Cultivate and Catalyze Spiritual Transformation in Your Community

Many Christian communities long for deeper spiritual growth but find themselves stuck, not knowing how to move forward together. If you are a leader seeking to guide your community toward genuine, God-centered transformation, this book provides the vision and tools you need.

In Leading a Transforming Community, spiritual formation thought leader Ruth Haley Barton shares insights from over twenty-five years of guiding leaders through the Transforming Center. She casts a compelling vision for what is possible when a community gathers around the presence of Christ with the shared goal of spiritual transformation.

This seminal work is an essential resource for pastors, small group leaders, and leaders of all Christian communities who believe that change and transformation should be the norm, not the exception.

Leading a Transforming Community will equip you and your team with



- Biblical and theological foundations for spiritual transformation in community;

- Shared attitudes, practices, and experiences to do together as a group;

- Real-life examples and stories from fellow leaders; and

- Practical, intentional strategies for opening to God as a community.



This book shows how spiritual transformation is central to the message of the gospel and the mission of the church. With Leading a Transforming Community, learn to cultivate a community of spiritual transformation that discerns and does the will of God together, and in turn empowers others to do the same.



Ruth Haley Barton (DD, Northern Seminary) is founder of the Transforming Center, a ministry dedicated to strengthening the souls of pastors, leaders, and the communities they serve. Trained at the Shalem Institute and the Loyola University Chicago Institute of Pastoral Studies, she is a seasoned spiritual director, teacher, and retreat leader who has served on the pastoral staff of several churches. Ruth is the author of numerous books on the spiritual life, including Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Invitation to Solitude and Silence, Sacred Rhythms, and Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest.



1. Longing for More in Community

Part 1: Foundations: From Desire to Intention



2. Arranging Our Lives Together for Spiritual Transformation



3. Beliefs that Shape the Soul: Biblical and Theological Foundations



4. Christ Formed in Us: Love in a Cruciform Shape

Part 2: Solitude: Our Life Hidden with Christ in God



5. Solitude at the Heart of Transforming Community



6. With God in Our Bodies

Part 3: Community:Sustaining Us in the Mystery



7. Choosing to Walk Together



8. Transforming Worship: Opening to God Together



9. Working with Stages of Faith in the Family of God

Part 4: Mission: In God for the World



10. For the Sake of Others: Generosity and Giving



11. Practicing Forbearance and Forgiveness



12. Justice: Learning to Love what God Loves



Conclusion: Discerning a Transforming Way of Life in Community



Epilogue: The Questions We'reWilling to Ask Ourselves



Appendix A: Biblical Framework for Honoring the Body as a Spiritual Practice



Appendix B: On the Road to Becoming a Transforming Community: Church Readiness Assessment



Appendix C: Transforming Center Values and Practices



"Whether you are a new leader or a seasoned one, this book will challenge, guide, and encourage you. It's an ideal field guide for your leadership team. Ruth Haley Barton has faithfully followed God's call on her life, and through this work she offers trustworthy companionship for anyone seeking to lead others toward authentic transformation."



"Spiritual formation has both a deeply personal and a profoundly collective dimension. If the former has been at the forefront of many churches in the last generation, there is a surging, vital interest in church, or ecclesial, formation. This book moves a person and a church from personal formation into formation of community. In particular, Ruth Haley Barton has moved her well-known studies of the personal into the community. Genuine Christian community formation involves fellowship, generosity, forgiveness, and love. For leaders and churches willing to enter the process of formation as a group, this book is a wonderful catalyst. Those leaders and churches will never be the same. They will experience transformation, both slowly and at times suddenly."



"Ruth Haley Barton invites us to discover the miracles of God's transformation that unfold through practices pursued in community rhythms. Spiritual formation is the way we can experience Christ's abundant life in a fallen world, and I am grateful Ruth has distilled her considerable, hard-won wisdom into this guide. It will be a gift to so many communities that long for a path of lasting change, together."



"Ruth Haley Barton offers a compelling vision for holistic, trinitarian spiritual transformation lived out in authentic community. She addresses challenges that hinder spiritual growth while providing both sound theology and guidance for genuine transformation. She invites us to examine the tensions within our ecclesial structures while holding hope for what is possible when communities yield to the Spirit. This is a resource for those who long to cultivate environments where spiritual disciplines are not performative but transformative. Barton desires redeemed people reflecting God's glory."



"This is a manifesto, the crescendo of decades' worth of seed sown and wisdom won in the inner lives of leaders from every swath of the church. Ruth Haley Barton invites leaders to think deeply about their own formation, the traditions they've inherited, and the communities they lead. Most poignantly, she challenges the misappropriations of success and tragic status quos that serve as cheap substitutes for resilient discipleship in the modern, Western church. I received the invitations of this book first as a member of a transforming community, its yeast kneaded into the dough of my life and leadership years ago. I'm delighted that the gift I received has been crafted into written form, that it might be shared more broadly."



"Ruth Haley Barton's Leading a Transforming Community is a deeply engaging read that masterfully unpacks the integral connection between the inner work of spiritual formation with the outer work of mission. I would recommend it to anyone seeking to go deeper in their inward and outward journeys."