This book is a must read for all current day spiritual leaders. I don’t make this statement about many books but there are a handful that I put in this category. As one who has been in the crucible of ministry for over 40 years now, I wish I had taken heed to the many principles of Soul Care Ruth shares in this book that exegetes the life and leadership of Moses and how God led him into times of solitude and silence to prepare and maintain his soul strength to lead God’s people out of Egyptian Slavery, through the wilderness, to the edge of the promise land and then back to the wilderness until they were ready to finally enter the promised land.
Crucible as “a place or set of circumstances where people or things are subjected to forces that test them and often make them change.”
Ruth Haley Barton, page16.
Ministry in the 21st Century can well be described as a crucible of internal and external pressures that if ignored can bring a leader to lose their ministry effectiveness or the ministry itself, if not acknowledged and faced with a Soul that has been strengthened but rather depleted.
When the early Wesleyan bands of Christ followers got together in small group meetings, their first question to each other was “How is it with your soul?
Barton, page 24
When was the last time someone asked you that question? When was the last time you asked that question to yourself or to another spiritual leader you care about? In this book, Ruth, helps current day leaders learn to ask that question on a consistent basis and to be able to answer with honesty and specificity. The author provides an assessment for leaders in the appendix, “How Is It With Your Soul?” It is a simple assessment of seventeen questions that can help a leader gain accurate and practical insight into the spiritual condition of their soul and leadership. Barton, page 241-244. This in itself could be worth the price of the book.
The book contains a preface by Gary A Haugen, Introduction, Thirteen Soul Searching and Building Chapters, and Afterward by Leighton Ford, a Simple and Practical Guide for Groups to journey through together, and a an Informative Leader’s Soul Assessment. While every chapter is both practical and powerful, I want to highlight a few chapters that I found especially helpful in my journey for soul and leadership health.
Chapter 4, “The Practice of Paying Attention”
A very common response I have received and given myself to the questions like, “How have you been?”, or “How are you doing?”, is “Busy!” We live in a world addicted to busyness, to multitasking, to productivity to the max. Ruth shares from her own ministry experience, “When members of the pastoral staff are running down the hallways talking on their cell phones, there is something seriously wrong with this picture!” (Page 61). I’m sorry to say I have been that picture at church or walking into meetings or walking into the gym on more than one occasion in the past few months. She then offers some powerful questions we might ask ourselves if we have the courage:
- How much paying attention am I doing—really?
- Do I have enough give in my schedule to be able to turn aside and pay attention when there is something that warrants it?
- Could it be because I am moving so fast that I do not have time to turn aside and look?
- Do I even have mechanisms in my life that create space for paying attention, so that I don’t miss the places where God himself is trying to communicate with me?
Paying attention to all the things burning in and around us keeps us in touch with what is truest about God, ourselves, our world so that we can heat God calling us by name.
Barton, page 70
Chapter 8, “Spiritual Rhythms In The Life of The Leader”
In the past few years I have become more aware and a tune to the natural rhythms God has established in the created world and in our spiritual lives. The experience of weekly sabbath rest is something I had neglected for over 40 years of my ministry. Ruth writes about the reality of how our culture both secular and spiritual does not provide a rest rhythm. She provides real life facts and examples to illustrate this rest stealing reality.
1. Christians are assimilating a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to,
2. God becoming marginalized in Christian’s lives, which leads to,
3. A deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to,
4. Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to live, which leads to,
5. More conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload. And then the cycle begins again
Michael Zigarelli, from survey conducted as associate professor of management at Charleston University School of Business, in Barton, page 118.
Ruth writes about the rhythms of work and rest and the importance of times of recovery to replenish body, mind and soul. She writes of rhythms of engagement and retreat where we learn to rest in God and wait on him to do what is needed. She then writes about rhythms of silence and word and stillness and action. Barton elevates the act of remaining in a private place with God as heroic and that the greater the call for decisive action, the more we must’ve sure we have waited long enough to receive clear direction. Ruth makes several other specific applications ending with a declaration: “There is an energy that comes from being rested that is different from the energy that comes from being driven….Rhythms create space for God, fostering an ability to bring something truer to the world than all of our doing. (Barton, page 134.
RESTORING HOPE 