Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership

Really good. Luckily this isn't one of those “5 steps to the awesome you” sort-of leadership books. It is about spiritual formation with an eye towards leadership. This is a devotional book, not a leadership book. It is a slow and meditative. I'm in impatient reader, and can frequently find myself thinking, “okay, just tell me the ‘point' or the ‘lesson' you want me to get and move on.” Barton is wise enough to not let us get off that easily. She makes us sit in these truths and meditate on them with her deeply.

Also, Barton moves in the spirit of midrash in how she treats the Moses story through the book, which she uses as her launching point and paradigm. This is a Jewish interpretive method, and so for those that lean more “conservative” and “liberal” theologically, this can wrongly distract from the point she's trying to make. Conservative Evangelicals might frequently think “that's not in the text!”, while those on the other side of spectrum, especially those steeped in biblical studies might think she's trying to make historical claims in her words–claims that biblical studies would deny. This is not what she's doing. She pressing the story through the filter of human experience to pull lessons that transcend history and the text in order to shape and form us. Wherever you land on those issues, don't let it distract you ro keep you from seeing the beauty of this book.