Just a taste…

Here’s excerpts from the foreword of Ruth Haley Barton’s amazing work, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry.

A book that resonates deeply with me on the last six months on my journey in taking critical and unwasted time to allow God to tend to my soul.

On the day I called, you answered me,
You increased my strength of soul.

PSALM 138:3

“It is a lovely late fall day as I finish reading Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership, one of those days that lends itself to musing and memory. And it is fitting that I am in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a place where I have learned a great deal about the life and soul of leaders.

At nearby Winthrop University we gathered young men and women for many years as a part of our leadership development program. We taught about evangelism, about communication, about leadership values and practices. But what I remember most are the walks and talks across campus with emerging leaders who wanted most of all to share their inner dreams and difficulties—the soul of their leadership. During those years I myself was experiencing in this place times of both great fulfillment and agonizing despair. And all of this led eventually to a sense that God was calling me to a new ministry of spiritual companionship and mentoring of kingdom leaders.

Also fitting as I write this is the place I’m at: the Oratory, a retreat and ministry center in Rock Hill that has become for me a regular sacred place of listening and renewal for my own soul.

Perhaps this is why I am so moved to gratitude today for what Ruth has written. Although we have never met, I sense in her a kindred spirit, and her book has become a companion for me on the way.

I hope it will be that for many leaders, like a young pastor, who, at the end of one of our retreats, said, “I realize today that the best thing I can be for the people I work with is to be able to say, ‘It is well with my soul.’”

For him and others like him I want to recommend this book. Ruth’s style is warm and accessible. I like her insights into the inner life of a leader. I admire her love for poetry and prayers, which she shares in abundance. I am deeply grateful for the helpful practices she describes and recommends. But what draws me even more is that Ruth writes with realness and integrity out of her own intimate experience of the inner journey of a leader.

Moses is the biblical leader she has chosen as a model. I find myself musing, If Moses read this book, how would he react? Would he be grateful? Surprised? Dismayed?

Somehow I think his reaction as he read these accounts of his leadership would, over and over again, be, I remember that! I recognize myself! That’s how it was. She has caught me!

But, more than that, Ruth has, in conjunction of Moses and her own experience, caught me—and I think she will catch most readers.

I read here things that both sting and sing, thoughts like these:

You can gain the whole world of leadership and lose your own soul,

Your connection with the deep places within where God’s Spirit witnesses with your spirit.

I’m tired of helping others enjoy God. I just want to enjoy God.

What would it be like to find God, not to lose him in the context of leadership?

In solitude we must stop believing our own press.

God is not in any particular hurry to get us to the Promised Land.

Oftentimes our feelings of isolation increase right along with our success.

And my own soul responds both with “Ouch!” and “Yes!”

But most of all I respond with “Thank you,” because I am reminded here over and over that it was not Moses but the God who called Moses who ultimately got the people into the Promised Land. God was at the soul of Moses’ leadership, and is at the soul of Ruth’s and mine.

When I got back this morning, I read a story about a disciple who asked his master whether there was anything he could do to make himself grow spiritually.

The master answered: “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”

Disconcerted, the disciple asked what then was the use of the spiritual exercises the master had taught him.

And the master replied: “To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”

I think that is what Ruth would say about this book. I certainly would. Reading this book will not strengthen the soul of your leadership. Only God can do that. But it will surely help you to be attentive to the God who is the strength of your soul, and the heart of your leadership.”

- Leighton Ford