Recently, I read Lance Witt’s Replenish: Leading From a Healthy Soul. The following are quotes from the book that I particularly liked:
(Regarding a conversation with a mentor.) I asked what I needed to do to help our church be effective at spiritual transformation, and this was his immediate response: ‘You must live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your experience of everyday life with God’ (p. 10).
But what doesn’t get talked about as much is the importance of healthy leaders. We will never grow healthy churches with unhealthy leaders (pp. 11-12)
.…in trying to fill the gap with leadership resources, inadvertently we have marginalized the soul side of leadership. The result is a crisis — one of spiritual healthy among pastors (p. 18).
We have neglected the fact that a pastor’s greatest leadership tool is a healthy soul (p. 19).
We’ve all witnessed the carnage of leaders who’ve had to leave ministry (at least for now) because of moral failure. The headlines are always about the scandalous and shocking behavior, but rarely mentioned is the back-story.
It is the story of a neglected soul and mismanaged character. Of a slow drift into relational isolation. Of being seduced by ambition. These leaders didn’t intend for it to happen, but somewhere along the journey they stopped paying attention to what was going on inside of them. The shift was incremental and at times imperceptible.
Having talked to some whose ministry has come crashing down around them, I can tell you the convergence of outward success, self-deception, soul neglect, and relational isolation creates the perfect storm for disaster (p. 19).
We may be better leaders than we used to be, but the evidence seems to say we are not better pastors or husbands or Christ followers (p. 20).
Godly leadership is always inside out (p. 20).