“It is a pleasure to affirm the ministry of the Transforming Community.
Recently, my family and I vacationed out west. While hiking in places like Wyoming and Montana, we became quite thirsty in a climate where the heat is high and the humidity low. Stopping in those moments of overpowering thirst to grab our water bottles, those long drinks of cold water were some of the finest pleasures of our trip!
Participating in the ministry of the Transforming Center is like taking a long drink of cold water in the desert. Frankly, when we had Ruth Barton to our church to speak earlier this year, I didn't realize how "dehydrated" I had become.
The sad truth is, most pastors like myself are spiritually dehydrated and don't even know it. We are so busy exegeting and homiletizing about the Water of Life of life that we forget to make time to drink from the well of the Spirit ourselves. Meanwhile, we run hard every day on the treadmill of ministry, and the next thing we know, our souls have withered into dry husks.
Even sadder, many of us never learned how to drink deeply from the well of the Spirit in the first place. We know about God, but do not know God...not intimately. We preach an intimacy with Jesus we do not have ourselves. We sense that such intimacy is possible, but don't know how to make that closeness a reality.
So we go through the motions of ministry, hoping we can somehow sustain ourselves over the long haul. Some of us learn how to do this so well our congregations do not suspect that our spiritual wells ran dry years ago. But we know. And God knows.
And thank goodness, the Transforming Center knows.
Since first meeting the Transforming Center, I have begun reading Ruth's books. And in April of this year, I attended my first of eight quarterly Transforming Community retreats. The first retreat was outstanding, ushering me into intense experiences of solitude and community. I left feeling like my thirsty soul had been rejuvenated.
Likewise, everytime I read from one of Ruth's books, I feel like I have just taken a drink from a pure mountain stream. I have read lots of "spiritual" books during my 30 years of ministry, and no small number of books about the devotional life. But none speak to me quite like Ruth's. She has an uncanny understanding of what it means to be a dehydrated disciple/minister. She is so vulnerable with us that we cannot help but be vulnerable with ourselves. Better yet, she doesn't just diagnose our dehyrdation. She points us to spiriutal practices and patterns that will lead us beside God's still waters, and restore our souls.
Quite simply, the teaching of the Transforming Center is at the same time very down to earth, very wise spiritually, and also very eloquent. This is a potent combination, one that is extremely helpful to me and no doubt many others. And I am very excited to be on the journey to spiritual transformation with the team of the Transforming Center."
—David Hughes, Pastor, First Baptist Church,
Winston-Salem, NC
