I have a brother and two sisters. I love them all and wish you could meet them. There’s a good chance that one of them, my sister Ruth, is already known to you.
A funny, glee-full thing happens to me at least several times a year. Someone will be talking to me about a book they’ve been reading that they’ve found really helpful, almost revolutionary to their spiritual life. Usually it’s Invitation to Solitude and Silence or Sacred Rhythms or Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership. and they say “It’s by this woman named Ruth Haley Barton…have you heard of her?” And I say, “Actually, yes, I’ve known her for quite a while” and pretty soon it dawns, “Oh…Ruth HALEY Barton!” It’s always a moment of joyful discovery!
Maybe at another time I’ll write something longer about Ruth’s books and her really remarkable ministry of The Transforming Center (I couldn’t recommend it highly enough), but just for today I want to highlight her most recent book that I just finished, love, and want to recommend. It hits notes that have been deep in me for decades, and have spent the better part of 20 years trying to cultivate in every ministry I’ve started and served. It’s called Life Together in Christ: Experiencing Transformation in Community.
She’s tackling a pretty common problem in Christendom: “It is possible to hang around other Christians a lot, meet regularly for worship, study our Bibles, join a church, and even call ourselves a community but not change at all in ways that really count.”
She then dives into an alternative: “Transforming community begins to emerge as we establish shared understanding about what spiritual transformation is, develop shared language for talking about it and encouraging one another in the process, and embrace a shared commitment to arranging our lives for spiritual transformation. This involves so much more than adding a program or offering an elective class, and it doesn’t happen by accident.”
Of course, the rest of the book unpacks these things. And Ruth does it beautifully by working carefully and insightfully with the story in Luke 24 of Jesus and the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, step by step. As in all her books, Ruth is careful to ground it all in Scripture.
So I want to ask you to consider a couple of things.
1) Get the book! If you want greater spiritual transformation in your life, OR are in a small group of some sort, AND especially if both of those things are true, please buy the book and read it. As you can imagine, it’s best read actually with others and especially if you’re already on a journey together. It’s got a way to read it with a group in the book itself.
2) Join the Coracle group in NoVA engaging Ruth’s work: I hope you’ve see the good news that Wade Ballou has joined Coracle’s staff as Community Minister for Northern Virginia. In March, he’s going to start two different groups designed to help people encounter God and grow in Christ. One of them will begin March 17 and then meet on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month, and this one will start by going through together Ruth’s DVD series on “Sacred Rhythms: Practices that Nourish Your Soul and Transform Your Life”. We’re working on the details, but even now email Wade if you want to stay apprised of those details or are interested.
3) I have no idea what Ruth’s new book might mean for Coracle or Corhaven. But I figure that if a bunch of people locally are reading it now, some really good seeds are being planted for something to emerge later. I DO know that I’ve been passionate about deeper community for the sake of Christ-likeness and growth for decades, and that’s never gone away or diminished. Just not sure what that means given where we live now.
As always, on the journey,
