also receives some suggested activities, or prescriptions if you will, on how to move forward. Since self- differentiation was an area of growth for me, so I’ll be considering the following:
Write down an inventory of four areas of my life:
Fears; resentments; trauma; and my sins against others. The more complete these lists are the more effective this practice will be. Once you have completed the inventory, ask God, in whatever way you understand God, to forgive, remove, and heal you of each of these things.
Speak to a spiritual director, counselor, coach, pastor, or chaplain:
It is important to have a third party perspective, but not just any third-party. We need people who see us with unjudging and unbiased eyes. We need people with whom we can share our stories, fears, and hopes without fear of judgment.
3. Join an anonymous group:
Attend one of the many 12-step meetings that best matches your struggle. Or form a group of people you trust and commit to confidentially sharing your lives with one another without judgement
In talking to Burns about my score, he touched on a word that had become all too familiar to me - burnout. As someone who feels all the feels, I was likely experiencing a great deal of emotional fatigue from some of the trauma I had gone through. During my spiritual direction and counseling sessions, I thought I had moved through most of this heaviness, but the assessment showed me that I had some residual debris hanging out in my soul, or as Burns says, my spiritual plumbing needed some tending.
Taking the assessment and talking to Burns felt like going to a specialist, perhaps like going to a dermatologist to access a treatment for better skin clarity or maybe a nutritionist who could provide allergy testing with hopes of improving gut health.. Just like our physical health, there are layers to our spiritual heath, it is complex and it is fluid, always changing based on our environment and circumstances.
We must tend to it, care for it.
Before hanging up our ZOOM call, Burns reminded me of a kind physician who looks at their patient with hope:
“God Bless you, he said. “You’re likely to have a different set of scores next time you take this. Keep working through those different steps and know they we’re all a work in progress.”
And as someone who loves to connect with others, I asked Burns, “So, what is your vision for Soul Metrics?”
He smiled and paused before answering:
“We each have the potential to be like the foundation of living water where God’s life and love is gushing out of us onto the world. I want to see a world like that.”
Rev. Dr. Paul Burns founded Soul Metrics in 2019 for the purpose of assisting Christian organizations, leaders, and the spiritually hungry in measuring and developing their spiritual health. Burns completed his Doctorate of Ministry from Western Seminary with an emphasis in Christian leadership coaching. Through his dissertation, he created a Christ-centered, psychometrically sound assessment measuring spiritual intelligence: The GPS (God-Personal-Social) Spiritual Inventory.
Soul Metrics offers testing, training, and coaching to a variety of Christian organizations and ministry workers, including hospitals, churches, seminaries, Christian non-profits, denominational bodies, pastors, chaplains, coaches, counselors, spiritual directors, psychologists, and any individual who desire to develop their spiritual health.
To take the GPS, click here. If you’re interested in becoming trained as a Soul Metrics practitioner, sign up here. To contact Burns regarding coaching, speaking and other inquiries, you can email him.
“The first act of love is always the giving of attention.”
- Dallas Willard
Emily Turner is a writer and trained spiritual director. She would love to hear from you.