Ruth Barton
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Sabbath Journal : What Your Soul Wants To Say To God
$16.00Add to cartRuth Haley Barton believes sabbath saved her.
In her book Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, Ruth traces the need for, barriers to, and beauty available in this gift. Sabbath Journal offers selected wisdom from the book, blank spaces for written responses, and fifty-two prompts to launch divine dialogue. Ruth says, “What you write here does not have to be profound; it just needs to be true. And even after you have finished reading the book, you can keep using this journal as a sacred space to ‘say something true to God’ as part of your sabbath practice.”
As you intentionally develop the habit of pausing, use this interactive resource to reflect with Ruth at your own pace and in your own words. This journal is your next step in replenishment to guide your life’s patterns.
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Just Passion : A Six-Week Lenten Journey
$12.00Add to cartA Collection of Lenten Devotions from IVP Authors
Injustice is rampant around us. It is also present within us. To better confront oppression in the world, we must own that reality and look to Christ our liberator. Lent is the opportune time for this as we contemplate his suffering together.
With selections from a diverse range of IVP books, A Just Passion has been curated to hold in tension the immense weight and hope of the Lenten season. This collection of short readings, breath prayers, and Scripture passages from the First Nations Version guides readers through a six-week journey of repentance, lament, worship, and healing.
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Embracing Rhythms Of Work And Rest
$25.00Add to cartIn our frenzied culture, the possibility of living in balanced rhythms of work and rest often feels elusive. This rings especially true for pastors and leaders who carry the weight of nonstop responsibility. Most know they need rest but might be surprised to find within themselves a deep resistance to letting go and resting in God one day a week, let alone for longer seasons of sabbatical.
The journey to a meaningful sabbath practice is slow and gradual, and it is a journey we need to take in community. Sharing her own story of practicing sabbath for the past twenty years, Ruth Haley Barton offers hard-won wisdom regarding the rhythms of sabbath, exploring both weekly sabbath keeping as well as extended periods of sabbatical time.
Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest grounds us in God’s intentions in giving us the gift of sabbath, providing practical steps for embedding sabbath rhythms in churches and organizations. Each chapter concludes with What Your Soul Wants to Say to God, an opportunity to reflect and engage God around your own journey with the material. Sabbath is more than a practice–it is a way of life ordered around God’s invitation to regular rhythms of work, rest, and replenishment that will sustain us for the long haul of life in leadership.
Includes a conversation guide for small groups and communities.
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Pursuing Gods Will Together
$27.00Add to cartChurch boards and other Christian leadership teams have long relied on models adapted from the business world. Ruth Haley Barton, president of the Transforming Center, helps teams transition to a much more fitting model–the spiritual community that practices discernment together.
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Invitation To Retreat
$25.00Add to cart“Come away and rest awhile.”
Jesus invites us to be with him, offering our full and undivided attention to him. When we choose retreat we make a generous investment in our friendship with Christ. Truth is, we are not always generous with ourselves where God is concerned. Many of us have done well to incorporate regular times of solitude and silence into the rhythm of our ordinary lives which means we’ve gotten pretty good at giving God twenty minutes here and a half an hour there. And there’s no question we are better for it! But we need more. Indeed, we long for more.
In these pages Transforming Center founder and seasoned spiritual director, Ruth Haley Barton, gently and eloquently leads us into an exploration of retreat as a key practice that opens us to God. Based on her own practice and her experience leading hundreds of retreats for others, she will guide you in a very personal exploration of seven specific invitations contained within the general invitation to retreat. You will discover how to say yes to God’s winsome invitation to greater freedom and surrender. There has never been a time when the invitation to retreat is so radical and so relevant, so needed and so welcome. It is not a luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual life.
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Strengthening The Soul Of Your Leadership (Expanded)
$26.00Add to cartForeword By Gary A. Haugen
Introduction
1. When Leaders Lose Their Souls
2. What Lies Beneath
3. The Place Of Our Own Conversion
4. The Practice Of Paying Attention
5. The Conundrum Of Calling
6. Guiding Others On The Spiritual Journey
7. Living Within Limits
8. Spiritual Rhythms In The Life Of The Leader
9. Leadership As Intercession
10. The Loneliness Of Leadership
11. From Isolation To Leadership Community
12. Finding God’s Will Together
13. Re-envisioning The Promised Land
Afterword By Leighton Ford
Discussion Guide
Appendix: How Is It With Your Soul?
GratitudesAdditional Info
“I’m tired of helping others enjoy God-I just want to enjoy God for myself.”With this painful admission, Ruth Haley Barton invites us to an honest exploration of what happens when spiritual leaders lose track of their souls. Weaving together contemporary illustrations with penetrating insight from the life of Moses, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership explores topics such as
responding to the dynamics of calling
facing the loneliness of leadership
leading from your authentic self
cultivating spiritual community
reenvisioning the promised land
discerning God’s will togetherEach chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead.
