Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership with Ruth Haley Barton

In this episode, Ruth and Adele use the Lord’s Prayer to examine God’s invitation to prayer. They share what God is currently calling each of them to as it pertains to prayer. How does the “Our” in the opening line “Our Father” call us to “a seismic shift in orientation” and what does it mean to bring God’s kingdom to earth inside of us as we pray? Adele closes with practical ways to incorporate prayer into the margins of your life.     Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder  Engaging a transforming conversation around policing in America (Beyond Words Blog post)   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   Music Credit: Grace and Peace: Music in Solitude CD (Available soon in our online store)    The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

This week Ruth and Adele discuss God’s invitation to wait. They process the difference between good waiting and bad waiting and ask what waiting exposes in us? The two also examine when waiting is avoidance, particularly as it pertains to justice and how to discern when to wait and when to act. Finally, they also look at what invitations to wait God might have for the church as we come out of the pandemic.      Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   Music Credit: Springs of Living Water: Music in Solitude CD (Available soon in our online store)    The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

The invitation to forgive is one of our most weighty invitations, as Ruth and Adele will explore. In this conversation, they will put some definitions around forgiveness, reconciliation, and how our narratives and facts are involved when it comes to the process of forgiveness. They share wisdom for when forgiveness is needed but not offered and close with tangible support for pastors to enter into their own process of forgiveness as they untangle the many wounds they may have received in this difficult season.      Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson    Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   Music Credit: Grace And Peace: Music in Solitude CD (Available soon in our online store)    The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

The invitation in this episode may be our most challenging yet: God’s invitation to admit I might be wrong. Why is it so hard to admit that we may be wrong and how does shame keep us from this invitation? Ruth and Adele discuss the invitation to teachability, confession, discerning when to allow space to be wrong and when to speak up for what is right, and more.     Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

In this week’s episode, Ruth and Adele discuss God’s invitation to weep. Listen as the two cover the gift of tears, as well as what makes it hard to weep. As we come out of the pandemic it may be easy to miss this invitation in favor of celebrating our ability to return to the many things lost in the last year. Why should leaders create awareness and space to name these losses and mourn them? What practical things can we do to help us grieve?      Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.     The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

In this episode, Ruth and Adele respond to God’s invitation to rest. They acknowledge the fears and cultural rewards that keep us from resting and examine what freedoms we might have found during the pandemic that we want to carry with us into a new season as it pertains to rest. And finally, they discuss soft addictions that prevent true rest and provide practical disciplines to help us respond to this very important invitation.   Mentioned in this episode:  Barna article about groups returning to church (or not) after pandemic (barna.com) Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.     The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

This week Ruth and Adele are breaking down the invitation to practice the presence of people. What does it mean to “shine your face upon someone” and why is our physical presence so important? Listen as Ruth and Adele tackle the notion of “relationship quotas” and share their thoughts on how to respond to this invitation in relationships that have been fractured by all that has happened during the last year and a half.   Mentioned in this episode:  Dr. Edward Tronick Still Face Experiment (YouTube) Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.     The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self! 

For this special bonus episode, we wanted to give all of our listeners a peek into what is happening over on Patreon. This is a short sample of our bonus “Ask Ruth” series where patrons get the opportunity to ask Ruth questions and hear her responses in an exclusive to patrons episode. In this episode, hear Ruth speak to the issue many Christians are facing as they figure out how to return to a church that may have revealed itself to hold very different views on what it means to be a follower of Christ in regards to power, racial justice, etc. over the last year. As expected, Ruth’s response is full of wisdom, grace, and insight.   The Ask Ruth series is available to patrons at both the $5 and $10 levels. Patrons at the $10 a month level also receive regular Beyond the Episode content when the podcast is in season. These episodes come out after the main feed episode has been released and contain conversations that relate to the main episode but are more extensive or personal than what is covered in the main episode.   If you are interested in what we provide our patrons, head over to our Patreon page and become a patron today to support our podcast ministry.

  Listen as Ruth and Adele use the invitation from chapter two of Invitations from God to examine the ways following and leading are connected in the life of Christ and what it means to steward your role as a follower well. What do we do when the leaders we follow disappoint and how does this invitation to follow fall differently on people groups depending on their historic ability or lack thereof to lead in their own right?    Mentioned in this episode:  Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Support the podcast by joining our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!  

In this episode, Ruth and Adele discuss chapter 1, Invitation to Participate in Your Own Healing. Ruth and Adele cover everything from the particular wounds we have encountered societally over the past year and a half to how to identify participation in healing versus passively waiting for something to happen to us. Learn what happens when we ignore this invitation and become transmitters of pain and what practices help us to respond to this invitation.  Mentioned in this episode:  The Six-Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism (mereorthodoxy.com) Invitations From God by Adele Calhoun   Become a patron and check out our revamped patron program over on Patreon. Patrons will now also receive regular bonus content as well as opportunities to hear Ruth answer their questions. Become a patron today and support our podcast ministry.   SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS You can also access the podcast on Stitcher and Spotify.   Music Credit: Anthem: Music in Solitude CD (Available soon in our online store)    The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders.  Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!