My name is Murphy, and I am a spiritual director, teacher, writer, and researcher. I helped create and am a lead mentor for The Companion: Apprenticeship in Spiritual Direction, a student-centered spiritual-direction training program housed within the Apprentice Institute at Friends University. I teach at Ozark Christian College (MO) and Friends University (KS), and I serve as a spiritual director for pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders around the globe.

I am completing my PhD at the University of Aberdeen (UK) studying the role of interpersonal desire in spiritual formation. I have special interests in René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire, spiritual experience, and how life experience informs religious belief. I write regularly at the Practicing Christian Spirituality Substack.

I live in Southwest Missouri with my family, and I serve in a local church that’s messy, beautiful, broken, and in process.