Book Recommendation: Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership

I’ve heard so many stories this year of transitions. Transitions to new types of ministry, new roles, new locations. It feels like the Covid years have been a salt shaker, shaking people up and around on the dinner plate of life. For me, part of that has been walking through a process of re-exploring my calling with God, noticing things He had been gradually stripping away, and choosing to participate with Him in the next little steps of becoming the person He is calling me to be. Some of that has been exciting, some of it scary and painful.

Ruth Haley Barton’s book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership has been a helpful place to go during that process. She does a deep dive into the life of Moses for wisdom on topics such as paying attention, living within limits, and the loneliness of leadership. Her writing was insightful but even more impactful were the reflections at the end of each chapter. They help me process my shifting ministry journey with God in ways I wouldn’t have thought to do on my own.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels themself or their soul adrift in the midst of ministry (changing or not).

“Any kind of authentic calling usually takes us to a place where we feel inadequate–where we confront our own willfulness and our preconceived ideas about how we thought our life would go, where we think what God is asking us to do is downright impossible or where we just don’t want to take the risk…But God answers all of Moses’ objections (and ours!) with variations on a single theme–the promise of God’s presence in the crucible of leadership.” p 80

(This review from Lynnae K.)