This expanded edition includes a new appendix for self-evaluation, “How Is It with Your Soul?” and a flexible six- or twelve-week discussion guide for groups.
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Invitation To A Journey (Expanded)
$20.00Add to cartM. Robert Mulholland Jr. defines spiritual formation as “the process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.” Compact and solid, this definition encompasses the dynamics of a vital Christian life and counters our culture’s tendency to make spirituality a trivial matter or reduce it to a private affair between “me and Jesus.” In Invitation to a Journey, Mulholland helps Christians new and old to understand that we become like Christ gradually, not instantly. Not every personality is suited to an early morning quiet time, so Mulholland frees different personality types to express their piety differently. He reviews the classical spiritual disciplines and demonstrates the importance of undertaking our spiritual journey with (and for the sake of) others. This road map for spiritual formation is profoundly biblical and down to earth. In the finest tradition of spiritual literature, it is a vital help to Christians at any stage of their journey. This edition is revised and expanded by Ruth Haley Barton with a new foreword, practices and study guide.
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Life Together In Christ
$23.00Add to cartOdds are you’ve been disappointed by community at some point in your life. You’ve joined a church or small group with high hopes of experiencing real edification, friendship and belonging, only to be disappointed by the lack of true connection and growth. There is something terribly difficult about human beings trying to function together over the long haul. So how can we cultivate true Christian community-not simply for the sake of connection but also for the sake of mutual spiritual transformation? This kind of communal, spiritual experience isn’t easy. No matter how cynical we have become, the promise that we sin-scarred humans can become like Christ is one of the great promises of the Gospel. We are meant for kingdom living here and now. And we cannot do it alone. Paul’s teachings on spiritual growth and transformation are always given in the context of community-the body of Christ with its many members, all using their gifts for mutual edification. It is clear that transformation and community are integrally related. Without spiritual transformation, communities will falter and disintegrate; without community, we will limit the work of transformation in our lives. If we can bring these two dynamics together in transforming community, that’s when a spontaneous combustion will begin to take place. In this kind of shared life, the value and the priority of spiritual transformation is taught, discussed, and lived out in large and small groups, in families and among friends, in formal Christian education settings and informal conversations. It becomes central to the life of the community, offering both structured opportunities for growth while allowing space for the spontaneous “bubbling up” of the Spirit’s work in people’s lives. In Life Together in Christ, veteran spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton gives us an interactive guide for smaller groupings of people who are ready to get personal and practical about experiencing transformation together. Designed to function on both individual and communal levels, groups will grow through and by study of the account of the disciples on the Emmaus Road found in Luke 24. Be ready to experience true, intentional, transforming community.
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Life Together In Christ
$20.00Add to cartHave you joined a church or small group in hopes of experiencing real life change, only to be disappointed? Have you sat through inspiring sermons about what is possible when Christians gather together in mutually edifying relationships, only to recognize how cynical you have become after many failed attempts? Community may be one of the most over-promised, under-delivered aspects of the Christian life today. Individuals remain selfish and stuck in their ways. Communities become spiritually lifeless or even fall apart because we don’t know how to experience transformation together. Transforming community does not come primarily from listening to inspiring preaching or adding another church program. It emerges as we embrace a shared commitment to the attitudes, practices and behaviors that open us to Christ in our midst. And that’s where Life Together in Christ comes in. Reflecting on the story of the two disciples who meet Christ on the Emmaus Road, Ruth Haley Barton offers this interactive guide for small groups of spiritual companions who are ready to encounter Christ in transforming ways-right where they are on the road of real life.
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Sacred Rhythms Participants Guide (Student/Study Guide)
$12.99Add to cartA learning experience in spiritual formation that incorporates teaching on the spiritual disciplines from trained spiritual director Ruth Barton, this six-session DVD curriculum combines teaching and modeling of the disciplines with opportunities for group members to engage in meaningful discussion of their experiences as they practice the disciplines in community.
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Invitation To Solitude And Silence
$25.00Add to cartWinner of a Christianity Today Book Award! Much of our faith and practice is about words–preaching, teaching, talking with others. Yet all of these words are not enough to take us into the real presence of God where we can hear his voice. This book is an invitation to you to meet God deeply and fully outside the demands and noise of daily life. It is an invitation to solitude and silence. The beauty of a true invitation is that we really do have a choice about embarking on this adventure. God extends the invitation, but he honors our freedom and will not push himself where he is not wanted. Instead, he waits for us to respond from the depths of our desire. Will you say yes? This expanded edition includes a guide for groups to use both in discussing the book content and in learning to practice silence together.
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Sacred Rhythms : Arranging Our Lives For Spiritual Transformation
$24.00Add to cartPicking up on the monastic tradition of creating a “rule of life” that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, Ruth Barton’s new book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines and how we can weave them into our daily life. Each chapter includes exercise to help you begin the practices-individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation.