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Wearing khaki pants and a knit shirt, Crabb is watching a tennis game on tv when I first meet him at the Glen. Crabb's feet are bare. Somehow, they connote vulnerability—and a soul he would soon effortlessly bare. At 58, Crabb seems too mellow, too frank, too centered to dodge any questions.

"I can be very demanding of what a conversation should go like, how people should respond, what people should be thinking about," he says. But this week, people are paying him to do just that.

Several years ago, when Crabb was reading Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (IVP, 1995) by Oxford University professor of historical theology Alister McGrath, a warning leapt off the page: "Evangelicalism is the slumbering giant of the world of spirituality. It needs to wake up." At the time, Crabb was losing faith in what he had experienced as "the standard 'evangelical' means of spiritual growth."

"Daily devotions, no drinking, faithful church attendance, busyness with church programs, performance-oriented Sunday worship and preaching," he says, didn't lead him to "a dynamic enjoyment of God." In fact, they seemed to be interfering. "I was finding water for my thirsty soul in classic Catholic writings."

But reading McGrath gave him a renewed vigor to explore evangelical essentials. Soon, they became the building blocks in his uniquely evangelical basis for spiritual direction. These days, Crabb is tugging at the sleeve of the sleeping giant.

If you ask James Houston—founder of Regent College and one of Crabb's mentors—he'll tell you it's time for this wake-up call. Like Crabb, Houston believes healing of non-organic disorders "should not be in the hands of specialists—it should be in the hands of the church." Crabb now attends a Presbyterian church, but both he and Houston grew up in the Plymouth Brethren, which doesn't have professional clergy and stresses the empowerment of laity. The two live to train laity.

Houston believes that too many evangelicals have sought God "through activism—programs, conferences, applying methods, or ministries." People needing relational healing too often had to turn to psychotherapists. "The therapeutic revolution has been an indictment of the church," he says.

True, evangelicals do sometimes err on the side of making faith into formulas. On the other hand, they've always exalted the importance of "a personal relationship" with God. Small groups are also an evangelical trademark. Perhaps both the love of relationships and its perversion (subjecting relationships to the methods Houston talks about) have readied evangelicals for spiritual direction. Houston cites one more influence: the recent renaissance of interest in Trinitarian spirituality.

Whatever the reason, programs in spiritual direction are popping up at many evangelical colleges. The first issue of a journal of spiritual formation called Conversations—a brainchild of Crabb and two other psychologists who moved into spiritual direction, David Benner and Gary Moon—came out this March. And Crabb—with his School of Spiritual Direction, SoulCare conferences (in which he teaches participants to "enter the battle for the souls" of those they love), and two books in the works on spiritual direction—is the evangelical savant of the hour.

His father played a key role in getting him to this point. The "austere," open-minded yet conservative English immigrant taught Crabb how to doubt in the midst of believing. Crabb says the hard-working power-tool salesman was "honest enough to struggle and let me see it."

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May 2003, Vol. 47, No. 5