Seeking God in Solitude
More than 180 pastors and ministry leaders from a range of denominations and organizations, including the Christian Reformed Church, recently took time away from their busy work to spend a day learning about the significance of being in solitude so that they can connect with God.
Meeting at Plymouth Heights CRC in Grand Rapids, Mich., the leaders heard Ruth Haley Barton tell them that only in solitude — by escaping the relentless pressures of their work — can they truly hear what God may be saying to them in their soul about being leaders.
“There is nothing more important than our soul,” said Haley Barton, director of the Transforming Center, a ministry dedicated to enhancing the spiritual lives of pastors and Christian leaders and the congregations and organizations they serve.
“The soul is the place where God’s Spirit is present to us. By getting in touch with our souls, we can hear from God and be able to lead from out of that place inside of us,” said Haley Barton, author of several books including Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry.
Pastors and leaders, especially today, must be multitalented. They are asked to be preachers and teachers, lead capital campaigns, be CEOs of their church, involve themselves in mission outreach, and do pastoral care. As a result, said Haley Barton, they get pulled every which way — and all of that takes its toll on the soul.
If you lose touch with your soul , “you can lose the connection to your ministry,” said Haley Barton. “You can find yourself leading worship, but you are only manufacturing the emotions. You can look like you are doing better than you really are.”
Titled “A Day with Ruth Haley Barton,” the conference focused on discussing spiritual practices that can help leaders in ministry. The event was sponsored by Calvin Theological Seminary, the Starting and Strengthening Churches Team of Classis Grand Rapids East, and the CRC’s Pastor Church Resources ministry.
During the conference, participants had times of solitude in which they could sit and reflect in the church sanctuary or elsewhere in the church. Lunch was a time of silence — an opportunity to check one’s connection with God.
Al Postma, classis renewal leader for Pastor Church Resources, said the conference was offered “as a way to help pastors and other leaders step into a space where they can encounter themselves and the depths of their souls.”
As part of the conference, said Postma, participants received a copy of the user’s guide for the online Pastors’ Spiritual Vitality toolkit, compiled by Pastor Church Resources and Faith Formation Ministries to help pastors lead more spiritually vital lives.
Postma also said that through the Thriving Together Program, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., Pastor Church Resources has distributed Haley Barton’s book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership to many pastors experiencing ministry transitions.
In the book’s introduction Haley Barton writes: “I have only one desire for this book, really, and that is that it will lead you into encounters with God that will strengthen the soul of your leadership in places where you need it the most.”
When referring to the soul, she said, she is not speaking about some soft, amorphous thing. And it can’t really be located in any one spot like your heart or your brain.
But we all have a soul, she said.
“We might think of the soul as being ill defined and hard to get a hold of, but it is part of us, and it is real. It is the very essence of us that God knew before he brought us forth in physical form — and will exist after our body goes into the ground,” said Haley Barton.
Several years ago, she said, when she was especially busy in ministry, she blurted out, without thinking, to a friend: “I’m tired of helping other people enjoy God. I want to enjoy God for myself.”
She listened to what she had said and knew there had to be some changes. Feeling as if she had lost her soul, she said, she left the ministry and spent a period wondering if she would ever return. Most notably, she relaxed and allowed herself to pray and simply wait on God to speak to her.
She slowly got reconnected with God, she said. After she spoke such prayers as “God, I miss you,” she realized God was there, had always been there, and had simply been waiting for her to clear the way — to set aside the demands of busy ministry — for God to speak.
God eventually confirmed, she said, in ways that became clear to her, that she needed to return to ministry and speak to other pastors and leaders who might also be sensing “a soul slippage,” taking them far away from the God they have been serving.
“The soul is like a wild animal that will not come out until it sees a safe environment for it to come out,” she said. “Waiting for the soul takes time.”
During her time away from ministry, said Haley Barton, she came to draw deeply from Scripture to find role models, one of whom was Moses.
Moses was born a Hebrew but was raised in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s household. When he got older, he had to figure out who he was, battling with his identity. In the process, he killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave. Then Moses ran away into the wilderness for many years, tending sheep. (See Ex. 2:11-3:5.)
In those years, which would have included a lot of solitude, Moses was able to gain a better sense of who he was and who his people were. Then one day Moses saw a burning bush and, instead of turning away, he paused and heard the voice of God sending him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and into freedom.
“There is no sugar-coating how hard his path to leadership was,” said Haley Barton. “In the wilderness he realized he was an Israelite, and he sought God in solitude and then had the energy to do exactly what God wanted him to do.”
Participants at the conference had a set of questions to consider and talk about at their tables. At one table, they spoke of many things that get in the way of taking time to spend in solitude with God.
One ministry leader said she has so much going on that it would be hard to calm down and settle into solitude, partly because she has a tendency to judge herself harshly. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she said.
Summing up later from her own experience with solitude, Haley Barton provided a response to that kind of issue, saying, “It can be very difficult, but all we can do is wade through it and be willing to stay as long as God wants us to stay. In solitude, God shows us who we are, and we are able to own the dynamics that shape us.”
